GOD'S BIOMETRIC DATA

GOD'S BIOMETRICAL DATA‍

About the works of Erik Andersen

In the exhibition God’s Biometrical Data, Erik Andersen continued to expand on his central theme: the representation of the human body and condition. His two sculptural installations reflect on the human impetus to raise questions about existence and seek out ways to secure knowledge. Taking this as a point of departure, he employs basic geometric forms as repeated and interconnected elements, making reference to sacred geometry, and by extension, the fluid and diffuse concept we have of god and our own existence.

The first installation is a large resin structure in the shape of a square, pulled back at an angle from the wall like an opened book cover and held in place by an angled plank propped up against it. The inner surface shows a reflection of the sky-like painting on the facing wall, from which it has been stripped. In this way, Andersen strips away the illusion of a natural phenomenon represented on a two-dimensional plane, while revealing that it has been propped up, unable to stand on its own. It is empty – portraying only the attempt to make a picture of the world. Though the picture may resemble what it aims to depict, it requires its signifier in order to be significant, raising the question of how credible the evidence of knowledge really is.

The resin plank leaning against the square plane forms a triangle with its surface and the floor. The triangle, as is intended, provides a force of stability. The spectator sees the three-dimensional installation and finds only two-dimensional occurrences; they look at squares but see triangles – especially from one particular perspective, wherein the square screen becomes the perfect, symmetrical axis of an isosceles triangle, in turn cutting it in to even more right-angled triangles.

Situated across the room (as part of the second installation), a third element of the sacred geometry manifests in a large-scale relief: the circle. Standing a few centimeters from the wall the relief grants visitors a view of its reverse side and a passage way through the space. The front surface, which is thickly coated in black epoxy resin, consists of an indentation in the form of a large circle. The circle’s outer ridges give the appearance of being carved out by a gigantic thumb – an attempt at portraying divine perfection. Like a religious symbol – a gong in a buddhist temple or a shrine in a church – it overwhelms and looks down on the spectator, placing them at the threshold of the unknowable.

The layered, obfuscated geometries that take shape in the exhibition reflect on our tendency to take the little information that is given – a clouded vision of the whole –to form something certain, undeniable and irrefutable. The recurrence of screens and the interplay of flat surface and three-dimensional space further acknowledge that this process is mirrored in our contemporary forms of knowledge production – the reflective surfaces of our everyday technological devices. Nearly every feature of technology that makes life simpler has terrifying and untransparent mechanical inner workings that are only graspable for the very few. Thus, Andersen emphasizes the non-transparency of our current human reality, in the process, drawing a precarious line between infinity and oblivion. 

Julianne Cordray & Peter Wagner