Augmented Geology

Augmented Geology is a body of work created while in residence in Joshua Tree, California. Drawing inspiration from the harsh and beautiful landscape, Kleijn and Kohl experimented with rock, rain, sand, fire, and wide-open space, testing and capturing their effects on fragile cellos. Made in a landscape uniquely formed by time, erosion, and cataclysmic changes, the work is rooted in both patience and play.

Some explorations explore the visual and tactile– a cello filled with concrete, burned by the sun, or balanced on rock formations- others focus on sound. Beyond being odd and arresting juxtapositions, these small performances accumulate into larger questions about time and ephemerality, material and transformation. Divided between video work and sculptures performance ephemera, four pieces from the series are presented here.

Katinka Kleijn and Lia Kohl’s shared practice explores vulnerability and resilience through the cello as an object, a body, and a sound-making tool. Both cellists, composers, and sound artists, Kohl and Kleijn have amassed a collection of broken cellos in order to explore unusual, counterintuitive, and even iconoclastic ways of working with the instrument. As artists who are not only technicians of the cello but its companions and collaborators, their exploration is deeply personal, where the body of the cello is a corollary to their own. As such a site of empathy, the cello allows for unique experimentation with the limits of both tenderness and violence.

Lia Kohl and Katinka Kleijn: Augmented Geology
October 11 – December 15, 2023

Design Museum of Chicago
72 E Randolph, Atrium Gallery
Chicago, IL 60601