Christian Andersson at the Berlin Museum of Medical History

Titled Mirror Images in Art and Medicine, the exhibition explores how mirrors allow us to see our own bodies; while other people can see our bodies directly, a mirror image is the only way we can see ourselves. The curator, Alessandra Pace, has brought together artistic works, scientific experiments and objects to investigate how we experience our bodies in space, including work by Christian Andersson, represented by von Bartha.

 

Andersson is a multimedia artist working with drawing, sculpture, installation and video. He is interested in the relationship between science, reality and fiction. In the exhibition, he is showing the work Crystal Math, 2005, which features a lava lamp set on a table in front of a mirror. The piece looks at optical tricks, illusions and reflections, because soon the viewer realizes that there are in fact two lava lamps, and instead of a mirror there is a piece of reflective glass. In a text for the exhibition, Andersson wrote: “Confusion arises because assumptions and perceptions do not match”.

 

The group show includes artists Vito Acconci, William Anastasi, Christian Andersson, John Baldessari, Attila Csörgõ, Marta dell’Angelo, Annika Eriksson, Thomas Florschuetz, Adib Fricke, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Dan Graham, Sabina Grasso, Carla Guagliardi, Dalibor Martinis, Jorge Macchi, Bjørn Melhus, Richard Rigg, Otavio Schipper/Sergio Krakowski, and others.

 

The curator of the exhibition, Alessandra Pace is an art historian who consults on contemporary art with a focus on science and medicine. She studied at London’s UCL and completed an MA at the Courtauld Institute. She specialized as a curator at the Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble and has gone on to curate projects in hospitals, as well as international institutions with artists such as Chen Zhen, Tony Cragg and John Bock.

 

The Berlin Museum of Medical History, formerly Rudolf Virchow’s Pathological Museum, is a public museum seeking to give visitors insight into the history of medicine. The permanent collection shows over 750 objects ranging from specimens to models and graphics from central medical locations, from the laboratory to the hospital ward.