SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE: ANTONIA FREISBURGER

The title of the exhibition refers to Albert Einstein's famous concept of 'spooky action at a distance' – an invisible connection between particles that remains intact even over long distances. Antonia Freisburger came across this phrase in a podcast about quantum physics and was immediately fascinated by its ambiguity. The idea that particles could have feelings reveals a space in which physical phenomena and human experience merge.

Her painting reflects precisely this ambivalence: it moves between the rationally incomprehensible and the emotionally deeply familiar. The artist herself describes this tension as a kind of "cosmic world-weariness" – a feeling between fascination and lostness, comparable to lovesickness. Love, like quantum physics, cannot be fully explained; it escapes logic and yet exerts its full force. Thus, painting here becomes not an illustration of personal stories, but an open resonance chamber in which individual feelings and collective questions intertwine. Spooky Action at a Distance deals with these invisible connections that cannot be rationally explained or controlled – bonds between people, feelings and memories.

Some titles situate the works between pop culture and personal experience. Badlands I–III refer to a region in the Star Trek universe that stands for danger and unpredictability, but also for places of refuge for rebels. Trennungsgrund, on the other hand, refers to the exploration of heartbreak, queer desire, and the breakdown of human relationships. In both cases, image titles become interfaces where individual experience, pop-cultural imagination and social reality converge.

Spooky action at a distance thus refers to a fundamental attitude in Freisburger's work: taking the invisible seriously, tracing irrational connections and developing a special power precisely in this openness. Her painting shows that we are constantly entangled in relationships – relationships that cannot be grasped but nevertheless remain effective.

Antonia Freisburger lives and works in Düsseldorf. She graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 2018 as a master student of Andreas Schulze.