‘Four things to see’ is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, a free arts and culture platform that provides access to museums, galleries and cultural spaces around the world on demand. Explore now.
Each week we bring you four of the most interesting objects from the world’s museums, galleries and art institutions, hand-picked to mark significant moments in the calendar.
On 27 September 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that would forever alter our understanding of the universe. His equation E=mc² revealed, with unprecedented elegance and clarity, the equivalence between mass and energy, demonstrating that even the tiniest amount of matter contains extraordinary reserves of power. This revolutionary insight laid the foundation for both the harnessing of nuclear energy and our modern comprehension of stellar processes, while fundamentally reshaping physics itself.
Einstein’s discovery resonates far beyond the laboratory. Artists have grappled with concepts of transformation and dynamism for hundreds of years but only in the 20th century did they begin to explore in earnest – and in very different ways – the hidden forces that animate matter. From kinetic sculptures that represent energy in motion to works that confront the awesome consequences of nuclear power, contemporary art offers compelling meditations on Einstein’s legacy. This week, to mark 120 years since that momentous publication, we explore four works that engage with themes of mass and energy.
Desnatureza 8 (2025), Henrique Oliveira
Frieze Sculpture 2025, London
Oliveira’s sculpture transforms discarded plywood once intended for construction into writhing, organic forms that seem frozen mid-metamorphosis. The artist strips, layers and manipulates industrial waste material until rigid planks become sinuous forms that seem to defy their original nature. The work’s biomorphic energy challenges our preconceptions about how certain materials behave, revealing a world where boundaries between organic and artificial, static and kinetic, dissolve under creative pressure. Click here to find out more on Bloomberg Connects.
3 Alu-Scheiben auf Schwarz (3 Aluminium Discs on Black) (1970), Gerhard von Graevenitz
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Three polished aluminium discs rotate continuously against a black void, their precision engineering creating an endless dance of reflected light and shifting shadows. Von Graevenitz’s kinetic sculpture operates through simple motorised movement yet produces complex optical effects that seem to make energy itself visible. The work transforms minimal physical action – rotation about an axis – into maximum visual impact, demonstrating how concentrated force can result in hypnotic art. Click here to learn more.
Lake (2023), Khaled Chamma
Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney
Chamma’s densely worked drawing depicts rippling water rendered through thousands of obsessive pencil marks. Each stroke becomes both representation and physical gesture, accumulating into patterns that seem to vibrate with nervous energy. The artist’s repetitive mark-making embeds duration and labour into the image itself, making visible the temporal dimension of creative work and demonstrating the artistic potential of human energy, be it physical effort or mental exertion. Click here to discover more.
Atom Suit Project: Ferris Wheel 1, Chernobyl (1997), Kenji Yanobe
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe
Yanobe’s photograph captures an abandoned fairground ride in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, its skeletal structure stark against an empty sky. The ferris wheel, once animated by mechanical power and a source of joy for so many, now stands motionless. This photo is a valuable document of how sub-atomic forces can transform thriving community spaces into vacant landscapes in a matter of hours. The collision between playful technology and catastrophic power illustrates how energy cuts both ways: the same forces that animate the machinery of civilisation can, when unleashed, render entire regions uninhabitable for generations. Click here to find out more.
‘Four things to see’ is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, a free arts and culture platform that provides access to museums, galleries and cultural spaces around the world on demand. Explore now.