In Surge of Reality
At the centre of this project, reality exists. Yet reality is neither a place nor an object nor a moment. In Surge therefore signifies neither the beginning of a journey nor the cracking of a shell. It describes a feeling in the act of bringing reality to life.
Let us begin at the end, with language.
Every word shapes reality before we even perceive it. New thinking begins when existing words cease to be self-evident.
In Surge of Reality refers to a process carried out within reality; it moves perception, thinking and shaping into the event itself. Reality does not confront an independent subject as an object. Whoever observes is involved. Whoever shapes is changed in turn by what is shaped. The title is therefore not a linguistic deviation, but the expression of a process-based view of the world.
In Surge of Reality is not a deductive process. It cannot begin with a few secure basic assumptions from which reality is then logically derived. But an inductive approach is not enough either if the concepts themselves form deductive boundaries.
If the premises are called space, time and matter, the worldview that emerges from them will also remain within these concepts.
Yet these very concepts must themselves become the subject of investigation. They must not be presupposed as self-evident foundations.Reality must therefore not be derived from principles, but must continually be explored anew. Scientific observation, philosophical thinking, mathematical models and artistic experience offer different approaches. None of them can grasp reality in its entirety.
Artistic forms of expression create nonverbal languages that change verbal thought.
Space – Time – Matter
Our intuitive idea that solid things move through an unchanging space in a uniformly flowing time is incompatible with modern physics. Einstein showed that matter, space and time are not the stage on which reality unfolds, as Newton taught us.
And yet in everyday life we largely continue to live and think as though nothing had happened. Space, time and matter still form the self-evident framework of our language, our perception and our worldview. Scientific understanding has advanced considerably, yet our collective consciousness has barely absorbed it.
The flow of time is nothing other than a very strong feeling that helps our consciousness perceive the world. It accompanies every experience so immediately and constantly that it is hardly perceived as a sensation at all. We experience a before and an after, memory and expectation, duration and transience. From change arises the feeling of a time that flows relentlessly.
Only in particular situations do we explicitly speak of a sense of time: when time seems to stand still, when it accelerates or slips away from us. In everyday life, by contrast, we treat the same sensation as an objective property of the world. Time appears as an unstoppable, uniformly flowing stream on which reality drifts like a raft. Its felt reality is confused with reality itself. When the sea is moved by the wind and the waves move in one direction, where does the sea flow?
The same applies to space. Nearness and distance, confinement and openness, direction and distance are experienced immediately through the body. Here too we occasionally speak of a sense of space, without drawing the consequence that perception and consciousness already order every spatial experience.
Space appears as a container in which things are located. Yet it is precisely the reverse: things give rise to the feeling we call space. Space in the Einsteinian scientific sense can stretch, contract and curve because its structure depends on the relationships within reality.
Space and time are such constant feelings that they no longer appear as feelings. This is precisely where their power lies. They form the order within which every further experience takes place, and for that reason they themselves usually remain invisible.
Matter initially conveys an even stronger certainty. It has weight, resistance and surface. A stone is hard, a tomato soft. Things can be touched, carried and broken. Their immediate physicality seems to leave no room for doubt. Yet the deeper we penetrate into matter, the more it eludes the idea of a solid substance. What appears enduring dissolves into structures, fields, forces, interactions and information. In the end, no substance remains that possesses spatial extension in the classical sense. The logical consequence is this: forces are fundamental; substance is their concretization.
Space, time and matter do not belong to fundamental reality. They are the forms through which consciousness makes a processual and relational reality accessible to experience. Our perception is only one possible way of ordering reality. Knowledge therefore does not consist solely in describing this order with ever greater precision. We can also develop new orders – and through them make possibilities visible that did not exist within our previous model.
Reality fundamentally consists of infinite possibilities. It becomes concrete only through relationships.
Philosophy, Science and Artistic Practice
Our perception orders reality by separating, isolating and abstracting. This approach shapes modern thought. It is especially evident in science, yet extends far beyond it. It is deeply embedded in our society, our concepts and our intuitive perception of the world. Through this ordering, certain aspects of reality become graspable to our consciousness.
Our language follows the same movement. Its grammar does not merely describe a world of things; it continually brings this world of things into being. It detaches units from reality, assigns properties to them and then reconnects them through actions and relationships. Nouns generate objects, adjectives assign properties to them, verbs arrange changes into temporal sequences. Process-based thinking therefore requires more than new concepts. It requires a new attentiveness to the order that gives rise to our concepts in the first place.
Here lies the particular power of art. A work of art does not have to break reality down completely into subject, predicate and temporal sequences of sentences. Material, colour, sound, form, movement and effect can occur simultaneously, interweave and change one another. Relationships do not first have to be separated from one another in order to be reassembled afterwards. They can remain as an interconnected whole.
