THE ROSETTA EARTH PROJECT
2012 / 13
Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation. Imagine the year 2220 when the first alien mission hits earth and delivers a disc, in contrast to the Rosetta Disc and the Rosetta Stone (at the British Museum), only containing one sentence in multiple languages, which says: "HELLO EARTH!".
The Rosetta Project of 2012 is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers, working on a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone, to last from 2000 to 12000 AD. Its goal is, to build a meaningful online survey and near-permanent physical archive of 1.500 languages.
While preservation and exploration are inherent in human culture and in scientific and artistic expression, the unknown may also happen: an alien civilization makes contact with earth, before humankind does it.
ROSETTA EARTH / LANDSCAPE
oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm
© KLAUS HU 2012 / 13
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
RATE OF INTEREST
oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm
© KLAUS HU 2013
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
LES HETEROTOPIES 2011 / 12
is not the depiction, subject of the core family, mother and child, but the heterotopia (Nicht-Ort) of 2 different cultural and timely mass phenomena that meet on the plane of the canvas: the Christian family in the depiction of Giovanni Bellini´s “Presentazione di Gesù al tempio”, approx. 1460, oil on board 80 x 105 cm, original at Fondazione Querini Stampalia di Venezia and “The Great Wave”, a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai. Published sometime between 1829 and 1833.
So said, the heterotopia, in times of global economic trade, financial speculation / investment and mass tourism (staying always on the same spot) is a paradox. Its an empty chamber of promises for mutual cultural differences and empathy / understanding, that due its former mentioned preconditions, are missing. It becomes a heterotopia as metaphor, as image, as “non-space” and for mass consumption (comparable to an airport and its corridors and transitional halls).
The same principle is taken for Robert Smithson and Sonic Youth, although both of American belonging, never have met. Their land art and noise rock produced slight overtones, evoking a non existent space or a space not yet present. As the political and ecological events since then have proved, the overtones point towards a space for escape, an utopian nowhere, but regarding the real events (including a pandemic), are out of reach…..
LES HETEROTOPIES I
oil on canvas 180 x 200 cm © KLAUS HU 2011 / 12 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
LES HETEROTOPIES I detail
partly inspired by Giovanni Bellini: Presentazione di Gesù al tempio
approx. 1460, oil on board 80 x 105 cm,
original at Fondazione Querini Stampalia di Venezia
and
The Great Wave, a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai.
Published sometime between 1829 and 1833.
LES HETEROTOPIES II
oil on canvas 180 x 200 cm © KLAUS HU 2011 / 12
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
SONIC YOUTH MEETS SMITHSON
collage_grinding paper_watercolor_36 x 48 cm
© KLAUS HU 2011
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
BELLINI MEETS HOKUSAI
collage_36 x 48 cm
© KLAUS HU 2011 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN
MARS_SPIRIT 2009 / 12
installation - research - painting - edition - model - book
including long distance data transmission of images of martian rover SPIRIT.
While questions of intellectual property and the era of financial crisis melt with strategies of survival, a recent research is based on one photographic series, shot by the Mars robot "Spirit", whose panoramic and fragmented images show empty and stony landscapes, sometimes in true color, sometimes in false colour and sometimes in 3-D in low- and high resolution (bridging an up to 320 million km distance of data transmission). The records distributed by NASA question intellectual property, identity, science and narrativity in current global crisis of climate and finance. They open a new challenge of perception and abstraction, referencing Robert Smithson`s research of (mythical) landscape, fiction and industrial / archival spaces of the 60's.
One edition of 20 images of this research is printed as digital high resolution print 63 x 112 cm, and as BOOK, 84 pages, 51 photos, hardcover.
84 pages / 51 photos / some full page
8 1/2 " x 11" / 21,59 cm x 27,94 cm
60 € / including VAT/Mwst / plus costs for shipping
available from Sept 2012 on
including exposé "2035" by Peter Allen
in English and German
details via BOOKS
ISSO15_2
oil on canvas 140 x 140 cm
© KLAUS HU 2009
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
SPIRIT_S
oil on canvas 140 x 140 cm
© KLAUS HU 2009
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
HELLO_EARTH
DECELERATION
MARS STATION
drawing / gouache / collage on Ingres / framed
set of 3 / 210 x 85 cm
© KLAUS HU 2009
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
SOL758A
ISSO14_E-6971
NHOKKAIDO_AST
MACMURDO
oil on canvas, each 60 x 60 cm
© KLAUS HU 2009
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
model for a MARS STATION
clay approx 40 x 30 x 7 cm & size variable
© KLAUS HU 2011
& VG BILD-KUNST BONN
MARS-SPIRIT
20 Pigment prints / 20 motifs / ed 1/1 / framed / on Hahnemuehlen Fine Art Pearl each 63 x 112 cm
© KLAUS HU 2010
photo sources additional courtesy NASA/JPL CALTECH
MARS-SPIRIT
video
edited by KLAUS HU
images courtesy NASA / JPL-CALTECH
text by PETER ALLEN "2035" / excerpt
voice by CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON