Timo Klöppel: St Elmo’s Fire / Elmsfeuer

Elmsfeuer (St Elmo’s Fire) features works by the artist Timo Klöppel, who often works in response to distinctive places he encounters, such as forgotten plaster cast store rooms in the basement of the Glyptothek in Vienna and the Gipsformerei (plaster casting workshop) of Berlin.

For the exhibition, he set up two twin rooms, functioning as counterparts for life and death, finite and infinite. The first room reframes the gallery as a depot, while the second reproduces the artist’s studio bedroom. The title of the exhibition recalls the myth of the half-twin brothers Castor and Pollux, often portrayed in the objects stored in the state-owned repositories explored by the artist. The two figures, in fact, are often summoned in prayer at sea in times of emergency, along with Christian patron saint of sailors, St. Erasmus (Elmo), after whom the natural phenomenon of St Elmo’s fire took its name.