IL COLORIFICIO

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Il Colorificio, Temporary Office for Curatorial Consulting, 2018, installation view, Thank You Very Much in Residence at The Modern Institute. Courtesy of Il Colorificio and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow Photo: Patrick Jameson 2/7

TEMPORARY OFFICE FOR CURATORIAL CONSULTING

Temporary Office for Curatorial Consulting (TOCC) is a consulting agency for contemporary art. Founded by Il Colorificio – a curatorial collective and project-space in Milan –, TOCC provides tailored curatorial services to galleries, institutions, artist-run spaces and festivals in order to feed with new contents the starving but nonetheless peaked art system.

For the event “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours” curated by TYVM at The Modern Institute, TOCC provides a consulting service to the overall exhibition and to each art interventions that take place in the evening.

TOCC’s temporary headquarter is located in the gallery office. The entrance of the space is marked by a brass plaque. Inside, Il Colorificio’s characteristic signboard hung on the wall, recalling the fluo yellow of the office desk Toby Table (2009) by Urs Fischer. The results of the advisory process are posted along the walls and placed on the desk, comprising: seven folders (one per artist: Peter Basma-Lord, Nick Evans, Tamara Macarthur, Caitlin Merrett King, Alys Owen, Clare Quilty, Hannah Reynolds, Clara Ursitti), with the artist’s profile, a re-staging proposal and two SketchUp renderings; a folder voted to the critical re-thinking of the event, with the rewriting of the concept, a general re-staging proposal and some SketchUp renderings. A Xerox machine allows to print (entirely or partially) a copy of the documentation, certified by the Il Colorificio’s official stamp.

TOCC is none other than a fictional device with real outcomes, whose aim is to reflect and problematize the static nature of a unique point of view – often, the curator’s one. The TOCC’s method draws its inspiration from the shadow curator theorised by Nuno Sacramento, and the monument ambassador by Thomas Hirschhorn: the former is invited by an institution to provide a critical reading of its exhibition programme; the latter witnesses and records in a scratched temporary office the slippery of an event.

And yet, during this limelight show-off, when the consultancy’s authority overwhelms the role of the artist, the curatorial narcissism is on the brink of a short circuit: the lights turn off, eclipsing the curator and reactivating the work. Urs Fisher’s phosphorescent desk shines once more.

PETER BASMA-LORD
NICK EVANS
TAMARA MACARTHUR
CAITLIN MERRETT KING
ALYS OWEN
CLARE QUILTY
HANNAH REYNOLDS
CLARA URSITTI
A HOLE IN THE SKY / IS OPEN / A HOLE IN THE SKY / IS WIDER /

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PETER BASMA-LORD

PROFILE

Since his work is so closely connected to the simulation and the subversion of existing objects, Peter Basma-Lord (1989, lives and works in Glasgow) doesn’t operate within the purview of a binary, neoliberal and result oriented system. Rather, he deals with the absurd and the subtle border between fake and real, proposing a subverted system of rules or, better yet, no-rules.

The work that Basma-Lord presents at The Modern Institute is strictly connected with this undermining of the power structure and of the production system. House alarms filled with expanding foam – as if a bizarre short circuit affected them, or if they had a cancerous mass that has suddenly blown up – are hanged on the walls of the space. These curious objects, now de-functionalized throughout the addition of an unusual element, plays an in-between role: initially they seems part of our visual code, but soon our eyes recognize them as aliens. Alternated in the space, they constitute an illogical domestic forest regulated by a psychotic surveillance system.

The house alarms (Inside there’s nothing and its just a mess anyway, 2018) were presented for the first time in “1000 Mile Eyesight”, an exhibition that Basma-Lord realized in 2017 with the artist Jens Masimov. The show is a seminal example of the artist’s rejection of everything that could be planned and controlled: “even previously made works enter into that process as ‘found objects’ on an even footing with all others”, writes Basma-Lord in a critical journal. All the exhibited works are interconnected, making the show a singular work itself which requests the visitor’s activation.

Basma-Lord’s de-functionalization is not related with the Duchampian readymade, neither with Borys Groys’ artistic aestheticization that has been transforming the artwork in a simulacrum. Irony is the gateway to read the artist’s dystopic universe, where house alarms are just inadequate products that have lost their intended use. Deprived of their function, they are trapped in a limbo between fiction and authenticity, an ambiguous space which permits the viewer to investigates where the edges of the artwork lie.

