In the blessed abyss of the eternal ether
Works such as Summit, depict a monochrome image of a mountain top. The pinnacle motif is echoed in its shadows and layers of contrasting black rock and white snow. It appears as though the image has been manipulated or exaggerated. In fact, the image is upside down, but the effect is one of collage: the feeling of a summit made from a number of summits.
This ambiguous hall-of-mirrors-type pattern evoke the stacks of Magic Eye puzzles that the artist has cut through to create Wormhole, Mount Everest, and The Mariana Trench. Puzzles, whose answers are often elusive, are manipulated themselves, is the meaning now hidden deeper or even ungraspable?
Similarly, a balance between satisfaction and despair is found in The End of One Hundred Love Stories, a video piece made from end sequences of feature films.
The shows romanticism, intrigue and mythology is adeptly provoked by its title: In the blessed abyss of the eternal ether.
On entry the artist made me and my girlfriend devices for speaking and listening to the sky with. They consisted of a helium balloon tied to a piece of ribbon, which was attached to a plastic cup, acting as both earpiece and mouthpiece. An exciting and fanciful sculpture whose charm was made all the more acute by its sobering ephemerality.
Unfortunately the sky didn’t have much to say, but maybe I wasn’t listening hard enough, or maybe it’s messages were lost in the ether.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Detail from Digital Puddle 2008.