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28/10/2005

Gianni Motti

Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zurich

Higgs
A la recherche de l'anti-Motti

As hardly anyone knows, 2005 is the world year of physics. At the one hundredth anniversary of Einstein's revolutionary discoveries, preparations to take physics to the next level are in high gear. One hundred meters below surface at the border between Switzerland and France near Geneva, physicists and engineers at the world's largest particle physics laboratory, CERN, are assembling the Taj Mahal of particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider. These physicists are determined to alter our view of the universe by penetrating ever more deeply into the mysteries of the universe's smallest particles and the forces that bind them together, bring them into existence, and give them mass. The anticipation of scientific discoveries, of particles such as the Higgs boson that were named years ago but never seen, or the properties and whereabouts of antimatter, should be taken seriously from a team of scientist that collects Nobel prices like some collect works of art.

Fascinated by the eccentricity of antimatter, Gianni Motti has taken a plunge into the world of physics this summer. While his Big Crunch Clock ticks away five billion years toward the end of the world over the entrance of the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, the scientific efforts at CERN turn back the clock to the Big Bang. Current scientific theories indicate that the Big Bang was a burst of energy that transformed into matter. Recent discoveries in particle accelerator experiments, however, reveal that such transformations from energy always simultaneously produce equivalent amounts of matter and antimatter, which annihilate on contact. Why the known universe is made of matter, and what may have happened to antimatter – whether it hides out in the far reaches of the universe or whether it was completely destroyed in the first moments of the universe's existence - are mysteries as yet unsolved. A 27 km particle circuit complete with several cathedral-sized experiment sites scheduled to commence operation in 2007 will bring us a step closer to the beginning of time, the origin of the universe, and perhaps of an anti-universe.

Gianni Motti's exploration of these phenomena is at the same time an approach to the node of being and nothingness and a mirroring of the self in antimatter, which, as an analogy for this reality-hacking artist, and like his output, is a rare, fleeting, and unlikely creation.

Galerie Nicola von Senger AG
Bleicherweg 45, CH-8002 Zürich
Opening hours: Tue - Fri 9.30am - 6pm / Sat 12 - 4pm

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