Paper Organs and Colored Windows

We spent this beautiful Easter sunday going to Siegen, a small old industrial town two hours east of Cologne, to see an exhibition called Blickmaschinen (viewing machines) in the local museum of contemporary art. The exhibition shows parts of the Werner Nekes Collection ... about 200 laterna magicas, camera obscuras ... image distortion, perspective, and projection machines, panoramas, kaleidoscopes ... all sorts of incredible historical optical devices most of which I had no idea existed ...

... all of this successfully contrasted with 100 works of about 40 contemporary artists that focus roughly on topics of seeing and perception ... e.g. this star-spangled skull:

My favorite was a sound installation (I'm a sucker for sound installations) called "Paper Organs" created by Pierre Bastien. It used darkness and light, movement, and music in a minimalist and very successful way, creating a magical place ... I was reminded of Eno's light and sound installations.



We spent several very inspiring hours here. The exhibition will be shown in Budapest and Sevilla after Siegen - go see it if you have the chance.

Colored windows and video projections in the beautiful spiral staircase tower of the museum ...


While going back to the car, I noticed some anonymous rubber tongue sculptures on the street near the parking lot ... they weren't part of the exhibition and I guess nobody else had noticed them ...