Christian Waldvogel's work in conceptual and visual art is about the earth within the solar system and mankind within its world and new imaginations. For an exhibition at Helmhaus Zurich Waldvogel has created a three-part installation using candles, cyanobacteria and nutrient fluid. In part one, melting candles by random movement form globular "planets" over the duration of the show. Through a 1,615- square-foot pool of nutrient fluid as habitat for cyanobacteria, earliest forms of life on planet earth are represented. In the third part, Waldvogel places his planets within a self-conceived solar system. This story of genesis and the beginning of life on earth, following an equally random order, has been transformed into the book Christian Waldvogel. Unknown: The Orders of Randomness and amended with images and text. Waldvogel discusses this universal narrative in conversation with experts - a cosmologist and astrophysicist, a cell-biologist and gravitational researcher, a micro-biologist and an exo-biologist working in planetary research, - revealing an unusual perspective of how our planet may have come to existence.
The essays document what art can tell science and how both disciplines contribute to create our view of the world and the universe. Helmhaus Zurich is the city's municipial museum of contemporary art. Christian Waldvogel, born 1971, graduated in architecture at ETH Zurich and also studied computer music. He lives and works as a conceptual and visual artist and programmer in Zurich.