At the time of writing, the news cycle is in a state of turmoil. I mean, at this point, the art of journalism seems more bent on a coked-out hyperbolization of narrative than any dry, empirical reportage (not that reportage has ever been neutral), so what I am about to speak on may not, in fact, seem that out of the ordinary. Namely, headlines are ablaze regarding an (as of yet) unidentified flying object shot down by the US military in Canadian airspace, ultimately meeting oblivion somewhere in Lake Huron. This event follows a string of “UFO incidents” in the preceding weeks – beginning with an observation balloon with Chinese origins lingering in US airspace, which was promptly succeeded by the downing of another (as of yet) unidentified aircraft over Alaska. Eye-catching headlines capitalize on the momentary ambiguity of these objects to stoke excitement over the possibility of the extraterrestrial before inevitably, it turns out to be a weather balloon or something equally benign. Of course, I could be wrong (and you, dear future reader, are probably already privy to the outcome), but it’s the undetermined gap between event and hypothesis that makes stories like these cement themselves into the psyche of the general public.

I open this essay by using this brief blip in time to begin to approach the main subject of this text: Nina Hartmann. Namely, I turn to this segment of the news cycle because of the seemingly unlikely points of contact formed between Hartmann’s artistic practice and the figure of the UFO. Specifically, the way in which both her work and the idea (and symbol) of the UFO circles around conspiracy and unintelligibility. Combing through Twitter threads, news site comment sections, and the fetid sewer of internet politics (4chan’s /pol/ board), there seems to be three general responses to these stories. Firstly, there are those gambling on the (likely) outcome of it being some civilian aircraft gone astray or, for the more politically geared, another instance of international espionage. Then, there is the second response, believing in earnest that it is some sort of cosmic or extraterrestrial visitation event. Finally, there is the third position, which is that these events are a government PSYOP, another step towards the realization of some kind of world order, and should UFOs really exist, the government/deepstate/reptilian cabal/whatever would never allow us to know anyways. Regardless of one’s position, it hints at the power of any given symbol, and the way in which certain signs (here, the UFO) is both that which is readable, and yet operates at the precipice of that which is wholly indiscernible.

It is from this liminal position that I approach the practice of Nina Hartmann. Born in 1990, she is a candidate in Yale’s MFA painting program, whose practice trades in objects that are part photographic, part assemblage and part sculptural. Sometimes free standing and occasionally wall-mounted, her works are multilayered on both a material and pictorial level. Works executed in muted primary colors are put into conversation with reproduced images paired with simple forms, reminiscent of sacred geometry. Oftentimes, they are semi-opaque or partially transparent, evoking a bath of amniotic (or photography development) fluid, in which images sit in suspended stasis. In a recent conversation, Hartmann professed an interest in materials due to their alchemical properties. Formally, this becomes apparent in her oeuvre in the way in which her works appear to be trapped in a state of material becoming – somewhere between liquid and solid. This is, no doubt, due to her choice of materials. Resin, vinyl, encaustic, beeswax and tree sap are among the ingredients that form the basis of her works, materials whose properties can drastically shift with relatively minor adjustments to heat and chemical composition. Within these liquid-solid containment devices lay her images, as if bubbling up from a primordial ether.

Conceptually, her work rapidly flits between various discursive poles – between New Age spiritualism and semiotics, mysticism and empirical science as well as Jungian psychology and government conspiracies (both real and imagined). Take, for example, Hartmann’s solo show FOGBANK held in early 2020 at NYC’s Gern en Regalia. Although the gallery has since relocated, it should be noted that at the time, Gern en Regalia was situated in the back of Aeon Books, a shop that – among other things – possesses a wide array of spiritual, mystical and religious textual esoterica (which makes it particularly apt, considering Hartmann’s interests). The basis of the work in FOGBANK takes declassified CIA documents as its point of departure – specifically, the Stargate Project, a U.S. military initiative to determine whether it was possible to develop psychic abilities in individuals for the purposes of military reconnaissance and surveillance. The project, which ran between the mid 70s and late 90s, focused on the idea of “remote viewing,” a hypothetical ability of the viewer to “see” a place/object/thing that they have no direct access to. What this marked was a curious attempt by the state to explore longstanding mystic practices – if we are to read remote viewing as a form of astral projection, then its history extends back to ancient Egypt – with scientific methodology and data gathering. In a sense, this project echoes Hartmann’s interests in material-as-alchemy. That is, the lines are often blurred, through both formal resemblance and mutual conceptual influence. Although the project was ultimately a failure, one could say that this attempt at long range, remote viewing was, in fact, eventually realized, to great success. Wiretaps, keylogging, drones and other advanced forms of surveillance technology have made this desire to see that-which-cannot-be-seen a reality.

