Mona Schulzek | Thomas Feuerstein
SYZYGY
10 May – 21 June, 2025
OPENING 9 May | 6 – 9pm
As part of Various Others 2025, nouveaux deuxdeux presents a duo exhibition featuring Mona Schulzek and Thomas Feuerstein, in collaboration with Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna. Their works oscillate between natural science, a utopian idea, and collective transformation, questioning the mutual permeation of life, matter, and time.
Schulzek’s conceptual and research-intensive practice explores the relationships between earthly and extraterrestrial materials, tracing their narrative and functional transformations. In her current series, she integrates meteorites, metals, and scientific observations into sculptural objects that act as portals between technological and biological systems. Evoking space capsules, her sculptures carry rock samples and relics of once-living earthly organisms, thereby “preparing” the exchange of matter and life across cosmic distances.
Two additional sculptures, which "visualize" unborn aliens, explore the possibility of physically connecting with extraterrestrial life by materializing imagined future visions. These alien cocoons or portals draw on science fiction narratives like Stargate, where wormholes connections enable travel to distant planets and contact with otherworldly beings.
In his installations, "molecular sculptures," and drawings, Feuerstein explores chemical and biological processes that mediate between ecological and biotechnological materialities, as well as social and psychological states of consciousness. His long-term project, Metabolica, developed in collaboration with microbiologists at the University of Innsbruck, utilizes metabolicprocesses to create biological plastics for sculptures. From an environmental, political, and economic perspective, algae and bacteria become active collaborators in his work, highlighting a shift from petrochemicals to biochemistry. His sculptures and installations reflect thetransformation of natural, technological, and social structures, creating aesthetic models that expand the symbolic meanings of art through both metabolic and real-world processes. Both positions advocate for societal transformation and challenge traditional hierarchies in art and society by interrogating the boundary between fact-based and alternative forms ofknowledge and perception.
In addition to concrete insights, Feuerstein is particularly interested in forms of biological information processing in non-human organisms, while Schulzek engages with speculative or mystical knowledge, drawing on narratives from a time before systematic scientific methods emerged. Schulzek stages possibilities for cosmic contact with extraterrestrial life, while Feuerstein co-produces sculptures with living organisms as material visions of possible futures.
Through the aesthetic translation of diverse forms of knowledge, they render complex connections tangible and propose collective utopias. In doing so, they create new spaces forthought and action beyond established knowledge systems.
– Text by Teresa Retzer
Schulzek’s conceptual and research-intensive practice explores the relationships between earthly and extraterrestrial materials, tracing their narrative and functional transformations. In her current series, she integrates meteorites, metals, and scientific observations into sculptural objects that act as portals between technological and biological systems. Evoking space capsules, her sculptures carry rock samples and relics of once-living earthly organisms, thereby “preparing” the exchange of matter and life across cosmic distances.
Two additional sculptures, which "visualize" unborn aliens, explore the possibility of physically connecting with extraterrestrial life by materializing imagined future visions. These alien cocoons or portals draw on science fiction narratives like Stargate, where wormholes connections enable travel to distant planets and contact with otherworldly beings.
In his installations, "molecular sculptures," and drawings, Feuerstein explores chemical and biological processes that mediate between ecological and biotechnological materialities, as well as social and psychological states of consciousness. His long-term project, Metabolica, developed in collaboration with microbiologists at the University of Innsbruck, utilizes metabolicprocesses to create biological plastics for sculptures. From an environmental, political, and economic perspective, algae and bacteria become active collaborators in his work, highlighting a shift from petrochemicals to biochemistry. His sculptures and installations reflect thetransformation of natural, technological, and social structures, creating aesthetic models that expand the symbolic meanings of art through both metabolic and real-world processes. Both positions advocate for societal transformation and challenge traditional hierarchies in art and society by interrogating the boundary between fact-based and alternative forms ofknowledge and perception.
In addition to concrete insights, Feuerstein is particularly interested in forms of biological information processing in non-human organisms, while Schulzek engages with speculative or mystical knowledge, drawing on narratives from a time before systematic scientific methods emerged. Schulzek stages possibilities for cosmic contact with extraterrestrial life, while Feuerstein co-produces sculptures with living organisms as material visions of possible futures.
Through the aesthetic translation of diverse forms of knowledge, they render complex connections tangible and propose collective utopias. In doing so, they create new spaces forthought and action beyond established knowledge systems.
– Text by Teresa Retzer