Sophia Gatzkan, Johnny Linder, Ludwig Stalla
Transmission Remains
20 September – 1 November, 2025
OPENING 19 September | 6 – 9pm
The exhibition Transmission Remains gently reminds us that things are always at least two things at once. We like to think of the world as full of discrete, countable objects, each self-contained. It lies static in front of us, prepared for our imminent arrival. We move around this world, picking up one thing or another; we observe and examine things, giving them meaning. And looking around the exhibition, we see a number of objects sitting neatly in their own rectangular frames, as if prepared for our gaze.
A closer inspection reveals that many of the exhibited works contain traces or remains of some kind. Looking past the protective layers and aluminum casing of Ludwig Stalla’s work, we see that the cotton canvas is lightly rubbed with graphite, so that its vertical folds and the creases and wrinkles mirrored around the lines of the folds become visible, as well as the ghostly imprint of the stretcher underneath.
Set behind the transparent, tissue-thin gauze of Johnny Linder’s Subsequent Remains lie imprints of the body, as sewing thread dipped in paraffin is wrapped over joints, elbows, arms, and hands. As the limb is carefully withdrawn from its enclosing net, its hollowed-out, partly collapsed form remains, like a shed skin. Similarly, traces are also present in his Intuitive Tides series, where thread is used to wrap around tinted glass, enclosing a photographic image. The waterlines left in the sand are traces of tidal activity, and all photographs are a resultof a physical imprint left by light on a photo-sensitive surface. A semiotician might call these things indexes, and they would be correct, in that the index (like the trace or remain) shares a connection to the real. Unlike the icon and the symbol, which are more abstract, the index requires this connection to the real to establish its meaning—if not to grasp and hold it, then to touch it delicately, ever so gently, between the fingers. Yet, this real, defined by semioticians, is a construct, operating only within a narrow understanding of linguistics. Things are always two things at once because forces are at work, and what we like to think of as things are constantly changing, as are we when we encounter them.
Sophia Gatzkan’s Figure of Some Future Pompeii includes two fiberglass leg casts, which begin just above the knees before tapering down to the shin bone, where they are sprayed red—again, traces orimprints of a kind. The artist then screws these to a pair of motorcycle shock absorbers, with an even longer steel boltrunning through both, holding everything together. With its leg sockets and integrated suspension system, the work looks like a transfemoral prosthesis offered to individuals with above-the-knee amputations. An accident, we might think of—and of a violent kind, like those so vividly described by J.G. Ballard, with mutilated bodies and destroyed vehicles. These are bodies carrying the impact of the collision with technology, and technology marked by human flesh and fluids. Gatzkan operates within a prosthetic theory of technology, in which technological artifacts are understood as externalized organs. There is a technicity assigned to the body, its organs comprehended as technologies developed by the organism over the course of evolution. And just as with technological development, once the organism does evolve, its older version is rendered obsolete. Modern junkyards filled with rusting cars can be compared to Roman ruins or fossil grounds. For the philosopher Michel Serres, they are all cemeteries of externalized techniques. Modern technologies are fossils belonging to a future Pompeii.
Serres begins his book The Incandescent with a descent into duration. Those things that seem so permanent and unmoving, like mountains and rock, the sun and the stars, within a broader temporal framework—or indeed a minute,molecular one—become matter that moves, that continually changes and evolves. Things flow, and I am swept along with them. Connections form and have an effect, and for a brief moment things seem to stabilize, but everything is always influx, and these connections are discarded and lost when new ones are made.
In his series of copper works, Stalla takes the green circuit board—a technology seemingly destined for future cemeteries of externalized techniques—and submits it to the galvanization process, used by the metal industry to prevent corrosion by producing a protective metal coating. As the current passes through the sulfate solution in which Stalla immerses the circuit board, copper ions are attracted to the negative charge and deposited on the exposed metal surfaces. They beg into grow, seemingly of their own accord, to form delicate copper metal crystals. Interestingly, there is no predetermined form the metal crystals might take, a kind of point of stability they strive to reach. Hylozoic in character, the copper ions organize themselves as if possessed of intelligent life. They overspill and overgrow, and sometimes collapse—the remains of an ongoing process.
Things are always two things at once: change and stasis. But we must make an effort to place ourselves in the midst of them and allow ourselves to be swept along. Traces abound in Transmission Remains, but these are not fossilized objects acting as iconic signifiers, rigid markers of areal constructed by semioticians. The paraffin-soaked thread used by Linder in his work is soft and malleable; the tides he references are never still. Gatzkan opens the body to technological development, rigidity discarded as new forms are realized to the degree their surroundings allow. Stalla’s experiments with electrolysis emphasize the same: that things are static only in passing and always open to change. We like to think that there is a world waiting for us, but things never wait—they move in their own ways, leaving traces for us to find.
