Minna Kangasmaa | Christine Düwel | Eija Hirvonen | Dorit Trebeljahr | Astrid Weichelt
Galerie Kunstflügel, Rangsdorf, Germany
8.5. – 3.7.2022
The title of the exhibition ÉLAN VITAL AND MOMENTUM quotes two terms from philosophy. The French philosopher Henri Bergson coined the term ÉLAN VITAL. MOMENTUM is already used by Aristotle and was later taken up again by other philosophers. Élan vital stands for life energy and vitality, but at the same time also for a hidden creative development tendency that extends into the future. According to Aristotle, the term momentum means indivisible movement. But that does not simply mean standstill. Because in momentum, the pause and the dynamic of future movement are very close together. It is about the moment, a presence in which something is in the air but has not yet been completed. In this respect, the moving life energy and the moments of pause complement each other and are closely related to each other. The works of the six artists were created in this creative field of tension.
"Henri Bergson experienced the turn of the century as an adult man and with it the beginning of industrialization in Europe. The beginning of the machine age may have been one of the reasons why he thought a lot about the appearance of living things in the world. He coined the term ÉLAN VITAL as an expression of a creative power inherent in living things, a power that is present in every appearance of living things as the will to create forms and variety. At the same time as Albert Einstein, Bergson developed a philosophical "theory of relativity" by saying that time is not a fixed concept, but depends on the relationship to space and the appearance of the living things themselves. He had observed that time in the living world is like a flow, or even more like a pushing, in which processes overlap and then expand again, that there is order and rhythms, but that these are subject to individual adjustments and cannot really be measured with a clock or a calendar." (Kathrin Schrader)
Vitality is a possible translation of the term Élan vital, which was coined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. His aim was to depict a kind of metaphysical primal force that is inherent in and controls the processes of life. Similarly, the term Prima Materia refers to the omnipresent ultimate substance. Minna Kangasmaa's artwork "Prima Materia" made of unfired clay seems to sum up the theme of the exhibition.
"The time calculation of the living, also called chaos, in which the material mixes, bubbles and breaks, tears open and gives birth in a creative process. Our existence here today, in the face of the pile of piling up crises, is like this ambiguous state in which no measuring device can help us. We are groping in a dark matter, we can only feel our way forward slowly. At the same time, we know that something new is emerging, it is noticeably hinting at something. When did it actually start? And where will it end?" (Kathrin Schrader)