Featuring: MICHEL BLAZY, MIKE BOUCHET, LORIS GRÉAUD, MARK HANDFORTH, ANN VERONICA JANSSENS, LANG/BAUMANN, JONATHAN MONK, GIANNI MOTTI, BRUNO PEINADO

CURATED BY MARC-OLIVIER WAHLER.

The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known place in the Universe, even colder than the -270°C background glow from the Big Bang. Boomerang is located about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the Southern constellation Centaurus. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a young planetary nebula with faint arcs and ghostly filaments embedded within the diffuse gas of the nebula’s smooth ‘bow tie’ lobes. The diffuse bow-tie shape of this nebula makes it quite different from other observed planetary nebulae, which normally have lobes that look more like ‘bubbles’ blown in the gas. However, the Boomerang Nebula is so young that it may not have had time to develop these structures. Why planetary nebulae have so many different shapes is still a mystery.

In Space Boomerang, through Wahler’s ability to transform the gallery, we find the work of 10 contemporary artists, whose projects seem to leave a faint resonance of past exhibitions, while propagating ideas and forms to be revisited. The cycle of exhibitions can be seen as a trajectory whose movement is never linear but always returns to its point of departure after multiple possible trajectories. Space Boomerang inhabits the Swiss Institute in a state of perpetual rotation and with a ceaseless renewal of interpretations, activating a chronic, absurd and maybe poetic schizophrenia.