Reto Pulfer

"As a starting point I want to consider the story of Mount Wilson Observatory which overlooks Los Angeles from the surrounding mountains. At this site, in 1923, Edwin Hubble discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is just one of many galaxies. When observed with primitive telescopes or the naked eye the galaxies resemble a faint spot. They were thus called “nebula” and recorded since ancient times. For this show I plan to improvise with material I find on site like fabrics, stones, wild plants and ‘stuff’. I will try to behave like if I were a sprout. Using immersive installation as my primary medium I invite visitors to be inside something. I was told that this is intrinsically Angeleno- a city that trades in self-reflexivity and self-realization, gazing inside while looking outside.”

AWHRHWAR is pleased to present Ein Nebel aus Prä-Adamitischen Sternensprossen, A Nebula Made From Pre-Adamite Star-Sprouts by Swiss/German artist Reto Pulfer. Known for large-scale textile installations incorporating his polymath practice spanning sound, writing, drawing, ceramic and the edible, Pulfer will present a site-specific installation and accompanying performance for his first Los Angeles exhibition. Having a long-term interest in astronomy, Pulfer is using his research into Edwin Hubble’s discoveries about the multitude of galaxies in the universe, made at the nearby Mt. Wilson Observatory, as seed for this project. The abstractly large distances and macrocosmic scale of cosmology become backdrop to the microcosmic grain of digging into one tiny corner of the region. A stranger in a strange land, an art-tourist on an eco-tour of a city increasingly defined by demographic and environmental flux. What do big ideas mean in a place where value is often attributed by price per square foot?

The project will be followed by an experimental interview and critical record incorporating the responses of local artists and thinkers into a reflexive dialog.

Reto Pulfer, born in 1981, is a German and Swiss artist living in Berlin and Uckermark County, Germany. Upcoming group exhibitions: Art Parcours, Art Basel; You, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; upcoming solo exhibitions: Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris. His monograph Zustandskatalog: Catalog of States and Conditions has been published in 2017 by Sternberg Press with five exhibitions in 2015-2016 at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Musée régional d’art contemporain Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerrannée, Sérignan; Spike Island, Bristol; Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière; Fórum Eugénio de Almeida, Évora. Further exhibitions include: Hollybush Gardens, London (2017); Swiss Institute, New York (2013).