Within the process of In Surge of Reality, art thus acquires an essential function. Artist, material, work, viewer and surroundings do not stand outside an event that they merely observe; they are participants in the same process. The work creates relationships in order to think reality differently.
My approach therefore rests on the opposite principle. The learned method of dissection through abstraction is bypassed, and attention is directed toward connection itself. The emphasis lies on interaction, on the mutual conditioning of all possibilities. I connect areas that existing orders separate from one another. I bring materials, techniques and thoughts into new relationships.
Elements are forms of relationships. They participate in the emergence of form. Their properties arise from their chemical composition, from their relationships with other substances, from the forces acting upon them, from the processes applied and from the ideas brought to them. My work unfolds through exploring what attracts and repels, what resists forces or yields to them, what relationships it enters into with our senses, how it sounds, smells and feels, and what feelings arise from this. I therefore do not see myself as a sculptor, but as someone who tries to grasp the world through all possible approaches.
The development of formulations and processing methods has been part of my everyday work for decades. In material research, properties do not arise from individual raw materials, but from their mixing ratios, their reactions and the conditions of the process.
An essential part of my work lies in researching ancient and traditional lime techniques. I combine inherited processes with historical and new mineral raw materials and carry them forward in contemporary processes. New raw materials, combined with old techniques, open up new possibilities, while traditional raw materials develop new properties through new techniques. From this interplay emerge material, process and form.
Lime
Lime is the landscape I come from.
Lime carries within it its origin, its resistances and its own possibilities. It reacts with fire, water, air and earth, with temperature and movement. The human being gives it form. The material participates in the emergence of this form.
Matter is relationship. It arises from connections, changes through connections and becomes perceptible within them.
Burning and slaking lime ignited my passion for this mineral. In connection with fire and water, lime reveals its hidden force. The quiet, solid stone is broken open and transforms into a dangerous substance. This force can injure and destroy, but it is also a fundamental building block of our civilisation. This fiery side belongs just as much to the reality of lime as the quiet appearance of limestone.
Limestone is the realization of relationships: permanence through change.
I combine quicklime, volcanic rock and other geological minerals processed using state-of-the-art technology with Roman and medieval quicklime and lime-putty techniques. From this I develop new materials and techniques for my sculptures.
In the surge of reality lie infinite possibilities for thinking reality anew.
Andreas Vigl re-vigl@web.de +39 348 4508267
In Surge of Reality
At the centre of this project, reality exists. Yet reality is neither a place nor an object nor a moment. In Surge therefore signifies neither the beginning of a journey nor the cracking of a shell. It describes a feeling in the act of bringing reality to life.
Let us begin at the end, with language.
Every word shapes reality before we even perceive it. New thinking begins when existing words cease to be self-evident.
In Surge of Reality refers to a process carried out within reality; it moves perception, thinking and shaping into the event itself. Reality does not confront an independent subject as an object. Whoever observes is involved. Whoever shapes is changed in turn by what is shaped. The title is therefore not a linguistic deviation, but the expression of a process-based view of the world.
In Surge of Reality is not a deductive process. It cannot begin with a few secure basic assumptions from which reality is then logically derived. But an inductive approach is not enough either if the concepts themselves form deductive boundaries.
If the premises are called space, time and matter, the worldview that emerges from them will also remain within these concepts.
Yet these very concepts must themselves become the subject of investigation. They must not be presupposed as self-evident foundations.Reality must therefore not be derived from principles, but must continually be explored anew. Scientific observation, philosophical thinking, mathematical models and artistic experience offer different approaches. None of them can grasp reality in its entirety.
Artistic forms of expression create nonverbal languages that change verbal thought.
Space – Time – Matter
Our intuitive idea that solid things move through an unchanging space in a uniformly flowing time is incompatible with modern physics. Einstein showed that matter, space and time are not the stage on which reality unfolds, as Newton taught us.
And yet in everyday life we largely continue to live and think as though nothing had happened. Space, time and matter still form the self-evident framework of our language, our perception and our worldview. Scientific understanding has advanced considerably, yet our collective consciousness has barely absorbed it.
The flow of time is nothing other than a very strong feeling that helps our consciousness perceive the world. It accompanies every experience so immediately and constantly that it is hardly perceived as a sensation at all. We experience a before and an after, memory and expectation, duration and transience. From change arises the feeling of a time that flows relentlessly.
Only in particular situations do we explicitly speak of a sense of time: when time seems to stand still, when it accelerates or slips away from us. In everyday life, by contrast, we treat the same sensation as an objective property of the world. Time appears as an unstoppable, uniformly flowing stream on which reality drifts like a raft. Its felt reality is confused with reality itself. When the sea is moved by the wind and the waves move in one direction, where does the sea flow?
