Black holes, dark matter, gravity, time, motion—these phenomena fascinate physicists and artists alike. Both strive to discover how they shape our world. The connection between art and science is gaining increasing significance in contemporary art.

Now, the influence of physics on today’s art, design, and architecture is being more closely examined. Curated by Ariane Koek, the founder of the arts program Arts at CERN, the exhibition Entangle – Physics and the Artistic Imagination and its companion catalog present the works of fourteen contemporary artists who are inspired by physics and its investigation of natural phenomena. Besides their works, this ground-breaking publication also contains interviews with the artists and physicists who share their different ways of seeing.

Featuring interviews with and works of art by Julius von Bismarck, Julian Charrière, Sou Fujumoto, Iris van Herpen, Ryoji Ikeda, William Kentridge, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Goshka Macuga, Davide Quayola, Solveig Settemsdal, Sarah Sze, Keith Tyson, Jorinde Voigt, and Carey Young.

Exhibition:
16.11.2018—14.04.2019, BIldmuseet Umeå

JULIAN CHARRIÈRE's (*1987) work bridges the realms of environmental science and cultural history. Marshalling performance, sculpture and photography, his projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities.

William Kentridge (*1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa) graduated from the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg with a degree in politics and African Studies in 1976. From 1976 to 1978 he studied printmaking at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. In 1981/82 he took pantomime and acting classes at the École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecog in Paris. His work has been seen in many solo and group shows since the 1980s. Five Themes, for instance, was shown in 2010 at the MoMA in New York, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Albertina in Vienna. Kentridge was a participant in the documenta X (1997) and Documenta11 (2002), and is now represented at the dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). He is the recipient of various prizes, including the 2003 Kaiserring from the City of Goslar, and the 2010 Kyoto Prize for Art and Philosophy. The artist lives and works in Johannesburg.

In her drawings JORINDE VOIGT (*1977 in Frankfurt am Main) develops a kind of semantic code that seems extremely subjective and individual, yet is subjected to strict rules and systems. In the process her notations create visual spaces that employ an artistic, philosophical procedure to unfold the world in its fundamental parameters, such as distance, speed, direction, frequency, pop charts, genres, and much more, while at the same time revealing the simultaneity of all these things. 

JULIUS VON BISMARCK (*1983) grew up in Riad, Saudi Arabia, and Freiburg, Germany. He studied visual communications at the Berlin University of the Arts and at Hunter College in New York, and finished his graduate studies under Ólafur Elíasson in 2013.