BEYOND THE ZERO | Franz John

BEYOND THE ZERO | Franz John

Nowa Scena UAP Gallery, 28 Marcinkowskiego Ave.
Opening: 14.11.2025, 17:00
Exhibition duration: 14 – 30.11.2025
Curator: Marc Tobias Winterhagen

The exhibition Beyond the Zero, presented at the Nowa Scena Gallery of the University of the Arts Poznan (UAP), is Franz John’s second solo exhibition in Poland – the first took place in 1998 at the Goethe-Institute in Warsaw – and simultaneously, it is his first retrospective. The aim of the exhibition is to analyze Franz John’s artistic practice from a media theory perspective and to create a new composition of his work that highlights overarching points of intersection between individual pieces and makes them more accessible to viewers. In addition to earlier works, new and partially unpublished works will also be shown, as Franz John consistently creates site-specific works. This means, on the one hand, that he adapts the selection and number of works from a given series to the spatial conditions of the location, and on the other, that he sometimes modifies the works themselves to present them in a form optimized for the specific site.

Franz John explores both new and old media at the intersection of human and machine capabilities of perception and representation, in connection with natural phenomena. His works combine intensive research and scientific analysis with visual, often tactile and functional installations in public space. In his place-based art projects, the Berlin-based artist engages with the historical, geological, or climatic characteristics of the region. Over the past two decades, Franz John has created significant interdisciplinary works within the field of contemporary research-based art, focusing deeply and over the long term on the relationships between the natural and computer sciences, scientific theory, and artistic modes of thinking.[1]

The exhibition title Beyond the Zero immediately raises the question of the so-called zero point – and then encourages exploration of what might exist beyond this point of intersection with the value of zero. Upon closer inspection of Franz John’s individual works, one can indeed find in each of them a kind of zero point: a crossing point between two elements, perspectives, or even media.

In Die Kopierte Galerie (1987), a work that functions as both a performance and an installation, John used a handheld copier to create a 1:1 copy of the Paranorm Gallery in West Berlin on narrow thermal paper, then reattached the copied strips exactly where the originals were located. The point of contact here is the physical meeting point between the wall (as original) and the artwork (as copy). Yet the technical construction of the handheld scanner, with its lens allowing light from the external world to hit the sensor inside, also serves as a contact point between two worlds. The zero point is further embodied in the performative aspect of the work: after weeks of work, John covered the final strip of the wall with its copy – and at that fleeting moment, he was the only one who could see the perfect, completed state of the piece. He then had to cut an entrance to allow visitors to access the work, leaving them only a glimpse of the partially destroyed artwork – a look beyond the zero point of time that had marked the work’s ideal state.

In Balt-Orient-Express (1995), John again used a handheld copier to create accurate black-and-white copies on thermal paper strips at various stops along the train route from Berlin through Vienna and Prague to Bucharest. For example, bullet holes in the University building in Bucharest were first sealed on-site, almost like dressing a wound, and then, after the artistic “healing” process, displayed in the gallery as a framed testimony to time.

In Sky Nude (1992), John used – for the time – an exotic, technologically advanced flatbed color scanner. On the public terrace of the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, John scanned the same section of sky every 10 minutes for the duration of one full Earth rotation. These time-delayed sky images were then transmitted to a monitor inside the exhibition. The resulting images were not naturalistic depictions of the sky, but “unpredictable in shape and color: shimmering in night-black, turning psychedelic with approaching rain, and during the day resembling abstract Gerhard Richter-like patterns”.[2] The live moment of scanning can be identified as the zero point; the image seen afterward already lies in the past. Again, there is a meeting of two worlds, as the scanner’s optical lens lets external light hit the individual color sensors inside the machine.

In Military Eyes (1996), during an art residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts near San Francisco, Franz John transformed forgotten bunkers into massive walk-in camerae obscurae. The zero point here is the small, openable aperture through which light from outside enters the bunker, projecting an upside-down image onto interior walls marked by graffiti from tourists and soldiers. This fusion of interior and exterior, past and present, afterlife and current world forms the core of this photographic series, presented in illuminated lightboxes.

John’s experimental films also reflect the principle of optical connection between inner and outer worlds. In Instant Copier Animation (1985), various copiers were used to repeatedly manipulate and distort an image until it completely disintegrated – a process intended to reveal visual content that goes beyond the visible. In Vision (1988), John directly penetrated the video camera’s color chip with a laser, making the light and the camera’s internal mechanism both visible and the film’s protagonists. In Cricket (1986), John used the smooth zoom function of a color copier to produce visual interference. Once again, John explores technological boundaries – but his interest lies not in technical perfection or the “non plus ultra”, but in what exists beyond those limits.

Interzone (1999/2000) is an interactive multimedia time journey through Berlin’s former border fortifications. John biked, photographed, and filmed the entire 167.8 km length of the Berlin Wall’s inner side – the so-called “death strip” between the GDR and West Berlin – and over the next ten years, created an artistic CD-ROM from the material. This digital work was groundbreaking at the time and was hailed by the magazine “mac life” as outstanding. John’s journey through the interzone between borders was also a race against time and forgetting, as even during filming, the area was rapidly vanishing: border fortifications were dismantled and wall segments demolished.

Low Energy Bars (2009) can be seen as a media-based extension of Interzone. The work consists of authentic sand from the death strip, onto which two bars of light fall, evoking the illumination once used at border installations. John adapted the original work to fit the architectural conditions of the exhibition space, choosing to show it in reduced form. Its full effect is only achieved in darkness, when the gallery is closed and the deadly sand glows under the visible, cold light.

The work Beyond the Zero (2023/25), from which the exhibition takes its name, is a sound installation that plays the sound of the largest gravitational wave measured to date, verified only in 2025 (GW231123). Installed within an artificial wall and subtly positioned at the end of the exhibition, the cosmic sound becomes increasingly perceptible as one approaches. Since gravitational waves arise from the collision of two black holes, compressing and stretching space-time, John’s installation serves as an interactive illustration of this cosmic mega-event. The zero point of this work is undoubtedly the event horizon of the black hole – the point of no return.

[1] Clemens Krümmel, Catalogue “Ressource Farbe”, modo Verlag Freiburg, 2019, p. 2-3

[2] Erlag Freiburg, 2019, p.2-392