Hartmann’s resin sculptures frame and contain images pulled from the Stargate Project’s declassified documents, as if the works were some kind of cosmic channeling device. The images largely focus on xeroxed pictures of sites selected for attempts at psychic imaging along with captions identifying the object of interest – some are suspended in resin, while others are semi-crudely taped to the wall. Most of these images contain text pertaining to the object meant for a test subject’s remote viewing – one reads “TERRAIN AT BASE OF VOLCANO USED AS VIEWING TARGET” while another describes Argentina’s tallest mountain, Aconcagua.

When I spoke with Hartmann for the first time, I noted that I felt like they had a cosmic quality in that they seem to gesture towards something vast, and universal. For some, her work may be unsettling, gesturing towards PSYOPS, conspiracy and secretive histories. What is ultimately at play here is a nuanced mix of critical semiotics and Jungian archetypes, lending itself to an art-based expansion of consciousness. The images utilized in FOGBANK are typical of those used in her practice and speaks to the contentious nature of signs. For those of you unfamiliar with the notion of the Jungian archetype, at its most basic, it is the concept that humanity’s collective unconsciousness has an innate understanding of certain archetypes (such as the jester, the maiden, the wise old man, etc.) that appear again and again in our collective history. Hartmann’s practice is aimed at a destabilization of these commonly held figures through reappropriation and clever redeployment of these images. Take, for example, the image of the Argentine mountain in FOGBANK – what typically operates as a signifier of the sublime qualities of nature becomes something threatening when put into dialogue with state surveillance projects.

Returning to the UFO, the history of these objects has a number of parallels to Hartmann’s practice. Firstly, the meaning it signifies is contested – what was once considered fringe and pseudoscientific (and yet a commonly recognized figure) has now been legitimized by their recognition by the US state, thus transforming their reception. Secondly, the UFO is a symbol of that which lies just before the unknowable – be it the metaphoric mushroom cap above the rhizomatic knot of state secrets, or an unfathomable alien technology. It is perhaps this brushing up against the unknowable which stokes both fear and awe. To paraphrase philosopher François Laruelle, all thought and philosophy descends from a radically foreclosed One. The One can never be imaged or grasped in its totality, and yet it determines all thinking. Philosophy thus becomes a hallucinatory attempt at representing The One/The Real via transcendence, and yet it can only ever dialogue with a mere fragment of its infinitely determinable form. For me, what is at stake in Hartmann’s practice (and by a strange extension, UFO discourse) is not the symbolic load of psychic espionage or extraterrestrial life, but rather the impossibility of grasping reality in its whole.

Following this, when I first encountered Hartmann’s work, my mind immediately thought of Buddhist mandalas, a form of cosmic map in which the relationships between deities, subjects and the devotee become clarified. Formally, both Hartmann’s practice and the mandala bear many similarities – figures and images are bound together through shapes, lines and symmetry, drawing links between normally distant objects. In Buddhist practice, mandalas collapse the physical and the metaphysical into a singular point, with the goal of aiding the practitioner towards the realization that their reality is not transcendent but a partial hallucination of true reality, which is an ungraspable emptiness or void, known as śūnyatā. If we are to take Hartmann’s interest in Jungian archetypes to heart, her sculptures are a consciousness-raising, mandala-like device, pointing us towards the void or collective unconsciousness through forms teetering on the precipice of unintelligibility. This sense of indeterminacy is anything but lazy. In terms of semiotics, her work always plays with the crystallization of meaning and narrative, before immediately withdrawing before a fully realized attempt at rendering totality. It is not only that Hartmann’s visual language floats in between various planes of legibility, but her objects as a whole. Gilbert Simondon argues in his essay On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects that technicity is marked by repeated acts of splitting. That is, religious technics, scientific technics, ethics etc. depart from a mode of “primitive magical unity” in which all these technical categories were one and the same. Simultaneously, according to Simondon, during this primal period, humanity, too, was one and the same as the universe, rather than ontologically laying outside of it. The role of art thus becomes a way of thinking cross categorically, of briefly restoring this unity. In his terms: “…the work of art, in fact, grants us the equivalent of magical thought, since it recovers—on the basis of a given situation, and according to an analogical structural and qualitative relation—a universalizing continuity with respect to other situations and to other possible realities.” I situate Hartmann’s work firmly within this dialogue – a fluctuating dynamic between mysticism and science, a conversation between the unknowable totality and the signs that gesture towards it. But really, are these tensions so unimaginable? Are the resins, polymers and encaustics used by the artist not the wet dream of medieval alchemists? Are drones, wiretaps, and CCTV not the goals of the Stardust Project made manifest? In a strange way, Hartmann’s sculptures act as technologies of sight, brief points of contact that pierce the veil between the mundane world and that which lies beyond.

Nina Hartmann (b.1990) is a multimedia artist, and an MFA candidate in Yale’s Painting/Printmaking program for Spring 2023. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Her works operate at the nexus between sculpture and painting, and conceptually map the spaces connecting mysticism, alternative histories, and critical thought. Her work has been featured at Downs & Ross (NYC), Silke Lindner Gallery (NYC), V1 Gallery (Copenhagen), Harkawik Gallery (LA) and more.