On the occasion of this year’s 50th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, Parrotta Contemporary Art shows the exhibition „From the Rocket to the Moon“ in Cologne and Bonn. During the mission of Apollo 11, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon on July 21 in 1969. This event of worldwide impact was broadcast live and transmitted to nearly 500 to 600 million people, who witnessed at home what Armstrong has captured in his now legendary words: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind“. This memorable feat also marked the culmination of the race of arms between the two rivaling powers of the Cold War, which now took place in the universe. Already in 1957, the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit, triggering the „Space Race“. As a reaction to the „Sputnik shock“ the USA founded NASA in 1958. Three years later, in 1961, the Soviets sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space.
The works shown under the title "From the Rocket to the Moon" reveal various aspects and associations that illuminate the themes of "rocket", "moon", and "space". A broad visual spectrum is opened up between the terms "rocket" and "moon", covering the entire universe - from the tiniest elementary particle to the unfathomably large galaxy. The lightning and sound sculpture by Tim Otto Roth "Cosmic Mirror" (2008/2019) , which was realized in collaboration with KCETA/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, provides a concrete physical reference to the universe. The energies of the cosmic rays, which constantly strike our planet from outer space, brightly discharge once or twice a second and become visible and audible.
In the course of human history, dealing with the environment has always determined worldviews and explanatory models seeking to understand the conditions of human existence. Despite technical advances and recent developments in space exploration, the investigation of unknown worlds and the infinite vastness of the universe remain intriguing. In the exhibition, celestial bodies such as planets or stars are directly quoted, but also symbolically interpreted in relation to the human soul and subjective being. Astronomical objects have always served as a base for reflections on life both in terms of the past and the future. They act as revelatory entities in astrology and respond to our general need to learn about our origins and the desire to be embedded in a higher metaphysical order. Thus, the egg in its mythical and symbolic meaning as the archetype of life and fertility takes on a central role in Mizi Lee’s work ("Das Loch“, 2018). The egg itself is used as a simple camera obscura so that photographic images are displayed on the inner walls of the shell. At the same time, the hollow cavity is reminiscent of the immensity of the expanding universe or the concentrated force of the black hole.
The philosophical-religious conception of the world as an orderly, well-proportioned whole, reflected in the analogous relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm, is dealt with in the work of Laura Müller-Said ("Mikrokosmos I", 2018). In contrast to the harmoniously balanced cosmic order, the small world order in Anna and Bernhard Johannes Blume's "Küchenkoller" (1986) is upset and the bourgeois setting collapses into chaos. Potatoes are whirled about by indeterminate – supernatural? – forces or floating in a state of weightlessness out of the reach of the astonished housewife. Robert Haiss´ subtle painterly strategy of estrangement removes objects from their conventional situations allowing them to appear in an unfamiliar light, alive with new possibilities. A pair of dark felt slippers is casually placed on a pale, light gray ground that resembles the lunar surface, hovering above it is the curve of an indeterminate object ... Sofa? Sensor? Satellite? ("im Schatten", 2019) Due to a shift in perception, new levels of reality emerge.
The elaborately disguised protagonists of Oliver Sieber seem to emerge from alien worlds. They embody characters from the fantasy realm of the manga comic "Sailor Moon," in which female warriors defend the solar system from evil forces equipped with supernatural powers. The identification of the portrayed persons with fictional characters lends them an „out of this world“ appearance. This kind of role-playing derives from the Japanese fan-practice of Cosplay and gives rise to questions about identity.
Timm Rautert directly refers to the historical moment of the lunar landing with his work "Lift Off" (1969). Here, Rautert captures the media event as viewed on the TV-screen and thus reflects the electronic image with the photographic image. Pieter Laurens Mol places the smile of Yuri Gagarin on a banner waving high above the historical site of Burg Lede. On location, Hendrik de Wit replicates the dusty lunar surface along with man´s first footprint, which does not immediately reveal itself to the eye ("Grundriss," 2000).
The subject matter of the photographs by Margret Hoppe and the panels by Markus Döhne is the rocket as a vehicle of space travel. In their toy-like appearance Hoppe’s colorful, "homemade" variants humorously subvert the complexity of the technical machine. The composition of modular elements in Benjamin Badock's "Plattenbau" (2008) is reminiscent of the shape of a rocket, whereas the „rocket“-shaped munition depicted by Peter Granser ("Was einem Heimat war", 2011) bears a different meaning. Ann-Josephin Dietz hints indirectly at the contrast between day and night through changing the natural light conditions ("Zutaten für einen Apfelkuchen", 2017). The process of progressing time, reflects the movement of the earth around its own axis.
Not only are distant celestial bodies focussed in the exhibition, but also our home planet is regarded from a new perspective. In Yann Mingard’s work, a piece of rock appears as a foreign object ("Rock, Tsaidam Desert, China", 2004), while the texture of the landscape structures photographed by Detlef Orlopp seems to refer to unknown territory. The materiality of fissured rock on the one hand and the rippled, gleaming water surface on the other hand seems to become neutralized in perception here, the landscape assuming an overall extraterrestrial quality.

OPENING: FRIDAY MAY 31st 2019, 6 – 9 PM

mpefm GERMANY art press release