| kevin chin |
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| aaa | > press archive Jessica Piesse, Kings Catalogue essay, June 09 Kevin Chin RUINED Kings 5 – 27 June 2009 Catalogue essay by Jessica Piesse Fixing holes— Raveling the hanging walls of Babylon The spatial proposition all began with a length of wool. A pliable, linear fibre was passed through dexterous fingers, and hooked and knotted repeatedly to form complex, geometric patterns in the shape of rectangles. Multiple balls of wool were consumed as the intricate rectangles proliferated. The crocheted samples were stretched tautly onto wire frames and their soft materiality was thus transformed— each individual unit acquiring the appearance of a surreal brick. The fanciful building blocks were then stacked one by one to construct floating walls, all form without substance, that billow and vacillate, animated by the movements of the viewer. Standing within the soft walls and gazing through its intricate perforations at the white walls of the gallery beyond is a transcendental experience, not unlike observing white light through a Moroccan window grill. Both elaborate grill and crocheted plane frame our view of the world and become a curious filter through which spatial perceptions are altered. The eye focuses on the filled and empty spatial trajectories formed by the woollen patterns and perceives a fixed yet mutable surface. Empty space is full space and full space is empty. Nearby, swaying imperceptively is a cardboard field of lavender, constructed from rows of ubiquitous Kleenex tissue boxes. Wave upon wave of cardboard cut out blooms rise in regimented order echoing the mathematical precision of the crocheted rectangles in the hanging wall. The frisson between the rough and smooth surfaces of the cutouts emulates the tactile nature of lavender flowers with their soft woolly spires on crackling brittle stems. Standing over the formal arrangement is not unlike viewing a parterre garden from above, with its intricate knots of plants set out with geometric symmetry to form a maze of contained space. Like the possessed topiary gardens in Kubrick’s film ‘The Shining’, the lavender cutouts have the potential to move stealthily forward— rustling, watching and waiting. In this ruthless divorce from nature, the plants have been pruned, shaped and clipped savagely, torn from the earth and placed into carefully contrived rows. The artificiality of the arrangement is brilliantly articulated by the white space that separates each row. There is no earth, no moisture, no perfume, and no insects— only cardboard effigies laid out in a skeletal grid. Another grid consisting of interlocking canvases steps up the gallery wall in a brick like formation. As in the hanging crocheted walls, some of the ‘bricks’ are missing and only a subtle impression of their existence remains in the form of painted shadows. The remaining paintings, with images like shadows of memories, consist of photo real depictions of objects and scenes removed from their everyday context and rearranged to form patterns within a surreal landscape. Like the clues in a mystery novel, each surreal object hints at a possible reading of the painting, pointing to a solution that only the mastermind could expose. The uncanny white ground in which the images float could be seen to reference the cold fluorescent light of a Salvatore Dali dreamscape, which graphically illuminates twisted, organic forms, and mutated objects which appear like specimens awaiting psychological analysis. The fascination of this three-part installation lies in the exploitation and manipulation of the domestic object. A soft ball of wool traces space, a tissue box becomes a malevolent thorny hedge, and a grid of paintings featuring everyday objects become a portal to the subconscious mind. I'm painting my room in a colorful way, and when my mind is wandering there I will go Fixing a Hole, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1967 Jessica Piesse, 2009. |
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