Frozen Heat - Hans Peter Kuhn

The exhibition was titled <Frozen Heat>by the artist for two reasons. One is the text "Bildbeschreibung (Description of a picture)" by German playwright Heiner Müller, where he describes a painting of an open window and its curtain blown in by the wind as "frozen storm". The other is about molecular energy. Temperature is described as the movement of molecules - the faster they move the hotter it is, and when they stand still, it is the lowest temperature of ca. -273 °C. If you took a photo of molecules at high speed (which is hot) you would see molecules that stand still (which is frozen). Hans Peter Kuhn tries to make us aware of the present as the very moment by using the antonyms.

The exhibition shares a name with the piece which we see at the beginning of the exhibition.
In a narrow aisle of the museum, white lights line at equal spaces on a wooden box placed in a 40-meter-long glass display case. Looking closely at the light procession, we find that it is actually a line of fluorescent tubes arranged by the artist one by one. They stand natural and quiet like the vegetation planted in a flowerbed. When we walk slowly, they look like a series of sequential photographs displayed in a uniform rhythm and we have a feeling of sensing the temperature and movement of the light and the time passage, even. Kuhn describes this work, which holds the sound of silence and emits the frozen light, as "primitive creature in the future" -- a creature which blunts our sense of time like a dinosaur in the museum and wriggles like an animal in the zoo.

The next room is filled with colors.
We find three monitors installed on the wall and each screen shows a color from among three different primary colors. The colors reflect on the walls, floor and ceiling. Shadows appear on the surface of the screens and form gradually into vague figures; the images sometimes suddenly make a shape of human. Having come through the narrow aisle filled with strained silence, people should feel warm atmosphere in here. They may have a new understanding, for an example, how dynamic and intense the movement of "lifting the arm" is during watching the slow movement of the light and shadow.

Then we get into the largest space of this exhibition. There exist a lot of paired "something" on the yellow floor. They give light and make a sound in their own ways and seem to be equipments, plants or small beasts and birds. This landscape is waiting to be defined by people. We hear sounds fade in and out here and there and feel each pair is independent but all related to each other.
This space is also filled with beautiful reflection. The gold light shines and enfolds us; it accustoms our eyes to this "undefined landscape". When we find the white ceiling looks beautiful light blue because of the yellow floor and the result of eye fatigue, we know that our physical condition reacts to the outside.

Kuhn refers to the interview of a well-known physicist for this work. The physicist said that it was in the split second, when he put his foot on the step to get on a bus that he made his great discovery. We usually think that time flows in one direction, but, what if there is another direction, maybe at right angles to ours? What if we are able to change timelines, between ours and the other? The physicist said, when he was there with his foot on the bus step, that there was another timeline crossing and he got much time to travel on it begore returning to our usual timeline.
The artist explains the <undefined landscape> as a cross point of two different times, like the bus-step above. Here we switch from the visual timeline to aural timeline and vice versa, from everyday timeline to another.

The last piece is a small and beautiful light installation.
The artist transforms the space, which is generally used as a lounge, into a mysterious, profound light installation. We can find nothing but the band of the green lights here. This only actual object looks like a transparent positive photograph or an aquarium.
Although the title is <Release>, unfortunately, it isn't possible to relax or rest our eyes by the natural planting, as we are not permitted to go into the lounge space. We are left with the uncomfortable and unnatural green, having incongruity and dissatisfaction. Kuhn often responds to the viewer's intellectual curiosity as follows.
"The secret is behind it. But actually it is in you. "

All these works share a theme, the perception of the present, and each work is very simple, very rich in the sense. And, this excellent simplicity is created by strict rules and order.
Please imagine that, behind the wooden box and under the yellow carpet, each work has a conformation to control whole systems equipment with thousand of cables and there must have been sincere labor which in based on the comprehension of the art. As for the <undefined landscape>, it is not too difficult for us to understand the very simplicity and the beautiful order to support it.

We find the artist's intellectual idea for the perception. Kuhn does not aim to analyze information or control system function but to encourage people to feel and concentrate on our perception within. He believes that a physical experience of light and sound is stored up as a memory, which is significant for our life.

The works by Hans Peter Kuhn asks each of us to make intellectual endeavor to define the world in one's own way and with one's own experience. In the exhibition space, which is open and generous to all of us, he expects us not to try to understand something but just to feel.
Talking to and listing to our perception, we face ourselves and gain experience and knowledge as our physical and private memory.

Mieko Yoshihara