Michael Sailstorfer is exhibiting alongside Olaf Holzapfel at the Livie Gallery in Zurich from June 13 to August 30, 2025, in the show Speaking Through Substance.
In Speaking Through Substance, Olaf Holzapfel and Michael Sailstorfer use materials to convey traces of history, energy, and resistance. By working with elements like willow branches, straw, copper, and neon, they open up a dialogue about the conditions under which the physical world takes shape. In their practices, material becomes an active agent - something that reveals thought through its very presence.
In his 2025 series "Air Electric," Sailstorfer explores the interaction between electricity and matter. Fine copper mesh is stretched across wooden frames, becoming the surface for an electrochemical process. When a silver-electrolyte-coated rod touches the mesh—connected to a power source—the circuit is completed, and energy is released. In that instant, silver ions are deposited onto the copper surface. These works are images created not through traditional mark-making, but through a physical process—where electricity, matter, and motion converge into a visual language.
His second work "Einfacher Stromkreis (2025),"offers an abstract face—part primitive mask, part circuit diagram. Made with blue neon tubing, the piece hovers between drawing and signal, and strikes a balance between the human and the machine. The cool, technical glow of the blue light gives the piece a timeless quality, echoing the early aesthetics of computing. It becomes a luminous emblem that sits somewhere between person and device.
Sailstorfer’s work centers on transformation, on the effects brought about by the flow of energy and physical processes. Materials are altered through electricity and motion, and the technical components themselves become expressive, often in a raw, intuitive way.
