Maps of Bodying

Nikolaus Gansterer, Maps of Bodying 2, 2018, (222 x 144 cm)

Nikolaus Gansterer, Maps of Bodying 3, 2018, (222 x 144 cm)

Nikolaus Gansterer, Maps of Bodying 4, 2018, Nikolaus Gansterer, Maps of Bodying 3, 2018, (222 x 144 cm)

Nikolaus Gansterer, Maps of Bodying 6, 2019, (222 x 144 cm)

MAPS OF BODYING

Medicine’s sophisticated techniques for mapping and measuring the inside of our bodies with x-ray, magnetic resonance, ultrasound or laser generate intriguing images of the body. Yet the body remains a misnomer, says Erin Manning: “Nothing so stable, so certain of itself ever survives the complexity of worlding. The body is […] always in co-constellation with the environmentality […] not a form per se. And yet we inevitably use the concept as shorthand – how else to talk about issues of agency, of identity, of territoriality?”

In his ongoing series of drawings, Maps of Bodying, Gansterer explores modes of attention to scan the body from within as “events of experience”. He thus renders visible a body as a vivid field of forces which is not organized by anatomic proportions nor physical knowledge but by inner modes of perception. Through various states of alertness during day and night, in different bodily positions and in forms of illness such as fever.

Most of what we consciously perceive about the world is created through the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin that provide information from outside the body. The basic ability of any living organism is to observe its own inner states from unconsciousness to self-consciousness towards self-awareness. By redirecting the gaze inwards to the nervous system the artist becomes attuned to the body’s material liveliness, vitality and vibrancy. Gansterer thereby develops an idiosyncratic topography, placing his drawings on anatomical-sized maps. These are not conceived as gaining control over a territory but rather show the body as an ever shifting reservoir of fluids, movements and somatic activities. More-than human, this is the body as a state of becoming.

Ongoing series of maps and drawings since 2017,various dimensions, pencil and markers on canvas

Exhibited in the frame work of:

– 2019, tracing (in)tangibles, Nikolaus Gansterer, solo show, Galerie Crone, Vienna, Austria
– 2019, Viennacontemporary, 2019, artfair, Marx Halle, Vienna, Austria
– 2019, Nikolaus Gansterer, ) ( ) Drawing as Thinking in Action, solo show, Drawing Lab, Paris, France
– 2018/2019, Brisante Träume / Volatile Dreams, Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany
– 2018, Con-notations, solos show, Villa Arson, Nice, France