Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of all matter in the universe. Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained unless more matter is present than can be seen. This is why most experts think dark matter is ubiquitous in the universe and has had a marked influence on its structure and evolution. Dark matter is called dark because it doesn’t appear to interact with observable electromagnetic radiation and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, making it extremely difficult to detect. Since dark matter has not yet been observed directly, if it does exist, it must barely interact with ordinary matter, except through gravity. The primary candidate for dark matter is an undiscovered elementary particle. Many experiments to directly detect and study dark matter particles are now being conducted, but none have proven successful. Dark matter can refer to any substance that interacts predominantly via gravity with visible matter.

The artwork “dark matter“ broaches the enigma of the unknown and the mystery of the invisible. In today´s world where traditional materiality is undergoing an accelerated process of dissolution and transformation, this artwork can be understood as an allegory for the invisible fluid spaces of coded data which define our lives and drive the ongoing disappearance of space and time. Inspired by Kasimir Malevitch´s “Black Square”, Mark Rothko´s colour field paintings and Stanley Kubrick´s black monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the artwork questions and unsettles the perceptual process of the viewer. It is based on a photograph of the night sky, all of whose visible data have now been changed to black. The photographic print contains a special mixture of black pigments to achieve a perfect black surface and is mounted behind a matte acrylic panel. Only viewers standing in front of the artwork can bring it to life: pure black matter then transforms into slightly moving colour fields that result from the correlation between the artwork, its environment and the viewer. You could say that the artwork's own gravity field is interacting with the visible matter surrounding it.