Spectacular Interferometry • ROBERT ESTERMANN

Spectacular Interferometry, 1982–2018
four large-scale digital prints on tarpaulin with ropes and reinforcing tubes
420 × 832 cm, 420 × 920 cm, 446 × 906 cm, 968 × 1144 cm

Spectacular Interferometry brings together two bodies of drawings made by the artist roughly twenty-five years apart: speculative automobile designs he drew as a preteen in 1982, and his abstract drawings Modern Beach Design from 2007. The dimensions of the four digital prints are determined by the scale of the childhood drawings, so that each imagined car, or fragment of one, appears at 1:1. Two mimetic interpretations of “the modern,” produced within radically different frameworks, are brought into interference.

The title borrows the physical method of interferometry for a speculative cultural analysis: the interference of two imperfect systems of measurement can produce another kind of precision.

more views of the installation, including the performative unrolling of the tarpaulins at “Each Line Is a Crime,” Archive Kabinett, Berlin, 2018:

‘Spectacular Interferometry’ (2017) is a series of very large digital prints by Robert Estermann. Each print consists of two different sets of drawings; one is his recent abstract drawings of beaches, the other is the pseudo technical drawings of automobiles that he drew at the age of twelve when he was obsessed with the design and measurement of cars. In Spectacular Interferometry, the artist juxtaposes them into a single pictorial plane and plays with the idea of measurement in the “(non) scale of a modernist dream” to interfere with his pragmatic approach as child car designer.

Miya Yoshida, press release for Each Line Is a Crime, Archive Kabinett, Berlin, 2018

one of the preteen source drawings from 1982:

transcription from the upper-right corner of the first drawing:
Ms. [misslungen / failed], 15.7.1982
AB. [Arbeitszeit / working time]: ca. 30 min.
Ms. [Maßstab / scale]: 1:20

shown in:
“Each Line Is a Crime,” Archive Kabinett, Berlin, Germany (2018)

bibliography:
Miya Yoshida (ed.), Towards (Im)Measurability of Art and Life, Archive Books, Berlin, 2018, ISBN 978-3-943620-64-1