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INSTALLATION

In “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours” the fake house alarms (Inside there’s nothing and its just a mess anyway, 2018) by Peter Basma-Lord are hung up randomly on the walls of the space, playing with visibility and invisibility.

TOCC’s re-installment proposal is focused on the exasperation of the surveillance, one of the most pregnant facets of the artist’s work. In this way the house alarm mirrors the “disciplinary power” theorised by Michel Foucault. The disciplinary power is a mechanism of domination that exploits monitoring and surveillance to control populations. Not only criminals are subjected to disciplinary power: surveillance is now everywhere and everyone is subjected to it – the most obvious examples are the use of CCTV in public spaces.

The Modern Institute’s main room is now conceived as a revision of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. Instead of a central viewpoint that guarantees an incessant surveillance of what is happening on the sides without being observed, here a proposed shift of perspective. The mirrors on the walls impose a nude and almost omniscient vision that embraces the entire room and confines the glimpse to the sides of the space. Everyone sees others, and everyone is seen by others. The alarm systems, now located in the high part of the walls, are geometrically rhythmed.

The visitor’s gaze is captured by these mysterious objects that, with their doubt nature and the lights, seem to register their movements. The room is now an overturned panopticon where the viewpoint of the superintendents comes from the periphery, vectoring towards the centre. While the public is a lab rat, the visual of a vision experiment and of an undeclared and hidden control.
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NICK EVANS

PROFILE

In a postmodern era that denies universal certainties and truths as to make way for partiality and inconsistency, to invoke a recovery of a common vocabulary could seem a bold action. Especially if this mutual language comes from a supposed collective unconscious – according with the Jungian theories about an unconscious mind shared among beings of the same species.

Nick Evans’s (1976 Mufulira, Zambia. Lives and works in Glasgow) artistic practice tries to investigate the blurry ground of an unconscious vocabulary of forms. His sculptures belongs to an asymmetrical time that melt past, present and future in a single and multilayered dimension.

Escaping from a world saturated with meaning, Evans adopts a backward archeological process: primitivism is blended with the milestones of 20th Century canon – as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Constantin Brâncuși –, shapes from the everyday life and imagined figures.

This “ecology of forms” permits a reactivation of the cornerstone Western culture vocabulary (often taken for granted) finding a further meaning in the whole, here intended as a sum of parts.

At the same time, the combination of different shapes allows Evans to give up the authorial control, to live room for chance and for a generative and open process possible only inside the studio. It is in the studio that the artist feels free to open his mind to that fluid and uncontrolled attitude – very close with the surrealistic generative procedure – carefully avoiding the mystification of the self expression and of the role of the artist.

At the Modern Institute Evans presents three works never shown before, ideated for external and public spaces: a big gateway (Turning Arch, 2016), a plaster light sculpture and an abstract sculpture. The shift of function (from a social dimension to a private one) invites the public to reconsider their relation with the space, and to reflect on how much this relation influences the perception of the artistic object.

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INSTALLATION

TYVM presents three works by Nick Evans: a big gateway (Turning Arch, 2016), a plaster

light sculpture and an abstract sculpture – all works conceived for external spaces.

Considering the revision of the curatorial concept behind the whole exhibition – that sees a neo-club atmosphere shaped through mirrors walls and a dancefloor – TOCC proposes to install only the light sculpture, positioning it on the ceiling of the main space.

In this way, the work would benefit from a change of viewpoint: the upside down location calls into question the forms and their nature. As Evans noticed, the medium of sculpture is strictly dependent from the visitor’s perspective and his gaze direction. This reflection is very close with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his influential book Phenomenology of Perception, where he theorised that that the body is the site of perception and provides us with our ‘primary function’ of living and feeling the world – a notion strictly related with Rosalind Krauss’s “expanded field”.

The light sculpture hung on the ceiling is a request of activation directed to the public. Besides, swinging between the esthetic realm and its function as object, the work problematizes the trade behind the art system.
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TAMARA MACARTHUR

