Say It Isn't So

Since the end of the last millennium, a remarkably large number of artists have exhibited renewed interest in the natural sciences. They botanize plants, typify cow patches, construct observation facilities for insects, attempt to communicate with frogs in open laboratory settings, or try to arouse euphoria in subjects in experimental arrangements. They avail themselves of scientific jargon and forms of scientific illustration, and create unconventional models.
The exhibition Say it isn't so Art Trains Its Sights on the Natural Sciences examines this phenomenon. Yet it does not first and foremost want to go beyond the similarities already known to exist between the two areas; rather, along the lines of the current discourse, it wants to show how contemporary artists reflect on and transform the natural sciences from their own, occasionally critical standpoint. By keenly familiarizing themselves with the modes of thought, the experimental procedures, but also with the system of modes of communication and representation in the natural sciences, they become capable of placing these on a new level of aesthetic reflection. Because they enable experiencing scientific explanatory models from a distance, which is necessary for art, they make it possible to subject the belief in science to a reassessment.
In 1913/1914 Marcel Duchamp viewed and practiced art as an epistemic system. It is for this reason that within the context of this exhibition, his legacy is given particular importance: much of what young artists do today can be measured against his parameters, which criticize both the sciences as well as art. Bruce Nauman, whose works are reminiscent of test arrangements, and Nikolaus Lang, who out of necessity developed methods of collecting, archiving, and cataloguing very early on, are figures of reference for an older generation of artists.