Mona Schulzek | Thomas Feuerstein
SYZYGY
10 May – 21 June, 2025
OPENING 9 May | 6 – 9pm
In collaboration with Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, nouveaux deuxdeux presents the duo exhibition SYZYGY by Thomas Feuerstein and Mona Schulzek. The term "syzygy" refers to an astronomical alignment of celestial bodies during a full or new moon—conditions that make solar or lunar eclipses possible. Originating from Greek, the word means “union” or “yoked pair.” It is an apt title for this special constellation of two artists whose works oscillate at the intersection of science, utopia, and collective transformation, exploring future imaginaries shaped by technology, biology, ecology, and speculative knowledge.
Mona Schulzek’s sculptures Chamber I (2025) and the series Dead Matter (2025) continue a line of inquiry first raised in her work Together we can make God perfect (2020): How does humanity engage with non-human life—be it biological, technological, or extraterrestrial? The seemingly alien object, as if fallen from the sky, is displayed publicly due to its “non-artistic” origin. Chamber I, composed of titanium, stainless steel, aluminum, and plastic, references architectural and procedural elements, as does the Dead Matter series.
In Dead Matter (vacuum chamber), Schulzek incorporates the remains of a vacuum architecture she had constructed—an unsuccessful attempt to technically capture emptiness. In a ritual act, she burned the object, sealed its ashes in a glass ampoule, and placed it at the sculpture’s core: an urn preserving experimental failure, transformation, and symbolic rebirth. In contrast to Point Nemo—the remotest spot on Earth where decommissioned satellites are sunk into the “space graveyard”—Schulzek emphasizes material circulation and estrangement from origins in this cosmic-terrestrial convergence. She shifts attention to vanishing sites and asks: What remains when systems collapse?
At the heart of Organic Matter (pill millipedes) (2025) is a giant pill millipede (Sphaerotheriida)—a rare arthropod crucial for nutrient stabilization in its habitat, yet increasingly endangered by human destruction of its ecosystems. Its spherical shape serves as both protection and metaphor, referencing biological morphologies and cultural notions of retreat and preservation. The creature appears like a biological relic embedded within machine aesthetics—as if the machine itself sensed the Earth’s peril and elevated this fragile being to a symbol of warning. Schulzek’s work reflects on the visibility and value of non-human intelligences—animal instinct or machine learning—often romanticized, misused, or ignored by humans. The sculpture forms a quiet alliance of technology, biology, and memory—as if machines, before humans, understood that survival on a fragile planet demands collective action.
Portal A and Portal B (2025) resemble futuristic urns, possibly bearing the remains of an extinct species—perhaps humanity itself. Their smooth, alien contours elude clear categorization and suggest relics of non-human civilizations, speculating on extraterrestrial life and its visibility. Their mirrored arrangement evokes Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (1512), specifically the iconic gesture of near-touching hands symbolizing the transmission of life, consciousness, or divine energy. The sculpture pair also recalls science fiction narratives such as Stargate, where wormhole connections enable interstellar travel and contact with other life forms. At their tips, the sculptures incorporate silicon or selenite—materials that connect the technological with the mystical: silicon evokes advanced digital systems, while selenite suggests sacred or energetic resonance.
Thomas Feuerstein’s installations, “molecular sculptures,” and drawings weave chemical, biological, and social processes into a dense web of material research, imagination, and societal analysis. In his long-term project Metabolica, developed in collaboration with microbiologists at the University of Innsbruck, he harnesses metabolic processes of algae and bacteria to produce bio-based plastics—a paradigmatic shift from petrochemistry to biochemistry. These microorganisms act not merely as material but as active co-producers, signaling a shift in perspective on the relationship between humans, technology, and nature.
Alongside the sculpture MAGGOT (2024), the exhibition presents 45 drawings from the Metabolica series. Stylistically, these range from surrealist illustration and 1960s sci-fi comics to the compositional clarity of Bauhaus posters—fusing design with sociopolitical vision. These drawings are not mere supplements to his often monumental installations; they constitute an autonomous language, where sculptures emerge as speaking figures. Speech bubbles like “Not the artist speaks to the world, art makes the world speak” point to a shift in authorship toward art as a medium of social articulation.
Feuerstein positions himself in a lineage of avant-garde movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism—traditions that see art as a transformative force between everyday life, politics, and utopia. Echoes of Joseph Beuys’s concept of art as “social sculpture” resound in his work—albeit with a satirical twist: The sculpture becomes a political agent within his drawings that serve as conceptual spaces for posthuman ecologies. These ideas materialize in recurring industrial objects like Euro pallets, which Feuerstein marks with cryptic codes such as “PHB”—standing for Politics, Humans, Biology, and also referencing polyhydroxybutyrate, a biodegradable plastic. The pallet—symbol of global commodity flow—becomes a carrier of speculative meanings, a fragment of a future ecological architecture where life, technology, and language are inextricably intertwined.
