Inspired by a series of found scientific diagrams Nikolaus Gansterer compiled an elaborate collection of hand made drawings questioning the possibilities and limitation of visual information. The work "Forty Found Figures" deals with the relationship between science and fiction by reflecting on methods of description and interpretation of measured realities. The drawings come out of an investigation into the visual strategies used in the presentation of theoretical conjectures as arrangements of coherent facts and the way in which they lay a claim to represent objective truth. In the course of a multi-stage process Nikolaus Gansterer de-contextualized the found figures by "cleaning" them from their original descriptive captions and layers of text in order to release their speculative potential.
Thus undermining the ordering systems and schematics by depriving the diagrams of their orientation based on prediction and calculation, he exposes them as instruments of power. In the resulting drawings the abstract forms have become relational signs, communicating a free semantics where the factual again gives way to the fictional. (Astrid Wege)

Concept: Nikolaus Gansterer
Year: Since 2005
Technique: Ink drawings

Exhibited in/at:

– 2009: Konturen, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, Austria

– 2007: Resonaces, Artis, Den Bosch, the Netherlands

– 2007: Bioforms, Cheapart Gallery, Athen

– 2007: Artmart, Kuenstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria

– 2007: Fresh Trips, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

– 2007: Kunstambassade, Pictura Drawing Center, Dordrecht

– 2006: Potential Dialogue, RCM Museum, Nanjing, China

Published in:

– Drawing a Hypothesis, Nikolaus Gansterer (Ed.), Springer Verlag Wien/NewYork in the series: Edition Angewandte,  2011, ISBN 978-3-7091-0802-4

– Potential Dialogue, Zuo Jing, Christiane Krejs (Eds.), catalogue, RCM Museum, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna/Nanjing, 2006