Without the Promise of Success, Kevin Bauer’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Bart, is about daring – daring to do something without any guarantee, daring to take a leap into the unknown. His work investigates the designed world we pass through everyday and tries to formulate answers to these surroundings.
Kevin casts his objects in a form whose components are based on his observations. Urban architecture and designs in public space intrigue him. Industrial, practical, unwieldly or user-friendly, ingenious or simply lazy: all sorts of peculiarities make their way into his photo archive. By using such elements in his work, Kevin draws our attention to everything in our surroundings that has been designed.
One of the elements Kevin uses is inspired by a component from the recently launched James Webb space telescope. This futuristic piece of engineering orbits around the sun and looks at the universe and the distant past, seeking information about what happened right after the big bang. A risky venture in which hundreds of things could have gone wrong and thrown a spanner in the works. Success was not guaranteed, but hope springs eternal.