Introduction

The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein presented a large-scale museum exhibition of works by Matti Braun. His works enable the viewer to become immersed in atmospheric spaces characterized by an eminently clear and precise aesthetic. With the exhibition title Kola, Matti Braun takes us into the Arctic tundra, to the northern shores of the White Sea. On Russia’s Kola peninsula, near the Norwegian and Finnish borders, unique rock formations have remained virtually unchanged for more than two and a half thousand million years. In 1970, the peninsula was therefore chosen as the site for the so-called Kola Superdeep Borehole. By 1994, it had been drilled to a depth of more than 12,000 meters, making it the deepest borehole in the world. At the same time, Kola is threatened by the environmental impact of radioactive waste, both from civilian power plants and from the spent fuel rods of Soviet nuclear submarines.

Both the motif and the title that introduce the exhibition sum up, in a nutshell, Matti Braun’s artistic approach and his profound interest in atmospheric relationships. Each object and each material used points beyond itself, catching the viewers’ attention and enticing them into a web that is rich in associative imaginative spaces.

In his research, Matti Braun includes historical, cultural, geographical, and biographical contexts. Facts, memories, images, and forms are woven into a complex mesh while at the same time allowing his work to be permeable. Braun is particularly interested in the paths taken by cultural exchange; he therefore interweaves heterogeneous historical and personal truths, opens and shifts standpoints, and intermingles internal and external realities.

On show were samples from all his work groups, ranging from smaller objects with a partly folkloric or ethnological aura, to extensive room installations, such as S.R., R.T., Ghor and Lota. The exhibition also contained conceptually related works taken from the collection of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.