3D | Multimedia

37 Butterflies – A Dynamic Interplay, 2021

Multimedia Installation, stop motion video, digital collage

for

SALON REAL / VIRTUAL 9# Salon: Ines Rieder | Gedankenwelt der Ines Rieder, 2021 Galerie Michaela Stock

37 Butterflies and 73 archive boxes are the main characters in Denise Schellmann’s multimedia installation. The stop motion video, as well as the juxtaposed digital collage refer to Ines Rieder’s meticulous working process. Dynamic butterflies as a symbol of metamorphosis visualise a glance through the microscope. Microbes interact, congregate and disperse again, just like information that accumulates in an archive – tiny particles and building blocks that provide information about life.

3×7 Butterflies, 2021

Multimedia Installation, 21 soft sculptures, 21 clips, 21 frames per clip

The installation 3 x 7 Butterflies is the result of a meticulously playful, transformative work process in which the artist Denise Schellmann gives expression to her analytically structured creativity. Originally based on two-dimensional drawings, she creates bioamorphous fabric sculptures by repetitive hand-sewing of individual patterns that, as fragile yet robust creatures, seduce the viewer to reach out and touch them in their static yet dynamic appearance.

From 7 two-part, 7 three-part, and 7 five- to seven-part forms emerge 7 single creatures, 7 double creatures, and 7 double creatures with feelers, each of which get in touch to one another in 21 individual and 7 collage-like animated formations, both as individuals and in community.

„Boxels“, 2019

Part of Biennale session La Biennale di Venezia

Exhibition on the occasion of the panel “Digital Transformations – Society and Arts at the Turning Point”, students and alumni of the Art&Science Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna are presenting their works in a conceptual setup which traverses the analog physical world to develop insights into challenges, opportunities and problems of new technologies and digitality.

In uniform frames, miniature versions of works, thoughts, zipped projects and fragments of practices are contained and presented both in the physical and the digital realm. While further information about the works is only accessible by those who possess a device capable of accessing the internet, the observation of the physical works is limited by the viewers ability to access the site at the right time. Being in the room and on the internet at the same time, the presented pieces enter a twofold existence – they are sections, references, squeezed into an acrylic and online environment. The pieces, each different in nature and restricted by format, ultimately turn into „voxels“, scattered around, leaving it to the viewer to correlate their individual interpretation and place them in a virtual grid of their own imagination.

Material: Acrylic glass box, tripod

„In Auflösung“, 2018

Vienna City Lights Installation

Part of Open Art exhibition, Summerstage Vienna
Curated by Thomas Draschan

„Reality“, 2017

Mirror installation, Denise Schellmann in cooperation with CERN, HEPHY and Art@CMS program

How real is real? Paul Watzlawick

The mirror installation „Reality“ represents CERNs algorithm controlled data filter system as a metaphor for our self-created focus, which determines our reality. In the end: Who can tell us if the bubble we live in is real?

„Reality“ was part of the year project 2017 of the Art & Science masterclass at the University of Applied Arts of Vienna in cooperation with the nuclear research center CERN, Geneva. 

The data out of millions of collision events per second is filtered through two major trigger systems to store only 100s of events for further analysis. Consequently, the results of CERN’s experiments depend on computerized algorithms, which value the relevance of the collision events and automatically lead into an isolation from maybe important information. Who knows about the significance of events, which were not in the self-created focus of analytic interest? How do filters affect our perception in general? How do you perceive your illusive reality bubble?

The installation is deliberately placed at eye level, at the height of the human brain. Four wire objects are positioned in the beam path of four mirror surfaces, which are directed to each other in right angles. The wire sculptures symbolize the four experiments along the LHC (Large Hadron Collider, which is the biggest particle accelerator on earth) in CERN and also the undefinable amount of data. Tiny red balls in the wire mesh are a symbol of algorithms, which filter out a very small amount of data to store and analyze. The glass cube refers to our reality bubble. Viewing the installation from a certain perspective, which is marked on the floor by footprints, the wire objects blur into each other. Reflection and real image can no longer be distinguished. At the end of the day, no one can judge whether the bubble in which we live is real or sheer illusion.

Material: painted wood, acrylic glass cubus, iron wire, 4 mirror tiles 30 x 30 on disband plates, modeling clay, angular clamp

Part of group exhibition Circuit Training – A Foray Into The World Of The Large Hadron Collider
Masterclass ‚Art & Science‘ University of Applied Arts, Vienna, in cooperation with CERN, HEPHY und Art@CMS
@ das weisse haus, June 2017, Vienna

2016 – 2017 „Reality“ was exhibited at the CERN Control Center, Prevessin, France

“The Essential Rhythm – A Drawing Into Space”, 2015

A collaborative installation part of the INSTINC Artist in Residence Program in Singapore Sept – Nov 2015

As collaborating artists Denise Schellmann (Austria) and Nandita Mukand (Singapore) share essential analogies not only concerning their professional background as they both found their passion for art by experiencing different realms on their journey. It is their affinity to natural aesthetics, to forces and polarities of life and organic components that provide a crucial harmonious flow to their working relationship.

By Nandita’s experimental sculptural attitude to work with materials and Denise, the former scientist’s researching and integrated meditative drawing process they developed a sensitive understanding of the complexity and matter of their work, in a sense of material as well as the subject itself.

Cells as building blocks of life represent the fundamental physical unit of being. Whether formed to a bark of a tree or perfectly shaped to an animal organ tissue, cells are throughout exposed to a balancing act of essential contrasts, such as growth and decay, integration and differentiation or simplicity and complexity.

The installation ‚The Essential Rhythm – a drawing into space‘ invites you to have an insight into the fragile universe of dualisms hidden behind solid stability.  It’s an experience of etheric vibration uniting the linear and the chaotic as well as the dynamic and the static.

Nandita’s and Denise’s collaborative working process can be described as an organically growing, symbiotic melting pot of different cultural and educational experiences. They both were exploring each other’s mark making and found their inspiration in their reaction on each other, where two different approaches started to converge into one union.

Material: transparent paper, graphite, colour crayons, wax, tissue

Special installation as part of the „Affordable Art Fair“ Singapore 2015

„The Essential Rhythm – A Drawing Into Space“ differently interpreted at the INSTINC Art Space, Nov 2015, Singapore

“Accumulation Of Expert’s Information – In The Anonymous Forest Of Instructive Overflow”, 2015

Installation, 2015

Do you feel instructed by the instruction of the instruction?

This installation refers to the obscurity of medical leaflets and user instructions in general. Who is confused? Who is informed? Or better to say: Who is legally protected?

Material: medical leaflets, wire, white coat cloth, buttons, textile marker

Part of the group exhibition „Consequential Choices – Versions Of Atlas Making“ Art & Science Masterclass, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, May 2015, AIL – Angewandte Innovation Lab, Vienna