Le petit Yves #1 (2025) marks the beginning of a new ongoing work cycle. It features a dyed horseshoe crab beneath an acrylic dome—a homage to Yves Klein, with his iconic ultramarine reinterpreted. Here, the pigment is not just symbolic; it is the result of extensive research. Derived from diatoms capable of capturing large amounts of CO₂, the turquoise-blue pigment emerges through a novel chemical process. This connects art history, ecological responsibility, and patent law: starting in 2024, Feuerstein filed patent claims for the pigment, which is not only aesthetically but also ecologically significant. The horseshoe crab—whose blood is blue due to its copper base—intensifies the work’s transhuman and speculative-biological dimensions. Mythologically, “blue blood” signifies nobility; biologically, it signals alternatives to human hemoglobin.
In SYZYGY, two artistic positions meet to illuminate the boundaries of knowledge, the conditions of life, and the meanings of matter in speculative futures. While Feuerstein’s experimental installations turn algae and bacteria into agents of aesthetic transformation, Schulzek’s machines heighten our awareness of fragile ecological coexistence—balances that can be tipped by the smallest shifts.
Feuerstein’s works generate metabolic ecosystems in which technology, language, and life are intricately entwined. His installations and sculptures make visible the biochemical processes he develops collaboratively with scientists—to create eco-neutral pigments or explore microbial intelligence as the basis for new aesthetic ecologies. His drawings call for the mobilization of artistic and activist agents: revealing his convictions while opening a field of meanings between art, science, and social imagination.
Schulzek’s sculptures, by contrast, may at first appear cool and distant, but they gradually unfold a quiet language of softness and vulnerability. The giant pill millipede at their center is a creature of symbiotic dependence—its survival hinges on a complex microbial balance that cannot be technically replicated. Her works respond with a presence that resists clarity, and through their ambiguity, unlock a multitude of potential readings.
In the exhibition space, both positions enter into a silent but polyphonic dialogue. nouveaux deuxdeux presents them not as opposites, but as a dynamic fabric of resonances. Biological interdependence and microbial transformation, speculative thought and precise research, ambiguity and aesthetic agency converge. Both artists embrace ambivalence—not as a weakness, but as a productive basis for thought and insight. In a time shaped by simplified narratives and populist agendas, they elevate ambiguity as a key resource—reminding us that the future will not emerge in binaries, but in the open, living in-between.
– Text by Teresa Retzer
Mona Schulzek’s sculptures Chamber I (2025) and the series Dead Matter (2025) continue a line of inquiry first raised in her work Together we can make God perfect (2020): How does humanity engage with non-human life—be it biological, technological, or extraterrestrial? The seemingly alien object, as if fallen from the sky, is displayed publicly due to its “non-artistic” origin. Chamber I, composed of titanium, stainless steel, aluminum, and plastic, references architectural and procedural elements, as does the Dead Matter series.
In Dead Matter (vacuum chamber), Schulzek incorporates the remains of a vacuum architecture she had constructed—an unsuccessful attempt to technically capture emptiness. In a ritual act, she burned the object, sealed its ashes in a glass ampoule, and placed it at the sculpture’s core: an urn preserving experimental failure, transformation, and symbolic rebirth. In contrast to Point Nemo—the remotest spot on Earth where decommissioned satellites are sunk into the “space graveyard”—Schulzek emphasizes material circulation and estrangement from origins in this cosmic-terrestrial convergence. She shifts attention to vanishing sites and asks: What remains when systems collapse?
At the heart of Organic Matter (pill millipedes) (2025) is a giant pill millipede (Sphaerotheriida)—a rare arthropod crucial for nutrient stabilization in its habitat, yet increasingly endangered by human destruction of its ecosystems. Its spherical shape serves as both protection and metaphor, referencing biological morphologies and cultural notions of retreat and preservation. The creature appears like a biological relic embedded within machine aesthetics—as if the machine itself sensed the Earth’s peril and elevated this fragile being to a symbol of warning. Schulzek’s work reflects on the visibility and value of non-human intelligences—animal instinct or machine learning—often romanticized, misused, or ignored by humans. The sculpture forms a quiet alliance of technology, biology, and memory—as if machines, before humans, understood that survival on a fragile planet demands collective action.
