Into the Dimensional Corridor
6 November 2014 – 6 April 2015
The Star Trek characters Odo, Quark, Major Kira Nerys, and Tom Paris, appearing here in the form of life-sized cardboard cut-outs; a sculptural installation of plates of coloured acrylic glass; luminously blue video projections; and framed portraits of famous scientists. These were some of the elements featured in the exhibition Into the Dimensional Corridor created by the American artist Lutz Bacher specifically for the x-rummet venue at the SMK.
Since the mid-1970s Lutz Bacher has explored how identities are presented in popular culture. She lifts familiar material, such as the Star Trek characters, out of its usual context and allows it to enter into entirely different scenarios, giving rise to new meaning.
The exhibition title has been drawn from an episode from the first season of the Star Trek series and refers to the transition from one state of being to another – from this world to another. This is a familiar rite of passage within science fiction culture, within spiritual thinking, and in literature, where it often signifies a main character moving from one moral level to the next.
Premiering in 1966, the Star Trek TV show has created a universe of outsiders and an alternative world order that has been read as a critical comment on a succession of conflicts pertaining to race, gender, war, etc. More than anything, however, the series is a truly long-lived pop-culture phenomenon: through decades it has reflected and fed the desire for the unknown and the fantastical.
In the exhibition the fictitious Star Trek universe met a range of portraits of prominent scientists taken from a book entitled Masters of Abstraction by photographer Peter Badge. Each in their own ways, these scientists have all contributed to the development of cyberspace. With this move, Lutz Bacher linked pop-culture fantasies about outer space with sophisticated scientific research and explorations of e.g. the Internet. Both take place in an abstract space outside our physical realm.
Lutz Bacher
Lutz Bacher’s real name is not known by the general public. Throughout her career she has worked under the male pseudonym Lutz Bacher.
Lutz Bacher has worked with a wide range of media; from installation art to video art, photography, and sculpture. A recurring trait of her art is that her works are always pieced together from existing objects, images, or texts that she finds in e.g. second-hand shops. Reinvented by Lutz Bacher, such objects often take on a humorous, eerie, or mysterious twist.
Lutz Bacher has lived and worked in California since the 1970s, but recently relocated to New York City. In 2013 she mounted three interconnected institutional solo exhibitions: at Portikus in Frankfurt-am-Main, at the ICA, London, and at the Kunsthalle Zurich. Other solo exhibitions include Aspen Art Museum (2014), MoMA/P.S. 1 (2009), Kunstverein Munich (2009), and the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2008).
She has also taken part in a range of group exhibitions, including “Spies in the House of Art”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); The Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2012); “Closed Circuit”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008); “Grey Flags”, Sculpture Center, New York and Bordeaux Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeux (2006); “American Tableaux”, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2002); and “Bit Streams”, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002). Her work is featured in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others.