Abstract nominee

Neither the Hubble nor the Webb Space Telescope provide such images. They are not gazes into the astronomical depths of space, star clusters, planetary systems, gas nebulae, or dark matter.
They are artistic renderings of graphic representations of biological data – so-called single-cell sequencing data that describe the function of cells in unseen depths. Each tiny dot in these images represents a single cell. It is identified by its specific mRNA pattern which drives protein biosynthesis. Clouds of dots with the same color represent cells with the same function. For these representations huge amounts of publicly available data are interpreted and graphically visualized using dimension-reducing statistical clustering algorithms.
These visualizations served as a starting point for expressionistic transformations to detach them from their direct scientific content and approach their abstract qualities. The transformations reveal shapes and colors that take us into the surrounding infinity and yet reflect our molecular blueprint.

The photographer and scientist Eckart Bartnik, born in Bonn in 1957, lives in Wiesbaden and has worked in biological research. He has been using analog and digital photography as his artistic means of expression for almost five decades, and since the 1980s his work has been shown internationally in group and solo exhibitions and published in daily newspapers, magazines, specialist journals and online.
Eckart Bartnik focuses on the abstraction of nature. He uses the insights gained from this in his artistic work to reflect on the tension between people and nature. As a scientist, he grasped his research topics with a rational mind - as a photographer, he takes a subjective approach with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of nature. He immerses himself in landscapes and photographs people and objects in dialog with their surroundings. He explores the friction between harmonious and repulsive views and is fascinated by the moods and myths associated with a landscape, an object, or a place - as well as its cultural heritage.