18.05.–29.09.2024, Wie der Skurrealismus in die Welt kommt, Villa Karbach Gmunden, Kulturhauptstadt Salzkammergut, 2024
As part of the VILLA KARBACH exhibition, Thomas Feuerstein is showing the newly created multi-part installation “ULTRAMARINA. Drinking up the lake” (2014) in the former workshop building on the lakeshore in Karbach. In the light blue flooded exhibition space ULTRAMARINA, green and diatom algae grow in the sculpture POLYPHORE. ULTRAMARINA brings together an ensemble of sculptures, pictures and objects. Here, diatoms from Lake Traunsee and limestone from local mines will be processed into a new pigment. A process developed by biologist and chemist Thomas Seppi for the exhibition forms the basis for the chemical synthesis of “Traunsee blue”. The color pigment, based on substances that all occur locally in Karbach, varies like the lake between bright ultramarine, turquoise, green and ash gray. In a nod to the history of science and art, the process has been registered with the Austrian Patent Office. “Traunsee blue” refers to the first historical patent in Germany by Johannes Zeltner (patent specification no. 1, 1877), which was granted for the chemical production of ultramarine as a substitute for lapis lazuli, as well as to Yves Klein’s IKB.
