Lichtlose Luft / Lightless Air

A solo exhibition which is the second phase of a project working with scientists at The Natural History Museum, London and The Regional Planetary Image Facility (RPIF) at UCL, London. This exhibition presents a selection of current work by British artist Johanna Love, who is working closely with scientists at The Natural History Museum, London and The Regional Planetary Image Facility (RPIF) at UCL, London. Through a combination of photography and drawing, the project seeks to examine problems of human perception in relation to modern technology. It questions the scientific image as one that remains detached and outside of our experience, sitting at the precipice of our perceptual understanding, and making visible matter that is beyond human vision. What drives this work is a fascination with how tiny specks of dust – what seems most insubstantial – has the material power to fascinate, to generate and to sustain thought. The scientific technical image is a starting point for the work, either obtained through the electron microscope or the digital scanner. However, it is always submitted to some kind of digital manipulation and then manual intervention through drawing. In drawing from or within the original photographic image, there is a critique of technology and a questioning of the scientific approach. Through the process of drawing and digital manipulation, there is an attempt to bring the image back into the physical, material world of the living and imagination, for as Merleau Ponty (1964) states, ‘science manipulates things and gives up living in them.’ The first stage and the body of work made was exhibited at GiG Gallery, Munich in 2015.