Portal A and Portal B (2025) resemble futuristic urns, possibly bearing the remains of an extinct species—perhaps humanity itself. Their smooth, alien contours elude clear categorization and suggest relics of non-human civilizations, speculating on extraterrestrial life and its visibility. Their mirrored arrangement evokes Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (1512), specifically the iconic gesture of near-touching hands symbolizing the transmission of life, consciousness, or divine energy. The sculpture pair also recalls science fiction narratives such as Stargate, where wormhole connections enable interstellar travel and contact with other life forms. At their tips, the sculptures incorporate silicon or selenite—materials that connect the technological with the mystical: silicon evokes advanced digital systems, while selenite suggests sacred or energetic resonance.
Thomas Feuerstein’s installations, “molecular sculptures,” and drawings weave chemical, biological, and social processes into a dense web of material research, imagination, and societal analysis. In his long-term project Metabolica, developed in collaboration with microbiologists at the University of Innsbruck, he harnesses metabolic processes of algae and bacteria to produce bio-based plastics—a paradigmatic shift from petrochemistry to biochemistry. These microorganisms act not merely as material but as active co-producers, signaling a shift in perspective on the relationship between humans, technology, and nature.
Alongside the sculpture MAGGOT (2024), the exhibition presents 45 drawings from the Metabolica series. Stylistically, these range from surrealist illustration and 1960s sci-fi comics to the compositional clarity of Bauhaus posters—fusing design with sociopolitical vision. These drawings are not mere supplements to his often monumental installations; they constitute an autonomous language, where sculptures emerge as speaking figures. Speech bubbles like “Not the artist speaks to the world, art makes the world speak” point to a shift in authorship toward art as a medium of social articulation.
Feuerstein positions himself in a lineage of avant-garde movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism—traditions that see art as a transformative force between everyday life, politics, and utopia. Echoes of Joseph Beuys’s concept of art as “social sculpture” resound in his work—albeit with a satirical twist: The sculpture becomes a political agent within his drawings that serve as conceptual spaces for posthuman ecologies. These ideas materialize in recurring industrial objects like Euro pallets, which Feuerstein marks with cryptic codes such as “PHB”—standing for Politics, Humans, Biology, and also referencing polyhydroxybutyrate, a biodegradable plastic. The pallet—symbol of global commodity flow—becomes a carrier of speculative meanings, a fragment of a future ecological architecture where life, technology, and language are inextricably intertwined.
Le petit Yves #1 (2025) marks the beginning of a new ongoing work cycle. It features a dyed horseshoe crab beneath an acrylic dome—a homage to Yves Klein, with his iconic ultramarine reinterpreted. Here, the pigment is not just symbolic; it is the result of extensive research. Derived from diatoms capable of capturing large amounts of CO₂, the turquoise-blue pigment emerges through a novel chemical process. This connects art history, ecological responsibility, and patent law: starting in 2024, Feuerstein filed patent claims for the pigment, which is not only aesthetically but also ecologically significant. The horseshoe crab—whose blood is blue due to its copper base—intensifies the work’s transhuman and speculative-biological dimensions. Mythologically, “blue blood” signifies nobility; biologically, it signals alternatives to human hemoglobin.
In SYZYGY, two artistic positions meet to illuminate the boundaries of knowledge, the conditions of life, and the meanings of matter in speculative futures. While Feuerstein’s experimental installations turn algae and bacteria into agents of aesthetic transformation, Schulzek’s machines heighten our awareness of fragile ecological coexistence—balances that can be tipped by the smallest shifts.
Feuerstein’s works generate metabolic ecosystems in which technology, language, and life are intricately entwined. His installations and sculptures make visible the biochemical processes he develops collaboratively with scientists—to create eco-neutral pigments or explore microbial intelligence as the basis for new aesthetic ecologies. His drawings call for the mobilization of artistic and activist agents: revealing his convictions while opening a field of meanings between art, science, and social imagination.
Schulzek’s sculptures, by contrast, may at first appear cool and distant, but they gradually unfold a quiet language of softness and vulnerability. The giant pill millipede at their center is a creature of symbiotic dependence—its survival hinges on a complex microbial balance that cannot be technically replicated. Her works respond with a presence that resists clarity, and through their ambiguity, unlock a multitude of potential readings.
In the exhibition space, both positions enter into a silent but polyphonic dialogue. nouveaux deuxdeux presents them not as opposites, but as a dynamic fabric of resonances. Biological interdependence and microbial transformation, speculative thought and precise research, ambiguity and aesthetic agency converge. Both artists embrace ambivalence—not as a weakness, but as a productive basis for thought and insight. In a time shaped by simplified narratives and populist agendas, they elevate ambiguity as a key resource—reminding us that the future will not emerge in binaries, but in the open, living in-between.
– Text by Teresa Retzer