blank is pleased to announce The Church of the Magic Square, a special project by German artist Thomas Zipp to coincide with Cape Town Art Week.
Produced in part during a three-month residency in Cape Town last year, the project will be completed in situ in an empty warehouse next to blank projects in Woodstock, combining painting, installation and performance.
Zipp will build a temporary chapel inside the empty warehouse to house twelve paintings from his series, A. O. Magic Square Face. These paintings are based on his engagement with the mathematical model ‘Magic Square of Four’ which American architect and theosophist Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866 – 1946) describes in his ‘Higher Space Theory (A Primer of Higher Space)’, dealing with the fourth dimension as a principle of growth and the change of time and space, inspired by Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity and the reflections about the space-time continuum. Zipp visualises his various theoretical concerns by working across different techniques in layers on the canvas. In each painting, an abstracted human head forms the background for a different diagram mapping the calculations of possible sequences of the ‘Magic Square of Four’.
The chapel, constructed out of cheap materials, painted black, and situated between the existing columns of the space, introduces a religious aspect related to the artist’s interest in the psychophysic theories of German philosopher and medical scientist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 – 1887), whose research was concerned with the calculability of human responses to external stimuli, and how those predictable responses are translated into human behaviour. In The Church of the Magic Square, Zipp’s explores whether religious belief can likewise be made calculable, mathematical, and in an accompanying performance, the artist asks whether medicine or religion is more efficient.
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Thomas Zipp (b. Heppenheim, Germany, 1966) lives and works in Berlin, Germany where he is Professor of Fine Art at the University of the Arts Berlin.
He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including Deutschland ist keine Insel at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany (2018), Manifesta 11 in Zurich (2016), Avatar & Atavismus at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (2015), 11th DAK’ART Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain (2014), Comparative Investigation about the Disposition of the Width of a Circle, 55th Venice Biennale (2013), I knOw yoU at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013), Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection at the Fundación Banco Santander in Madrid (2012), If Not In This Period Of Time: Contemporary German Painting 1989- 2010 at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2010), Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2008), 4th Berlin Biennial (2006), Defamation of Character at P.S.1 in New York (2006), and Rings of Saturn at Tate Modern in London (2006).
Produced in part during a three-month residency in Cape Town last year, the project will be completed in situ in an empty warehouse next to blank projects in Woodstock, combining painting, installation and performance.
Zipp will build a temporary chapel inside the empty warehouse to house twelve paintings from his series, A. O. Magic Square Face. These paintings are based on his engagement with the mathematical model ‘Magic Square of Four’ which American architect and theosophist Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866 – 1946) describes in his ‘Higher Space Theory (A Primer of Higher Space)’, dealing with the fourth dimension as a principle of growth and the change of time and space, inspired by Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity and the reflections about the space-time continuum. Zipp visualises his various theoretical concerns by working across different techniques in layers on the canvas. In each painting, an abstracted human head forms the background for a different diagram mapping the calculations of possible sequences of the ‘Magic Square of Four’.
The chapel, constructed out of cheap materials, painted black, and situated between the existing columns of the space, introduces a religious aspect related to the artist’s interest in the psychophysic theories of German philosopher and medical scientist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 – 1887), whose research was concerned with the calculability of human responses to external stimuli, and how those predictable responses are translated into human behaviour. In The Church of the Magic Square, Zipp’s explores whether religious belief can likewise be made calculable, mathematical, and in an accompanying performance, the artist asks whether medicine or religion is more efficient.
—
Thomas Zipp (b. Heppenheim, Germany, 1966) lives and works in Berlin, Germany where he is Professor of Fine Art at the University of the Arts Berlin.
He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including Deutschland ist keine Insel at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany (2018), Manifesta 11 in Zurich (2016), Avatar & Atavismus at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (2015), 11th DAK’ART Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain (2014), Comparative Investigation about the Disposition of the Width of a Circle, 55th Venice Biennale (2013), I knOw yoU at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013), Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection at the Fundación Banco Santander in Madrid (2012), If Not In This Period Of Time: Contemporary German Painting 1989- 2010 at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2010), Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2008), 4th Berlin Biennial (2006), Defamation of Character at P.S.1 in New York (2006), and Rings of Saturn at Tate Modern in London (2006).
