Michael Petry

The Chemistry of Love

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CLIENT: Art and Exhibitions Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany
1994

THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE explores common and opposed factors in the chemical composition of the human body and the “chemistry” of inter-human relations.

In THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE, several “specialists” describe the difference between the physical and emotional characteristics of an ideal relationship. These explanations are interrupted by Petry with scientific explanations about the chemistry of the body. The video interviews in German and English can be seen on eleven monitors that are integrated into a bigger spatial installation.

Michael Petry understands this installation as a metaphor of the human body. It consists of 121 laboratory glass receptacles of different sizes, suspended from the ceiling in 11 rows of 11 receptacles each. Each tube contains one of the 11 most important chemical elements that compose the human body.

The attempt at a total analysis of the human existence competes with the sensual experience that is constantly changing and cannot be defined. Out of this tension, an instability of the world is created that will always call for new combinations and their solution. Nothing stays the way it is.

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