Reconfigured map fragments on acrylic-polyurethane ground and canvas
140.0 x 180.0 (cm)
55.1 x 70.9 (inch)
Nodal Scaffold is a work from Gerhard Marx’s recent solo exhibition, Ecstatic Archive. The exhibtion title refers to a series of archives Marx has been working with over the past two years, which came from two main sources. The first was a collection of decommissioned geographic, geological and political maps from the past two centuries, which were saved from being pulped. While the other archive was of a more personal nature, comprising outdated maps donated by individuals burdened by a nostalgic attachment to these documents, but unsure what to do with them.
Rupturing the flatness of these maps, Marx has reworked the material with the dedicated rigor of a cartographer charting ever more imaginative territories. The geometrically complex drawings produced by these efforts are best read with the assistance of a navigational device. One such compass can be found in the form of a catalogue essay written by Professor Edgar Pieterse.
In Ecstatic Archive Marx replaces the original scientific purpose of maps with a discursive one. Through this work, writes Pieterse, Marx ‘exposes the map as fetish… render[ing] traditional cartographic representation as inherently strange and arbitrary’ resulting in ‘maps of allusion instead of maps of authority… [which] occupy a hinge position between contested pasts and uncertain digital futures.’
