GLASMOOG zeigt: Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez – Night Companions

Celestial bodies as reference points of navigation serve for orientation - from seafaring to the animal kingdom. But the contact with these proven astronomical reference points is often disturbed by human influences. In Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez's solo exhibition Night Companions (working title), on view at GLASMOOG from November 3 to December 9, 2023, real-space and virtual experiences of human and non-human perspectives are combined in an immersive mixed-reality installation. The narrative point of departure is the behavior of dung beetles, which orient themselves to the polarized light of the moon or - on moonless nights - to the Milky Way, unless light pollution or communication satellites alter the familiar image.

Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez's artistic work combines virtual reality, 360-degree or sound installations, audio walks or holograms in complex immersive spatial scenarios. De la Fuente Gutiérrez thereby intertwines the documentary with the fictional, the autobiographical with the technological.

The solo exhibition at GLASMOOG is shown in the context of the E.R.D.E grant of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, which Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez was awarded in 2022. The project grant of 6,000 EUR, which is offered on a rotational basis, is intended to support the development and realization of an artistic project that critically addresses the issues of ecology and the environment. The grant is awarded in memory of Steffen Meyn, who saw his studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as an opportunity to become socially and politically involved. During filming for the documentation of the activist protests in the Hambach Forest, Steffen Meyn suffered a fatal accident on Sept. 19, 2018. The KHM takes Steffen Meyn's political engagement as an occasion for the announcement of this grant.

Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez (born 1988 in Madrid, lives and works in Cologne and Madrid) explores central socio-political questions in her artistic work. What is our living space, this territory that connects all beings, like, what constitutes it? The core idea for the artist is a human, but above all also non-human agency/action power in the context of a network-like society, which recognizes the interconnection of the most diverse entities, as it was developed in the Actor-Network-Theory in the context of Science and Technology Studies by Bruno Latour, among others, and which is illustrated in the work of Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez in recurring virtual animal figures, such as wolves or - currently in the exhibition Night Companions - dung beetles, into which we as the audience can slip interactively.