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Simone Albers (Nijmegen, 1990) paints and makes installations reflecting on the natural world and the way we relate to her. She is interested in how nature functions on a fundamental level as well as how the parts are connected as a whole, looking for patterns and mechanisms that lay hidden beyond the directly visible. Natural sciences, like paleontology, astronomy and evolutionary biology, play a key part in her research. But Albers is not only interested in science as a tool to open up these hidden natural realms, she also thinks about science as a phenomenon in itself, as a social human practice. The second main field important in her work is philosophy. She uses it to examine this scientific practice, the relationship between the observer and the observed and to think about questions science can’t give an answer to. Weaving together insights from the natural sciences with philosophical reflections she proposes alternative, more inclusive representations of nature through her work, showing the complexity of natural systems free of objectification or appropriation and ultimately humbling the human position.

In the Heavy Meta series Albers portrays natural elements and systems. The paintings bear resemblance to natural history prints and cabinets of curiosities, except the depicted objects are not representations of the observable natural world but rather archetypes that underlie it. The ‘natural curiosities’ are replaced with universal forms or structures, created by simple painterly movements. The paintings within this series she named Substance, after the philosophical concept common in ontology and metaphysics referring to what is permanent in the things that change. These universal underlying substances are created by pouring, pressing or swiping the paint on the canvas leaving a trail, texture or pattern, mimicking natural structures. The compositions formed organically like a system or constellation, without a preconceived plan. In this way the act of painting can be seen as a metaphor for the creation of nature itself. The objects lack a sense of scale and interchange between matter and energy, the physical and metaphysical. The series aims to not categorize, understand and control, but to celebrate the non-hierarchical, the entangled and the mysterious.

Drawing inspiration from cosmology, astronomy, quantum physics and semiotics, the series Fabric of Reality focuses on the universe and the way we study and picture her. The paintings don’t necessarily show the cosmic landscape as we would observe it directly or through an optical telescope, but can be understood as constructed landscapes composed of elements we know through scientific imagery. The basic structures for these landscapes are created by marbling, an age-old technique where the paint drifts on a water surface. This process gives space for the paint to generate patterns by alternating pulling and pushing liquids: nature’s forces at work on a small scale. Around these marbled fields slightly metallic, hand drawn lines appear. They form warped grids, reminding us of the depiction of the curvature of spacetime but also reminiscent of a woven fabric. This fabric holds different elements borrowed from scientific imagery used to portray phenomena we encounter in space, from elementary particles and electromagnetic radiation to astronomical objects and cosmological structures. Albers understands them as mediating objects between physical reality and our understanding. In that way they refer not only to the phenomena they depict, but also point towards ourselves as observing and image producing species. The paintings can be read as a representation of the complex phenomena underlying the physical world as well as a visualization of human analysis, constructing a fabric of what together makes up (a) reality.

The series that follows, Omega & Alpha, zooms in on the vast world of micro-organisms, (soil) ecology and ancient symbolism. Though mostly invisible to the naked eye, microbes are immense in their numbers, greatly diverse and all around us. Truly nothing on earth is sterile; all species had to find ways to coexist and coevolve with these earliest living organisms. Yet we are only beginning to understand their complex lives, properties and relations. What is known, is that they play huge roles within the global ecosystem and have shaped our environment in a great manner and continue to do so. They are often at the beginning of the food chain as well as at the end by decomposing organic matter, making nutrients available for a new round. With that they connect ends to beginnings; they are a perfect demonstration of the cyclic nature of natural systems. By linking them to ancient and pre-Christian cycle of life symbols like knots and braids, circles and spirals it becomes visible that circular and cyclic thinking is at the root of earthly processes as well as human culture, and fundamental to a liveable world for all.