Franz John

COLOR AS RESOURCE

An Art Project on the Energy Level of Plants

Fellowship of the ZF Kunststiftung, Friedrichshafen (D), 2019
Exhibition: Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen (D). Oct. 18th 2019 – Dec. 1st 2019

Ressource Farbe
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
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Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
Color as Resource
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Farbstoffsolarzelle
2019-08-21, 09:52. Dye solar cell at the window of the tower studio above Zeppelin Museum. View over Lake Constance. Photo: Albert Kunzer

Franz John – Color as Resource

Franz John deals with natural phe­nom­ena and with possi­bili­ties of rep­re­senting them in new and old media at the in­ter­face be­tween human and machine per­cep­­tion. In many of his site-specific art pro­jects, the Berlin-based artist deals with the historical, geological or cli­matic pecu­li­ar­ities of a specific region.

Between February and De­cem­ber 2019, he was a fel­low of the ZF Kunst­stiftung Frie­drichs­hafen (Ger­many), and, during his art resi­dency there, continued to work on his pro­ject Color as Re­source. At points of ex­change among art, science and su­stain­ability, he pro­duced dye-sensitized solar cells(1) from hops plants, a native cul­ture plant of the Lake Constance region, which he used as ener­gy sources for his own artistic light in­stal­la­tions.

For his final exhibition at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichs­hafen, he placed five regional hops plants grown to ceiling height at the center of a light installation, which he operated exclu­sively using energy gen­er­ated and collected from hop dye-operated cells. As a result – not only on a sym­bol­ic, but also on a factual level – an auto­sug­ges­tive, sustainable ener­gy balance of color as a resource can be sensually expe­ri­enced. In Franz John’s works, this happens avoiding ide­ali­za­tions or roman­tici­zations of nature that are often en­coun­tered in ecol­o­gical art. Perhaps the strong­est con­ces­sion to symbolic or ideal spatial concepts, albeit from a historical perspective, is rep­re­sented by the artist’s decision to dis­tri­bute the hop plants in the exhi­bi­tion space in ac­cord­ance with the trans­cul­tur­ally known „Quincunx” scheme(2). Text by Clemens Krümmel

1 Dye-operated solar cells, also known as “Grätzel cells” after their inven­tor Michael Grätzel. The special feature of this par­tic­ularly su­stain­able and environ­mentally friendly tech­nol­ogy is that its photo­synthet­i­cally func­tion­al components can be ob­tained from plant pig­ments – in contrast to the silicon-based con­struc­tion that is pre­valent worldwide today.
2 One important example is the tract “The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quin­cuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the An­cients” by Hermetic philo­sopher Thomas Browne that was first published in 1658. Full text at https:/en.wikisource.org/wiki/ The_Garden_of_Cyrus (last visited on 2.19.2021).
(3) Infographic: (c) alchemy symbol quincunx

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