from vacuum decay series

photography (manipulated negatives)
pigment print on Hahnemuehle paper
90x60cm. 2019


The quantum field theory suggests that our universe might exist in a metastable state of a ‘false’ vacuum. It might eventually move to a more stable state in a catastrophic phase transition. Any information about this event would reach us only at the instant when we, too, were destroyed.
The artist approaches the current doomsday premonitions and theories of the world’s metastability in barren landscapes where he anticipates the nucleation of a bubble with true vacuum values and investigates abandoned cities to determine on which side of the threshold we are actually standing. Are these ruins decaying evidence of a past destruction or the first seeds of a new universe?