CROSSOVER/S
Trying to understand Self: What you looking at?
Artist Self: Shhhhhhhhh I'm not ready yet, I need to be plugged in.
Insight: My usual practice going into any show is to be fully plugged in 👂 wise.
Yes, I am antisocial.
Ever since a Rothko show, way back when, the person next to me decided to give her friend a rather audible 🙅 curatorial tour of the show (she was not the curator nor was it an official tour), I have made 2 rules when it comes to galleries or museums exhibitions.
1) Always have music on. I usually listen to classical. *side note* I would like to believe that it's stimulating brain waves. In other words, I can connect to the pieces.
2) Always go when there's no one around. Which usually means RIGHT when the establishment opens. This is again, thanks to the Rothko show.
It is probably the most claustrophobic experience to go into an exhibition and there is something brushing up against you every step of the show. 🤢
Artist Self: Ok. I. AM. READY.
Music ✔️ Today it's Vivaldi's 4 Seasons
Walkable Shoes ✔️ Slip On Vans
Awake Brain ✔️Coffee is magical ✨
Location: Hangar BicoccaPirelli
Exhibition: CROSSOVER/S (the first solo retrospective in Italy) of Miroslaw Balka
Disclaimer: As an installation artist, I will always try extra hard for installation exhibitions. More often than not though, I ❤️ installation shows.
Second disclaimer: I use the terms "exhibitions" and "shows" exchangeably. They are the same things to me, but may not mean the same thing to others.
Setting up it: Walking into the almost blacked-out hangar space, it's overly moist and humid to the point where it's almost suffocating, my eyes try very hard to focus. The stale air is made extra stale with the giant massive water piece. It sort of looks like a running facet with a metal basin just chilling out. The water is spot lit and it almost sparkles 💎
TTUS: Uh huh.
AS: OH COME ON! Doesn't this do it for you?
TTUS: sure?...
AS: It's reminiscent of The Rain Room, though obvs it's not, since it's not a room... nor is it raining... but you know what I mean.
TTUS: As in there is liquid coming out somewhere above? Got it.
AS: AND AND the scale!!!! It's like Robert Therrien, Robert Gober, Claes Oldenburg. Ya/No?
When was the last time you've been so dwarfed by a piece that you can't help but feel like you're wandering in The Giant's homeland?
TTUS: As in Jack and the Beanstalk's Giant?
AS: STOP interrupting my brain! Carrying on...In this case, maybe The Giant's loo?
The tarnished metal on the basin is welded together baring semblance to quilts. Imagine trying to climb up onto the top where you'd discover:
1: How it's made (which would be so very Olafur Eliasson).
2: Looking at something that probably looks like a lake, but probs not because there's probably some massive draining system.
TTUS: Moving on.
TTUS: OOOOOOO jail.
AS: Structural, grid, symmetry, confrontational borderline violent. It's in the shape of a cross, which could mean that it's referencing obvs, the cross. Also, there are fans linked to motion sensors, placed at what seems like at random, which will blow you whilst you wander through the piece. The very stark black metal juxtaposed by the spot light is highly confrontational, and when you walk past the wind, the sensations are on overload.
TTUS: So... prison 👮♀️🚔.
TTUS: Doormats.
AS: I probably screamed out THIS IS BEAUTIFUL so loudly that the entire space heard me. This is what happens when you have Vivaldi blasting. All common courtesy is literally blasted out of me. 😳
I love a good recontextualisation piece.
Just like Duchamp's "Urinal", when daily objects are taken out of its place and put on a pedestal, in this case an invisible pedestal, the object is no longer in the same context as it was. It has been recontextualised.
Doormats are very intimate, personal.
Sure, it's for you to clean off the bottom of your shoes and it's very dirty, but, it also tracks where people step, how often it's stepped on, and it guards the entry of someone's home. It's a documentation of time and use.
To have a domestic object in an industrial space completely takes it out of the context what what it's used for. The patterns, colours, bits of shit on these mats are again quilt like: which references back to domesticity.
TTUS: Right. Evidently Relationtional Aesthetics and the Benjamin Arcade essays really got through to you.
In Conclusion:
AS: I don't look at exhibitions in a way where I want to know what each piece means. Maybe because I'm an artist, I have a palate of info in my brain and therefore I'm quite comfortable in free balling.
I believe in interpretations.
So I therefore interpret the pieces and think about what it could be referencing and therefore draw out a narrative for myself instead.
And finally...I wish you told me to make dark muggy rooms with big stuff in it.
