In Zwickau, the Association of Friends of Contemporary Art is showing video works by Robert Seidel on uranium mining in the region, which give the subject a whole new aesthetic
The images are constantly changing. Lines appear, form imaginary landscapes, change into streams of color, spots, condense again into lines, surfaces, figures, incessantly, discontinuously, hallucinatorily, as if intoxicated.
“Yellowcake” is the name of the multi-part video installation by Robert Seidel that the Society of Friends of Contemporary Art is showing in its gallery in Zwickau. The “yellow cake” refers to an originally yellow powdery mixture of uranium compounds. Today, the processing of uranium ore produces a rather brown to black mass. It is the starting material for the production of fuel elements, in view of the discussions about extending the service life of German nuclear power plants in the sense of the word “red-hot”.
More aesthetic than critical
However, Seidel’s work relates more to the processing of uranium ore in “Object 101” between 1951 and 1990 in the Crossen district of Zwickau. During this time, the Soviet-German stock corporation (SDAG) Wismut became the third or fourth largest uranium producer in the world, leaving visible traces in the landscape that is now being recultivated, dumps and after the uranium mining was stopped, thousands of unemployed.
In his light and video installations “Object 101”, “Pechblende” and “Yellowcake”, which particularly brightly illuminate the gallery in the evenings, Robert Seidel is obviously less concerned with a critical review of the history of Wismuth or even commenting on the current discussions about the Atomic energy than an aesthetic processing of complex systems, which is typical for his work. His originally scientific training stands him in good stead here. Born in Jena in 1977, Seidel first began studying biology, but then switched to the Bauhaus University in Weimar, where he graduated with a degree in media design. Since then, his projections, installations and experimental films have been shown at many international festivals, in galleries and museums in Karlsruhe, Lille, Seoul, Los Angeles, Taipei and São Paulo, among others, and have received numerous awards.
Pictures like abstract comics
In his work, Seidel combines classic artistic techniques such as painting, drawing and calligraphy, which he processes or has processed with computer programs and artificial intelligence, thus creating dynamic, complex images of a hyper-complex world. In terms of their aesthetics, they tend to follow digital, artificial templates, sometimes appearing like abstract comics, free-flowing, flashing, disappearing, spontaneous thoughts or, to stay with the image of the “yellowcakes”, an uncontrolled core reaction that, in terms of time, intensity and effect, is not is to control.
These elaborately created images, called “poetic media art” in the subtitle of the exhibition, hardly serve the classic needs for poetry, i.e. poetry that also has something to do with compression, i.e. reduction. Instead, Seidel’s starting points dissolve into a kind of structure that becomes independent and apparently excludes human intervention. This follows the concept of the rhizome, originally derived from biology, Greek “root”, also root network, which was later used in philosophy as a metaphor for a description of the world that is not based on hierarchical models, but rather a multi-rooted, intertwined, networked one rampant system means. Uranium mining actually offers many starting points for this.
The “Yellowcake” exhibition can be seen in the rooms of the Friends of Contemporary Art in Zwickau, Hauptstraße 60/62, until December 15th. The artist will be present at the finissage on December 15th.