My art is a continual reconciliation of models and reality. Since 2016 I have been strolling – through cities, landscapes, thoughts and canvases – collecting evidence of how fragile, incomplete and limited our conceptions of the world are. Like Darwin aboard the Beagle (Darwin, 1859), I try to perceive and discover with as little judgement as possible. What matters most is not what I believe I know, but what reveals itself when I look closely and engage.
 

Strolling: A Field Study of the Everyday

My artistic practice follows an evolutionary algorithm (Mitchell, 1996; Eigen & Schuster, 1979):

• Mutation chance finds, unplanned encounters, discoveries along the way
• Selection What do I keep? What do I discard? What do I pursue further? What proves instructive?
• Inheritance How do discoveries change the next work? Everything new builds on all that came before
• Population dynamics I always work on several pieces in parallel – like a generation of individuals in exchange
• Fitness landscape Successful adaptation to environmental conditions is decided in the complex interplay of multiple factors
• Punctuated equilibrium (Eldredge & Gould, 1972): Long phases of development and observation are interrupted by radical innovations

Strolling as Research

My method is non-linear – it strolls. It is related to what Deleuze & Guattari (1980) describe as rhizomatic thinking. This artistic approach can be described in scientific terms – together with Prof. Dr. Claudia Meier-Magistretti, I taught a module on it as an artist at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. My concern is to explore, to apply and to make visible this way of working.

1. Begin nomadically
I begin without a fixed destination and let myself be guided – like a good stroller.

2. Perceive connections
My work links the seemingly unconnected: found objects, observations, intermediate results, discoveries, coincidences. They become nodes in a growing web.

3. Live embedded
Strolling and living merge. I do not research "about" but "with" – materials, passers-by, spaces, situations. I am not a detached observer; I am part of the field of research. And I accept provisionality.

4. Relinquish control
I deliberately undermine my own mechanisms of control. In painting, I orchestrate conditions that deprive me of control – through time limits, chance operations, or materials that provoke unruly reactions. I take this furthest in the series Symptoms of Life: I paint on the reverse side of raw linen, without seeing the image as it forms. In photography, I rely on serial overproduction, intuition and instinct. Only in the strict subsequent selection does the essence of a contest between control and surrender crystallise.

5. Follow impulses
Instead of control, I prioritise openness to unplanned impulses. They are not disturbances but fellow players – they break through the illusion of complete artistic control. By admitting them, I work not against the process but with its own logic.

6. Becoming, not being
My works are not finished objects but snapshots within a constant flow. They visibly carry their processes of making within them.

Models as a Central Tool

Physics understood long ago that Newtonian mechanics and quantum theory are merely different maps of the same world (Kuhn, 1962). In my artistic processes I actively work on and with my own models. This is at once a testing, questioning and experiencing of existing conceptions, and the development of new ones. None of it is final – each is an evolutionary step.

From this work emerge, for example, paintings. They do not merely carry traces of this process; they are expeditions in themselves – and at the same time their result. Photographic series document, in systematic as well as unsystematic aspects, expeditions into reality. In both media, the documentary impulse combines with an artistic-aesthetic claim: each work is equally a research protocol and an autonomous image.

Silas Kreienbühl (b. 1983) lives and works in Lucerne and Berlin. His work has been shown at Kunstmuseum Lucerne, at KKLB (Kunst und Kultur im Landessender Beromünster), and in the group exhibition "Totentanz" by Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, among others.

Sources:

• Darwin, C. (1859): On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray.
• Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1980): Mille Plateaux. Paris: Minuit.
• Eldredge, N. & Gould, S.J. (1972): "Punctuated Equilibria". In: Models in Paleobiology (Schopf, ed.), pp. 82–115.
• Eigen, M. & Schuster, P. (1979): The Hypercycle. Berlin: Springer.
• Kuhn, T. (1962): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Mitchell, M. (1996): An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. Cambridge: MIT Press.