Christian Vetter “Archäologie der Zukunft (Eismeer)” (Archeology of the Future, Arctic Shipwreck)

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Christian Vetter, Switzerland: “Archäologie der Zukunft (Eismeer)” 
(Archeology of the Future, Arctic Shipwreck), installation, mixed materials, 2010

Christian Vetter’s installation refers to “Arctic Shipwreck”, Caspar David Friedrich’s painting of 1823/24. The painting, showing piles of ice floes and the wreckage of a sailing boat, can at the same time be read as an allegory of failure – failure as subject, as artist as well as that of progress, and the belief in technology. At the beginning of the modern era, Caspar David Friedrich created a painting already heralding its end.

Vetter’s installation takes up these dark premonitions. His “Arctic Shipwreck”, at first, is nothing but a gigantic machine of perception forcing us to become, visually and bodily, aware of the havoc and torpor by means of different media and from different perspectives. Yet it is also an allegorical picture of our time, the end of the modern era that had tried to subject nature to technology and efficiency and, thus, obstructed part of the future.