"Thank You-Instrument" 1995
Ingo GÜNTHERBathed in strobe light within a darkened space, the viewer's silhouette is temporarily etched on the wall. This piece initially causes the viewers to innocently play with their silhouette, yet at the same time, it aims to create an experiential linkage with the flash succeeding the 1945 atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima and the shapes left by those incinerated in that instant and imprinted on stone. According to GÜNTHER, the title was chosen to remind us that the bombing of Hiroshima acted as the deterrent against atomic war during the Cold War. It was commissioned for the "Special Exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima A-bombing AFTER HIROSHIMA-Message from Contemporary Art"(Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995). In "Light InSight" we look back at the contributions and problems (X-ray photography, atomic bomb, nuclear power, etc.) wrought by Wilhelm Conrad RÖENTGEN's 1985 discovery of nuclear radiation, especially evoking the fact of nuclear bombing, which we must never forget, when thinking about light in the 20th Century. ProfileIngo GÜNTHER (b. Ahnsen - Bad Eilsen, Germany, 1957, resident in NY). Since the late 1980s GÜNTHER has established a journalistic approach to art, using satellite images of militarily sensitive areas or environmentally endangered zones unaccessible for public, and providing them to the mass media. He has presented works and projects from sociological perspectives, such as the "Worldprocessor" (1988), in which he visualized various statistical data related to the global economy and environment on illuminated globes, and "Refugee Republic" (1996), which took the existence of refugees as misunderstood and misused resource. He has had numerous exhibitions in Japan, including several solo exhibitions (in the1990s) at P3 Art and Environment.
http://www.republik.com/ Past Exhibition / Event