Pneuma Cosmic

Opens Saturday, May 9 Pneuma Cosmic takes place at Hungarian Pavilion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition is based on a fictional research project that explores the manifestations of the cosmic breath that fills the entire world and presents itself in the form of air movement. The project combines the logic of scientific research with deeply metaphorical cognitive associations. Walking through the exhibition, these two different approaches dissolve into presenting a conjecture rather than a proof. The exhibition is composed of conceptual, ephemeral works that draw parallels between air movement and the immaterial world, bringing attention to the complexity of our intuitive experience of the environment. The project is characterised by experiences emerging from slower paced, contemplative observation combined with abstract, associative thoughts. The term pneuma cosmic refers to a hypothetical all-pervading, invisible, vitalising, flowing driving force. Albeit poetic and philosophical in its language, the exhibition is closely linked to contemporary discourses on environmental aesthetics and environmental psychology. Repositioning or even blurring the boundaries between the individual and the outside world may result in our forming of a new type of attachment and responsibility towards our environment. The observational structure outlined in the exhibition is of a deeply subjective and intuitive character. Endre Koronczi has been exploring the artistic possibilities of the representation of airflow by means of outdoor experiments and indoor models since 2009. As a summary of this artistic practice, the installations presented in the Hungarian Pavilion are the results of the artist’s research into the existence of pneuma cosmic, conceived with an explicitly analogue approach, attuned to slow contemplation. The exhibition is structured into four units in accordance with the mind map that accompanies the research, guiding the visitor from the concrete toward increasingly abstract works pushing the limits of perception. The meaning of pneuma cosmic: A fictional concept, a new term coined from the words pneuma (Greek for ‘breath’, ‘breeze’ and ‘spirit’) and cosmic. Emerging from the phenomenon of air movement that pervades the world, it operates as a metaphor that attributes a vitalising, animating, enlivening force to the wind. Permanently present across most of the world, air movement fills the lungs of terrestrial living beings with oxygen, connecting the most minuscule and the most expansive points of the globe, flowing constantly from one thing into another, and invisibly shaping its environment. This intangible, invisible entity, which exerts such a general influence on the functioning of the world, is linked to transcendence by its gaseous nature, and to vitality by its movement. The concept of pneuma cosmic draws attention to such projections and transcendental associations of this phenomenon that lie beyond our perception. Commissioner: Julia Fabényi Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest Curator: Luca Cserhalmi