We’re looking forward to the first group show at VAN HORN. The “Curie Cabinet” was exhibited for the first time at the Kunstverein Schwerte and travels now, in a new form adapted to the gallery space, to VAN HORN. The original concept for the exhibition was developed by Jan Albers. Christian Freudenberger and Markus Karstieß realized it, in their position as former artistic directors of the Kunstverein Schwerte, in cooperation with Albers and Jochen Weber.

“The Curie Cabinet is a fictitiuos space inspired by photographic images of the Paris laboratory of the double Nobel price laureate Marie Curie. Like the vanished Amber room, the artists “rediscovered” this room and transformed it fragmentary into a charged interior, between a workshop and a living room. Private objects, furniture, lamps and pictures create a mysterious cabinet of apparatuses and things from research and everyday life, emerging from an indefinite time. Curies search for the elements that bind the visible world and it’s objects in its inmost folds, transmits itself as artistic idea and experimental design on to the exhibited works. Rays transport the energy from the large-scale drawings and instruments by Jan Albers, sweep the space and spread over the enigmatic, utopian designs and images by Christian Freudenberger. Visions of a world in which, from the creation to the dissolution of matter, everything seems possible. With rays one can go throughwalls or go aboard a time machine in form of the sculptural furniture pieces by Jochen Weber. Experimental prototypes of the present, between applied and free, abstract form, charged with the utopian dream of modernity. The amorphous-entwined lamp caverns by Markus Karstieß spread out of their holes light and shadows at the same time and transform the objects into an illusionistic dark dream cabinet.
Marie Curie died as a result of radiation from Leukemia. Her discoveries and surveys of the elements changed the world. Four artists in a dark ray space at VAN HORN and an absurd homage to an emancipated woman and scientist. ”

Concept: Jan Albers Text: Christian Freudenberger & Markus Karstieß