Galerie Reinhard Hauff is delighted to announce The resonant interval, the second solo show with the Paris artist Clément Cogitore (*1983). This monumental video installation was first shown in 2016 at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and earlier this year at Manif d'art 8, the Quebec Biennial. In Germany, The resonant interval can be seen exclusively at the Galerie Reinhard Hauff from July 21st to September 15th.

It is said that man first got into painting from observing the shadows that were cast at the light of burning fires on the walls of prehistoric caves. From the beginning of time, making images meant communicating with spirits. This continues to be the case today, despite the flooding and overload of images, which the revolution of technology has brought about. The colourful veils of pulsating polar lights on the dark horizons of the North Pole (lat. aurora borealis) are mystical phenomena, which, since the dawn of mankind, have spellbound people and inspired and animated the fables and legends of the peoples from the Northern Regions of our planet. From a scientific point of view these mysterious phenomena are caused when electrically charged particles ejected by the sun and the shield of the magnetosphere collide with the oxygen and nitrogen in the upper layers oft he Earth’s atmosphere and ionize them. In The resonant interval, Clément Cogitore attempts to merge two interwoven tales to explore the interval between scientific research into these luminous events, and the legends surrounding them.

An aurora borealis is often associated with a whistling noise – sounds, which in the legends and superstitions of the Inuit and Saamis are interpreted as the voice of the dead speaking to the living. According to research carried out at the University of Aalto in Finland, the sounds produced by an aurora borealis are inaudible at less than 70 meters from the ground. The fact that some people can hear them from the surface of the earth currently remains unexplained. At the beginning of 2014, the Yellowknife Aurora Borealis Observatory, in the Northwest Territories of Canada, picked up some slight red luminous formations. After remaining scientifically inexplicable for a long time, they seem to come in fact from the launching of explosives, like a modern extension of the Taatsotine tribe’s "celebration of the dance of the dead".

It is just this space between the rational and the irrational, the visible and the invisible, that Clément Cogitore is staging in this superimposition of images and tales. As stated by media theorist Marshall McLuhan "a border is not a connection, but an interval of resonance". In this case, the interval of resonance is just as much the stratospheric frontier between the sky and the earth, as the disturbing zone between different registers he uses: scientific interviews, historical reconstructions, fictional or mystic texts, such as an extract from the book of the Prophet Ezekiel (6th century BC), which remains the first known reference to a vision of an aurora borealis. The form of the installation extends this loss of markers: what we grasp is he video image, just as much as its reflexion.
(Text: Daria de Beauvais, Curator, Palais de Tokyo, Paris)

Clément Cogitore (*1983) lives and works in Strasbourg and Paris. His first feature-length film Ni le ciel Ni la terre (2015) was shown during La Semaine de la Critique at the Festivalde Cannes and was nominated at the Césars. The film was shown at the Galerie Reinhard Hauff in 2016.

You are cordially invited to the exhibition opening on Friday, July 21st, 2017 from 7 to 10 pm. We are celebrating with Gin & Tonic, generously sponsored by Edelbrand Stauffenberg Dry Gin.

The gallery is closed from 29.07. until 04.09.2017.