– Text by Magdalena Wisniowska
A closer inspection reveals that many of the exhibited works contain traces or remains of some kind. Looking past the protective layers and aluminum casing of Ludwig Stalla’s work, we see that the cotton canvas is lightly rubbed with graphite, so that its vertical folds and the creases and wrinkles mirrored around the lines of the folds become visible, as well as the ghostly imprint of the stretcher underneath.
Set behind the transparent, tissue-thin gauze of Johnny Linder’s Subsequent Remains lie imprints of the body, as sewing thread dipped in paraffin is wrapped over joints, elbows, arms, and hands. As the limb is carefully withdrawn from its enclosing net, its hollowed-out, partly collapsed form remains, like a shed skin. Similarly, traces are also present in his Intuitive Tides series, where thread is used to wrap around tinted glass, enclosing a photographic image. The waterlines left in the sand are traces of tidal activity, and all photographs are a resultof a physical imprint left by light on a photo-sensitive surface. A semiotician might call these things indexes, and they would be correct, in that the index (like the trace or remain) shares a connection to the real. Unlike the icon and the symbol, which are more abstract, the index requires this connection to the real to establish its meaning—if not to grasp and hold it, then to touch it delicately, ever so gently, between the fingers. Yet, this real, defined by semioticians, is a construct, operating only within a narrow understanding of linguistics. Things are always two things at once because forces are at work, and what we like to think of as things are constantly changing, as are we when we encounter them.
Sophia Gatzkan’s Figure of Some Future Pompeii includes two fiberglass leg casts, which begin just above the knees before tapering down to the shin bone, where they are sprayed red—again, traces orimprints of a kind. The artist then screws these to a pair of motorcycle shock absorbers, with an even longer steel boltrunning through both, holding everything together. With its leg sockets and integrated suspension system, the work looks like a transfemoral prosthesis offered to individuals with above-the-knee amputations. An accident, we might think of—and of a violent kind, like those so vividly described by J.G. Ballard, with mutilated bodies and destroyed vehicles. These are bodies carrying the impact of the collision with technology, and technology marked by human flesh and fluids. Gatzkan operates within a prosthetic theory of technology, in which technological artifacts are understood as externalized organs. There is a technicity assigned to the body, its organs comprehended as technologies developed by the organism over the course of evolution. And just as with technological development, once the organism does evolve, its older version is rendered obsolete. Modern junkyards filled with rusting cars can be compared to Roman ruins or fossil grounds. For the philosopher Michel Serres, they are all cemeteries of externalized techniques. Modern technologies are fossils belonging to a future Pompeii.
Serres begins his book The Incandescent with a descent into duration. Those things that seem so permanent and unmoving, like mountains and rock, the sun and the stars, within a broader temporal framework—or indeed a minute,molecular one—become matter that moves, that continually changes and evolves. Things flow, and I am swept along with them. Connections form and have an effect, and for a brief moment things seem to stabilize, but everything is always influx, and these connections are discarded and lost when new ones are made.
In his series of copper works, Stalla takes the green circuit board—a technology seemingly destined for future cemeteries of externalized techniques—and submits it to the galvanization process, used by the metal industry to prevent corrosion by producing a protective metal coating. As the current passes through the sulfate solution in which Stalla immerses the circuit board, copper ions are attracted to the negative charge and deposited on the exposed metal surfaces. They beg into grow, seemingly of their own accord, to form delicate copper metal crystals. Interestingly, there is no predetermined form the metal crystals might take, a kind of point of stability they strive to reach. Hylozoic in character, the copper ions organize themselves as if possessed of intelligent life. They overspill and overgrow, and sometimes collapse—the remains of an ongoing process.
Things are always two things at once: change and stasis. But we must make an effort to place ourselves in the midst of them and allow ourselves to be swept along. Traces abound in Transmission Remains, but these are not fossilized objects acting as iconic signifiers, rigid markers of areal constructed by semioticians. The paraffin-soaked thread used by Linder in his work is soft and malleable; the tides he references are never still. Gatzkan opens the body to technological development, rigidity discarded as new forms are realized to the degree their surroundings allow. Stalla’s experiments with electrolysis emphasize the same: that things are static only in passing and always open to change. We like to think that there is a world waiting for us, but things never wait—they move in their own ways, leaving traces for us to find.
– Text by Magdalena Wisniowska