Praya (1997) – Wellteilchen (1997)

This room leads us into Tim Otto Roth's early work and shows the development of the central motifs that have shaped his oeuvre. With Praya and Wellteilchen we see here for the first time works that approach the theme of the "wave" visually and theoretically. While Praya captures the play of light and wave movement in a tidal inlet, the Wellteilchen cycle takes up this theme from the perspective of physics. "On Monday, Wednesday and Friday we teach the wave theory and on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday the corpuscular theory." This is how William Bragg, a British crystallographer and Nobel Prize recipient, jocularly described the enigma of the wave-particle duality in 1921. And on Sunday? The Wellteilchen work is here a tongue-in-cheek persiflage of the terminological paradox that interprets the substance that makes up the world as both particle and wave. The initial basis for this shady-picture study is everyday particles in the form of a wave that, (mal)treated with light on light-sensitive material, is meant to reveal its true nature. There is no final, valid answer to wave-particles. One time they show their corpuscular-like nature, another time their radiating nature. And sometimes light seems to show its face...