The same applies to space. Nearness and distance, confinement and openness, direction and distance are experienced immediately through the body. Here too we occasionally speak of a sense of space, without drawing the consequence that perception and consciousness already order every spatial experience.
Space appears as a container in which things are located. Yet it is precisely the reverse: things give rise to the feeling we call space. Space in the Einsteinian scientific sense can stretch, contract and curve because its structure depends on the relationships within reality.
Space and time are such constant feelings that they no longer appear as feelings. This is precisely where their power lies. They form the order within which every further experience takes place, and for that reason they themselves usually remain invisible.
Matter initially conveys an even stronger certainty. It has weight, resistance and surface. A stone is hard, a tomato soft. Things can be touched, carried and broken. Their immediate physicality seems to leave no room for doubt. Yet the deeper we penetrate into matter, the more it eludes the idea of a solid substance. What appears enduring dissolves into structures, fields, forces, interactions and information. In the end, no substance remains that possesses spatial extension in the classical sense. The logical consequence is this: forces are fundamental; substance is their concretization.
Space, time and matter do not belong to fundamental reality. They are the forms through which consciousness makes a processual and relational reality accessible to experience. Our perception is only one possible way of ordering reality. Knowledge therefore does not consist solely in describing this order with ever greater precision. We can also develop new orders – and through them make possibilities visible that did not exist within our previous model.
Reality fundamentally consists of infinite possibilities. It becomes concrete only through relationships.
Philosophy, Science and Artistic Practice
Our perception orders reality by separating, isolating and abstracting. This approach shapes modern thought. It is especially evident in science, yet extends far beyond it. It is deeply embedded in our society, our concepts and our intuitive perception of the world. Through this ordering, certain aspects of reality become graspable to our consciousness.
Our language follows the same movement. Its grammar does not merely describe a world of things; it continually brings this world of things into being. It detaches units from reality, assigns properties to them and then reconnects them through actions and relationships. Nouns generate objects, adjectives assign properties to them, verbs arrange changes into temporal sequences. Process-based thinking therefore requires more than new concepts. It requires a new attentiveness to the order that gives rise to our concepts in the first place.
Here lies the particular power of art. A work of art does not have to break reality down completely into subject, predicate and temporal sequences of sentences. Material, colour, sound, form, movement and effect can occur simultaneously, interweave and change one another. Relationships do not first have to be separated from one another in order to be reassembled afterwards. They can remain as an interconnected whole.
Within the process of In Surge of Reality, art thus acquires an essential function. Artist, material, work, viewer and surroundings do not stand outside an event that they merely observe; they are participants in the same process. The work creates relationships in order to think reality differently.
My approach therefore rests on the opposite principle. The learned method of dissection through abstraction is bypassed, and attention is directed toward connection itself. The emphasis lies on interaction, on the mutual conditioning of all possibilities. I connect areas that existing orders separate from one another. I bring materials, techniques and thoughts into new relationships.
Elements are forms of relationships. They participate in the emergence of form. Their properties arise from their chemical composition, from their relationships with other substances, from the forces acting upon them, from the processes applied and from the ideas brought to them. My work unfolds through exploring what attracts and repels, what resists forces or yields to them, what relationships it enters into with our senses, how it sounds, smells and feels, and what feelings arise from this. I therefore do not see myself as a sculptor, but as someone who tries to grasp the world through all possible approaches.
The development of formulations and processing methods has been part of my everyday work for decades. In material research, properties do not arise from individual raw materials, but from their mixing ratios, their reactions and the conditions of the process.
An essential part of my work lies in researching ancient and traditional lime techniques. I combine inherited processes with historical and new mineral raw materials and carry them forward in contemporary processes. New raw materials, combined with old techniques, open up new possibilities, while traditional raw materials develop new properties through new techniques. From this interplay emerge material, process and form.
Lime
Lime is the landscape I come from.
Lime carries within it its origin, its resistances and its own possibilities. It reacts with fire, water, air and earth, with temperature and movement. The human being gives it form. The material participates in the emergence of this form.
Matter is relationship. It arises from connections, changes through connections and becomes perceptible within them.
Burning and slaking lime ignited my passion for this mineral. In connection with fire and water, lime reveals its hidden force. The quiet, solid stone is broken open and transforms into a dangerous substance. This force can injure and destroy, but it is also a fundamental building block of our civilisation. This fiery side belongs just as much to the reality of lime as the quiet appearance of limestone.
Limestone is the realization of relationships: permanence through change.
I combine quicklime, volcanic rock and other geological minerals processed using state-of-the-art technology with Roman and medieval quicklime and lime-putty techniques. From this I develop new materials and techniques for my sculptures.
In the surge of reality lie infinite possibilities for thinking reality anew.
Andreas Vigl
re-vigl@web.de
+39 348 4508267