On the occasion of the exhibition Oliver Thie: Die Wahrheit über den Ursprung der Welt a companion volume has been published.

For over two hundred years, a collection of inconspicuous gray basalt boulders has been stored in Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde. They are evidence of a heated controversy in the 18th century about the origin of the earth, the so-called basalt controversy. Oliver Thie has artistically researched them in an interdisciplinary dialogue with scientists from the Humboldt University and the Museum of Natural History. By combining recording techniques of historical measuring instruments with shadow projections, Oliver Thie developed his very own pictorial method for fixing shadow images, a kind of “drawing excavation” in which the shadows of the stones are worked out of paper covered with soot. The contributions by Claudia Blümle, Angela Strauß, and Felix Sattler collected in this volume contextualize Oliver Thie’s work in terms of art history, the history of science, and museum studies. The illustrated book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Oliver Thie: The Truth about the Origin of the World at the Tieranatomisches Theater, October 1 – December 30, 2020.

Sattler, Felix and Oliver Thie (eds.): Oliver Thie: Die Wahrheit über den Ursprung der Welt
With contributions by Claudia Blüme, Angela Strauß and Felix Sattler
Publication date: October 1, 2020.
Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
44 pages, in full colour, Cover silkscreen printing with lampblack on glassine
1st edition 800 copies

Order your personal free copy: welcome@tieranatomisches-theater.de