Quantum Physics and Artistic Epistemology: “Crystalline Cosmologies. Unruhige Anordnungen” Exhibition in Marburg

How can phenomena that exceed human perception become objects of thought? The exhibition “Crystalline Cosmologies. Unruhige Anordnungen” (Restless Arrangements), realized in collaboration between the Marburg Art Museum and the Mineralogy Museum, brings contemporary artistic practice into dialogue with concepts from quantum physics. Curated by Dr. Isabel Balzer, the exhibition does not merely translate scientific knowledge into visual form; instead, it treats quantum theory as an epistemic provocation. The works develop aesthetic models that operate in the gap between empirical research and poetic fiction for phenomena that resist direct representation.

Time Crystals: The Speculative Space Between Matter and Process

At the center of the exhibition lies a new body of work focused on time crystals—states of matter in which temporal order emerges without energy consumption. These systems challenge classical notions of linear time, stability, and causality, opening a speculative field in which matter appears not as a substance but as a process.

Dialogue: Time crystals enter into interaction with rare minerals from the Mineralogy Museum as well as with artificially generated mineral forms produced through AI-based processes drawing on the museum’s tourmaline collection.

Intersection: The exhibition relates geological, computational, and imagistic orders of matter to one another.

Epistemic Mobility: The installations function not as explanatory displays but as experimental arrangements, giving space to uncertainty, relationality, and transformation.

New Works and Technical Details on Display

The newly produced works in the exhibition reconfigure the paradoxes of quantum physics through material narratives and digital technologies:

• Cosmic Echoes (Kinetic Sculpture): A light sculpture composed of two rotating mirrored spheres inspired by wave-particle duality. By distributing light in a pixel-like manner, it evokes quantum indeterminacy.
• Crystalline Cosmologies (Graphic Series): A series of digital prints and India ink drawings on the theme of crystal cosmologies.
• A Fragile Frequency (Sound Composition): Produced in collaboration with Studio Kinda Cloudy, this work sonifies the imaginary growth of crystals and makes invisible information infrastructures audible.
• Artificially generated minerals produced via a StyleGAN2 model trained on hundreds of mineral photographs taken by H. Meyer.

Visitor and Exhibition Schedule

The exhibition forms a constellation of scientific objects, speculative artifacts, and material narratives by integrating items from the university’s mineralogical and physical collections.

Crystalline Cosmologies. Unruhige Anordnungen

Dates: Until 19 April 2026

Venue: Landgrave’s Castle (Marburg Castle)

Sensorium of Animals

Dates: Until 15 February 2026

Venue: Art Museum Marburg, Biegenstraße 11, Marburg