Splendid Voids

The performance FEED (2005) and the installation ZEE (2008), two works by Kurt Hentschläger (b. Linz, Austria; lives and works in Chicago), revolve around human perception and the yearning for sublime emotional experiences. Immersive and experimental, they combine the registers of audiovisual installation, media performance, and light architecture. Instilling a powerful sense of disorientation, they plunge the visitor into a world of light in which an almost complete absence of reference gives rise to surprising beauty. Hentschläger's new installation SOL (2017) transplants the audience into a gorgeously inscrutable void. Alternating between sensory deprivation and sensory stimulation by light and sonic impulses, SOL celebrates the suspension of time and space, confronting the visitor with his or her own self in the overwhelming experience of an unfiltered here and now. "Splendid Voids-The immersive works of Kurt Hentschläger" is the artist's first monograph. Its publication was timed to coincide with the world premiere of SOL during CTM at Halle am Berghain, Berlin, on January 27, 2017, and presents the three works FEED, ZEE, and SOL. Rather than documenting the pieces, the deep black object printed in silver is designed to capture the atmosphere they create and the audience's subjective experience. With an essay by the American art critic G. Roger Denson.