Tom Burr
20 Mar - 19 Apr 2008
TOM BURR
"Black And Blue"
The exhibition is comprised of 4 works, all of which have been considered in relation to the architectural parameters of the gallery space, with varying degrees of interaction with the space. Instead of being site-specific however, in a classical sense, the works play off the existing features of the exhibition space in order to emphasize conditions of constraint and states of containment. The works fluctuate between ushering and surrounding the figure of the viewer, and becoming the viewed figure themselves. This figuration is also presented in terms of it's own dis-figuration, with the possibility of the hybrid architectures/furniture/objects/sculptures/bodies, collapsing and failing.
Black and Blue is an extension, or an annex, of my exhibition Addict-Love, which focused on modernist subjectivity as a written, scripted series of events, endlessly repeated. An unconscious score. One of the emblematic objects of that exhibition was the vinyl record, and it's companion turntable, where sound is synonymous with a physical object that has a clear beginning and an end, and must be manually handled and negotiated; and it can be repeated until it's worn out. In Black and Blue the turntable becomes again a central trope, with The Who's "Tommy" as the implied soundtrack, the vinyl recordings reduced to their status as object only, with no actual sound. Mute suggestions of sound.
In Addict-Love, the exhibition is populated by several "characters": Chick Austin, (the early 20th century museum director and curator in America, who brought Gertrude Stein and Picasso, among many others, to the American public); Composer Kurt Weill; Poet and museum curator Frank O'Hara; Gertude Stein, (via her opera "Four Saints in Three Acts); Chanel, (as a brand, but suggesting a person); cigarettes; perfume; & alcohol. Black and Blue will repeat the vestiges of some of these "characters," weaving these fragments of 20th century subjectivities and tendencies through and onto the physical structures in the exhibition. Grafting through pinning, placing, positioning and propping, each of the five pieces is a combine of built armature and found, raw material.
Additionally in Black and Blue, as the title suggests, there is a increased association between formal aesthetics and physical pain, or bodily damage. Between self-conscious chromatic choices and the physical discoloration that comes from a bruise on the body. The notion of the physical body and it's limits, it's failings and frailties, (The Who's "Tommy" was a "deaf, dumb, blind kid,"), is set within the same space as the fugitive qualities of sculpture, where each work of art is dependent - to greater or lesser degrees- upon it's surroundings for support, but also for its positioning, imprisonment and containment: propped on the floor, chained to a pole, suspended, strapped, bent & wedged.
"Black And Blue"
The exhibition is comprised of 4 works, all of which have been considered in relation to the architectural parameters of the gallery space, with varying degrees of interaction with the space. Instead of being site-specific however, in a classical sense, the works play off the existing features of the exhibition space in order to emphasize conditions of constraint and states of containment. The works fluctuate between ushering and surrounding the figure of the viewer, and becoming the viewed figure themselves. This figuration is also presented in terms of it's own dis-figuration, with the possibility of the hybrid architectures/furniture/objects/sculptures/bodies, collapsing and failing.
Black and Blue is an extension, or an annex, of my exhibition Addict-Love, which focused on modernist subjectivity as a written, scripted series of events, endlessly repeated. An unconscious score. One of the emblematic objects of that exhibition was the vinyl record, and it's companion turntable, where sound is synonymous with a physical object that has a clear beginning and an end, and must be manually handled and negotiated; and it can be repeated until it's worn out. In Black and Blue the turntable becomes again a central trope, with The Who's "Tommy" as the implied soundtrack, the vinyl recordings reduced to their status as object only, with no actual sound. Mute suggestions of sound.
In Addict-Love, the exhibition is populated by several "characters": Chick Austin, (the early 20th century museum director and curator in America, who brought Gertrude Stein and Picasso, among many others, to the American public); Composer Kurt Weill; Poet and museum curator Frank O'Hara; Gertude Stein, (via her opera "Four Saints in Three Acts); Chanel, (as a brand, but suggesting a person); cigarettes; perfume; & alcohol. Black and Blue will repeat the vestiges of some of these "characters," weaving these fragments of 20th century subjectivities and tendencies through and onto the physical structures in the exhibition. Grafting through pinning, placing, positioning and propping, each of the five pieces is a combine of built armature and found, raw material.
Additionally in Black and Blue, as the title suggests, there is a increased association between formal aesthetics and physical pain, or bodily damage. Between self-conscious chromatic choices and the physical discoloration that comes from a bruise on the body. The notion of the physical body and it's limits, it's failings and frailties, (The Who's "Tommy" was a "deaf, dumb, blind kid,"), is set within the same space as the fugitive qualities of sculpture, where each work of art is dependent - to greater or lesser degrees- upon it's surroundings for support, but also for its positioning, imprisonment and containment: propped on the floor, chained to a pole, suspended, strapped, bent & wedged.