Work

A Mount-Rushmore-Resembling Piece of Cheddar Cheese Melted to a Perfectly Flat Squared Slice

Caption

Courtesy of Antoine Lévi Gallery, Paris and Galería Maisterravalbuena (Madrid)

Artist

By

Text

An imagined wandering through an exhibition I have only seen in pictures:

 

1646, The Hague

DJ accepted the invitation from an artist-run space to have a solo exhibition. He had some clear ideas on how his next exhibition could take shape even before this invitation came. There were works scattered in his studio that always seemed to belong together; the context of an exhibition could potentially strengthen or question these connections. There were also a few ideas that had been haunting him for a while, ideas well articulated in conversations, but never materialized into a physical form.  He thought a lot about versatile objects and products in terms of sculptural material.  Such as potatoes and towels…There are so many things you can do with towels, DJ was thinking – lie on them, dry, cover or clean things, reserve seats, stop noxious gases from entering through the gap beneath a door, hold hot objects. Whereas potatoes- there are as many varieties as many uses and shapes on a global scale. What was at stake was not so much to explore new uses of an everyday object we are very familiar with, but to highlight the malleability of objects and their ability to undergo a process of transformation and manipulation that imbue them with new meanings.

How-To Take the Way Around the Workaround

DJ was thinking of a tutorial he did some time ago on 3D modeling software in which he showed the process of creating a cube following the technique of an origami with a square plane that gets folded as if it was a piece of paper. The video showed at the end that the resulting cube was exactly the same that could have been obtained through the simple click of the ‘Add cube’ command.  The cube is identical irrespective of how it is created, but watching the modeling process invites the viewer to envisage the sculptural potentiality of one of the most basic geometrical shapes.

To compare A and not A

DJ knew that once working in the space, his initial ideas and thoughts would be subject to change and transformation. There were interesting elements in the space itself, he thought. The storefront window, for instance. There is something appealing about a storefront window. It feels like the gallery space extends to the street, it opens up and embraces its surrounding. The storefront has the magic power to turn a passer-by into a visitor. It can produce as much comfort as discomfort for those who are looking and for those who are being looked at. DJ was thinking to use the storefront window for a text work that would be visible from inside and outside the exhibition space. Following his interest in how meaning is produced, he collected different idioms that place in antogonism two items conventionally perceived as incomparable (like apples and oranges). A selection of words extracted out of these idioms were stuck on the window –they could have been re-combined or produce new associations that although arbitrary, one day, who knows, they might make sense.

Towel Sculptures Series

The high ceilings of the space welcomed DJ’s analogy between towels and clouds. He was inclined to elevate the towels close to the ceiling and direct the view out of the main area of the space. Initially dipped in glue and placed onto different objects in the gallery, the towels were likely take a new shape that eschewed any immediate reference. They could be anything we projected upon them, signify anything we derived out of their abstract shape.

Halle Berry,Moneypenny, Halle Berry (Flat, Flabby, Flat)

Taking the stairs, on the right side, DJ liked the intimacy of the small room in the back. He wanted to fill the room with an audio piece – a flat, linear song with lyrics that slightly change until they melt into one abstract line: and the hockey player runs a big galley, and the Holy Mary makes a fin jelly, and homey Manney is a fun jetty, and hurried Benny scores a fine tally…