'Mapping Spaces' examines the influence of early-modern guidebooks in geography, geodesy and the construction of fortifications on Dutch painting around 1650, featuring approximately 200 works of art all dating from the 17th century. Gerhard Johann Lischka identifies and creates interfaces or switch point from which a complex network of thoughts, images, writings and persons unfolds.
Mapping Spaces. Networks of Knowledge in 17th Century Landscape Painting
April 12−July 13, 2014
The ZKM exhibition Mapping Spaces casts new light on the gen-
re of landscape painting. As a genre, landscape painting is in-
debted not to the painters who depicted nature in the most au-
thentically realistic manner possible, and who thus established
the genre, but far rather to the advances made in craftsmanship,
engineering, ballistics and fortification – so runs the thesis of
the exhibition curators. With approximately 200 works of art all
dating from the 17th century – among other things, from the
Prado, Louvre and Rijksmuseum – the ZKM | Karlsruhe presents
both the most recent research findings on the subject and, con-
sequently, a previously unknown aspect of painting. “Thanks to
likes of Shakespeare and Molière, Rembrandt and Velázquez,
Descartes and Newton, the seventeenth century is also seen as
a golden age. Technological achievements have not only
brought forth a wealth of new data about the world, but have
also facilitated enormous artistic innovations by way of the
joining of science, practice and art. As the name 'Center for Art
and Media' suggests, the ZKM follows this tradition in the con-
temporary period." (Prof. Peter Weibel)
“It was not the 'bataille', but the advances inscribed in landscape by
craftsmanship, engineering, ballistics, and fortifications that comprised
the real vanguard – a message reflected in Snayers’ minutely detailed
precision, and the connection between map and image. By also intro-
ducing different lines of horizon in one and the same painting, the artist
succeeded in simultaneously depicting differing space-time events.
Thus, here spatial depth emerges not by means of extensions to a given
pictorial space, but through a multiple succession of finite landscape
prospects. Since, however, this invention is based on the templates of
surveyor and etcher Jacques Callot, the visual dissolution of boundaries
as found in Dutch history painting is not exclusively indebted to devel-
opments within art itself, but to the collaboration of cartography, geode-
sy and art.” (Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gehring)
Mapping Spaces is the first exhibition to have examined, on such a
scale, the influence of early-modern guidebooks in geography, geodesy
and the construction of fortifications on Dutch painting around 1650.
The prelude to the project, developed at the University of Trier, compris-
es Pieter Snayer’s large-scale panoramic depictions of battles scenes in
which maps and landscape paintings are superimposed in projected
layers for the purposes of documenting the most recent achievements
of modern engineering, ballistics and the construction of fortification.
Thus, the exhibition is unique in citing guidebooks in the subject of ge-
odesy by way of explaining the emergence of this specific kind of land-
scape painting. As the exhibition shows, like modern satellite surveying
(GPS) true-to-scale landscape pictures were indebted to a complex net-
working of knowledge: the alliance of geodesists, mathematicians, in-
strument-makers and painters. Therefore, artists had designed modern
remote exploration systems long before the new media began drawing
on digital images from space.
It is in view of this background that, as an institute of culture, the ZKM
has pursued new paths and thus presents for the first time in the exhibi-
tion Mapping Spaces around 200 works dating from the 17th cen-
tury across a 2000 m2 exhibition area. Paintings, measuring instru-
ments, plotters, books, maps and globes drawn from the most im-
portant collections of the world, such as the Prado (Madrid), the Louvre
(Paris), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) or the Kunsthistorischen Muse-
um (Vienna) testify to this new thesis in visual culture. The new mapping
of an early modern field of knowledge is accompanied by contemporary
works of art that treat the influence of technological developments on
our present-day perception.
“Hence, the relationship between science, technology and art – the
signature of the ZKM – has been in existence for centuries. The 17th
century art of painting is similarly indebted to contemporary media
technology.” (Prof. Peter Weibel)
Curator: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gehring
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GJ Lischka. Present Mind
April 12–August 3, 2014
We are indebted to the Greeks for the knowledge that being invariably
means present being. In the Parmenidean search for knowledge of Be-
ing, Being may also mean being true.
The work of Bern-based philosopher of culture, Gerhard Johann Lischka
is founded on the premises of contemporaneity and truth – thus the title
of an exhibition on his influence Present Mind. Lischka identifies and
creates interfaces or switch point from which a complex network of
thoughts, images, writings and persons unfolds – the Lischka constella-
tion, spanning from Jean Baudrillard through Niklas Luhmann and
Vilém Flusser to Paul Virilio, from James Lee Byars through Marina
Abramović and Jürgen Klauke to Andy Warhol and many others. As
author and editor, as lecturer and organizer of symposia, as artist and
curator of exhibitions, as creator of television films and moderator, as
editor of video DVDs etc., Lischka is at once producer and witness,
broadcaster and receiver, detective and archivist, administrator of the
past and shaper of the present – unfailingly in the mode of thought.
In the exhibition project, organized on the occasion of the donation of
his archive and library, Lischka reminds us that culture not only means
storage, but paraphrase, not only tradition, but transgression.
Image: Johannes Klencke, Klencke Atlas (1613-) 1660. Book with wall map, The British Library © The British Library Board K.A.R.
Press Contact
Dominika Szope
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Constanze Heidt
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Tel: 0721 / 8100 – 1821
e-mail: presse@zkm.de
www.zkm.de/presse
Press Conference: Fri, April 11, 2014, 11 a.m.
Opening: Fri, April 11, 2014, 7 p.m.
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Lorenzstraße 19 - 76135 Karlsruhe
Opening Hours ::
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Sat−Sun 11am−6pm
Mon−Tue closed
Fri, April 18, 2014 | Good Friday: 1 pm−6 pm, Admission free!
Mon, April 21, 2014 | Easter Monday: 11am−6pm
Thurs, May 1, 2014 | Labor Day: 10 am−6 pm
Sun, May 18, 2014 | International Museum Day: 11 am−6 pm, Admission free!
Thurs, May 29, 2014 | Ascension of Christ: 10 am−6 pm
Mon, June 9, 2014 | Whit Monday: closed
Thurs, June 19, 2014 | Corpus Christi: 10 am−6 pm
Fri, Oct 3, 2014 | German Reunification Day: 10am−6pm
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