The concept for the exhibition departs from the dual aspect suggested by the title Out of This World, that is to say the two artists Philip Topolovac and Martin Schepers install a joint exhibition that is both complementary and yet simultaneously an expressive and dialectical engagement. The idiomatic English usage ‘out of this world’ means both something that intensely engaged with yet born out of this known material world, i.e., of the planet. While at the same time the expression may mean something that is literally something from outer space i.e., quite literally outside the world. The concept for the exhibition is grounded on the interaction between inside and outside, that is on aspects embedded in the world but also as an engaged but detached observation of it. This offers a fruitful territory to explore with Philip Topolovac’s early technology satellite sculptures, and Martin Schepers’ drawings that are both grounded in the literal materiality of our planet. Many of Schepers’ sculptures that the drawings relate to are generated through found and recycled materials. In fact this is also related closely to an aspect of Philip Topolovac’s work: the archaeological discovery of sundry material objects that (Mark Dion-like) are unearthed as hidden histories. They are thereafter elevated from found detritus to a status — through forms of installation — of enhanced aesthetic and/or material value. These objects are also ‘out of this world’ or at least unearthed lost objects recast anew into this world. In distinction to Dion, however, they are not taxonomically presented rather they are shown as if they were relics with their own individual vitrines. This pseudo-spiritual type of presentation could be said also, in a certain sense, be ‘out of this world‘ — from an Elohim point of view. However, emphasis will be placed of on the inside-outside dichotomy, and the installation as I perceive it at this point is to stimulate a lively interactivity between the two artists. The spaces of the Studiogalerie will be used in this interactive manner for a conceptual and visual understanding to emerge.

Mark Gisbourne, curator of the exhibition
(Thursday, 18 September 2014)