Artist 310
Heiko Blankenstein
The scientific world of nature through the art
Installation and mixed media
Heiko Blankenstein (born 1970) is a German artist who lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. As a sculptor and installation artist his creative use of lighting and installation set the ground work for his fantastical worlds. He also draws extensively. His subject matter is based on physical and chemical design principles of the universe.
Blankenstein’s work explores the astrophysical conditions of the galaxy and how science tries to explain it is central to his work. He abstracts visual products of research and reformulates them in turn into artworks.
The artist is known for his interest in terrestrial and extraterrestrial landscapes. He explores galactic phenomena and their scientific attempts to be explained , as well as their various pop-cultural references.
‘There are questions about our existence in space and time that orbit the artist in his universe like planets.’ - Sarah Merten.
Heiko Blankenstein looks at nature and transcribes it into illustrations. He uses existing physical processes and through art elevates them with a hyperreality focus making it difficult in divide fiction from fact.
Heiko Blankenstein on a time when technology touched his life in a surprising way, ‘Probably when I was first getting interested in nuclear fusion while doing research for my artworks. The technology that's being developed in order to make fusion work as a source of energy here on earth is simply mind-blowing and was to my surprise extremely beautiful. The same counts for CERN , the huge particle accelerator I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago, and for mathematical visualisations of Lorenz Attractors, which are part of chaos theory research.’
He explains further how moments of nature and technology affect him,
‘... [I] wouldn't even know where to start, close up images of comet churyumov-gerasimenko, solar flares, tokamaks, close-ups of granules on the sun's surface, radar imagery of the surface of venus, and simply countless images of nature here on earth, from the most microscopic textures and living organisms to vast mountain ranges or seascapes.’
Heiko Blankenstein on his influences, ‘I would say being in the mountains and forests is a huge influence, the observation of nature and understanding how everything is connected in combination with the time and quietness to think up new ideas is most important source for art for me. The underlying theme of my work was always nature in its broadest sense, the realization that space is part of nature too ,made me work on astronomical and cosmological subject matter for the past years...I guess these things always interested me , even when I was a child, simply for their resistance to be fully understood – how can one understand things like infinity of space?’
Sources Consulted:
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