Curator Johan Tirén on When Thinking Is Not Enough
The KTH Royal Institute of Technology buildings on Valhallavägen in Östermalm in Stockholm were erected in 1917, and already 18 years later, the campus, designed by architect Erik Lallerstedt, was classed as a notable building. In the eastern light atrium, Magnus Thierfelder Tzotzis has been commissioned to create an artistic intervention.
Magnus Thierfelder Tzotzis’s art practice is characterised by an original view of the everyday. Using small means, he often laborates with shifting meanings and contexts. With sensitivity and humility, he has taken on the spatiality of the light atrium, interweaving it with the place of learning and research that defines KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Early in the process, the artist visited the Visualization Studio, a lab where complex problems are given a visual framework. Revolving around the relationship between art and research and how both fields twist and turn questions and problems in an attempt to see the world with fresh eyes, the visit created a kind of sounding board that resulted in the work When Thinking Is Not Enough. The artwork pays tribute to the kind of exploration the artist encountered in the Visualization Studio – exploration that reverses the perspective in the search for new knowledge and also allows for play and curiosity, elements that Thierfelder Tzotzis takes up in the work.
Thierfelder Tzotzis’s artistic intervention cuts through the air and can be found on the walls, in order to stand out against the special architecture of the light atrium. It is reminiscent of thoughts that run, bind together and tie themselves in knots. The work attempts to make us reach beyond that which we already know and take for granted. To twist, turn and question that which we perhaps all too often take for granted.
I think of last summer. The sand that ran through my fingers. When thinking is not enough.