PROFILE

Tamara Macarthur (1994), born in Berlin and graduated in Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, builds architectural spaces that speak her own language, precarious environments that protect and amplify her, shelters that at the same time she has to defend. These constructions, handcrafted with poor materials such as paper or foil, are homes she temporarily inhabits, for the duration of the performance, theatre-nests which give her the security to sing and to address the public. Quite often Macarthur‘s architectures incorporate oversized drawings of women, exploded self-portraits of the artist who seems to call on her multiples for backup in order to divide the effort. Macarthur’s environments become representations of herself, places where the artist stands, downsized, a fundamental caryatid carrying the weight of her exhibition and gift. The movements and the voice of Macarthur attempt to draw attention, to get noticed by the public in order to give herself completely to them, looking for an intimate connection and, in some respects, for a forbidden one. The artist's exhibitionism proceeds until exhaustion, a kind of reaction to issues of feared abandonment, visible when the visitor goes away, after he had given a little portion of his attention. The gesture of the artist emerges as desperate, maybe pathetic, surely tragic and futile. In the society of the spectacle where everything is a facade and everything is shown and paraded, the song or the lament of the artist is an authorial narcissism used to fascinate and to give time to allow a complete donation of her soul.

Macarthur's research has its roots in the theatre, more precisely in the Greek one: in the same way she desires the public's emotional involvement; ready to provide a little catharsis. Nonetheless Macarthur's performance arises also from a trick, form the self-proclamation, from a forced smile, from the circus. A caged animal, alone and scared, roars for the beating of a hidden tamer, or a clown with a heartbroken grin. The art of Macarthur gives itself completely, waiting for the fall of the curtains in order to collapse on herself, after having dried out every drop of the own generosity.

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INSTALLATION

For “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, Tamara Macarthur presents I’m Here For You (2018). The work is conceived as a dazzling inner architecture, a hybrid between a golden gothic cathedral and a greek temple. Located in symmetric positions, eight huge self-portrait drawings stand as caryatids, safeguarding the precariousness of the shiny construction. I’m Here For You is installed in the entry room of The Modern Institute, suggesting a loving dimension of invitation, a holy communion for the public who head to the end of the room, directly to the artist, minister of this intimate and lavish function. Macarthur sings next to the exit door, wearing only a roughly sewn golden body suit. The artist sings for the public, knowing they have to pass through.

Beginning with the engagement in I’m Here For You, and from past displays of Macarthur's environmental installations, TOCC proposes a more extreme staging of the work.

I’m Here For You represents an important innovation in the language of the artist, since it calls off and abolishes for the very first time the separation between the artist and the public – the division between the stage and the audience – denying the classical structure of the theatre or of the circus. The breakdown of the fourth wall and the final inclusion of the public expand the intensity of Macarthur's piece, but it still remains imprisoned in the alienating dimension of the gallery.

TOCC posits to completely open the way to Macarthur's practice, displaying the golden cathedral outside The Modern Institute before the entrance, increasing the public challenge of the work.

Following the directions of the Ancient Greek architects, “caryatids” should stay on the facade of temples, monuments and mausoleums in order to show publicly the strength of their beliefs. In the same way, displaying I’m Here For You outside the gallery is an attempt to donate itself, even without safety conditions.
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CAITLIN MERRETT KING

PROFILE

Rolling up a cigarette has become a social ritual: a moment of sharing, an excuse, a shortcut to hit on the cool guys hanging around next to the soccer field. Medical and psychological studies only confirmed the importance of the relational and contextual value of smoking. It would be pointless to insist on the risks of smoking, when its benefits are obvious and immediate: smokers always connect with other people, they hook up, right outside a market, with someone who just stopped to ask for a lighter. They work emotionally, constantly chilling.

Caitlin Merrett King (1992, Glasgow) recently graduated in Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. She places her works among the ravines of some popular artistic images (certain pop symbols or modernist stylistic milestones), outlining their social implications, arranging their spaces. There, is where the contradictions arise.

Cigs (2018) are several comfortable seats. Turning cigarettes into healthy pastimes: they maintain their social power and sharing potential without harming one’s health. Yet, its evil twin is still there, through the form and the functionality, the syntax and the semantics. It develops a scenic design for interactions and asks the public to experience it, as an invitation would.

Besides, Merrett King’s cigarettes, bottled ships, and shoes retain their memory: a night

out, a grandfather, a departure. These objects are sticky: they keep their memories as extensions of mnemonic terminations, as hand-carried luggage, like hard disks. They possess their agentivity and support one’s own through their directions and derivations.

Again they assume a caducity; they define themselves as memorial objects, destined to be consumed or forgotten. These contradictions underlie the accepted shallowness: thus in Pergamon Bridget Jones (2015), a careless visit to colonial relics is coupled with a famous love declaration – somehow different to the one we expected from that movie ending. As a result, we notice its problematic nature. Just like when we read in our work emails “I hope this finds you well”: a not-so-true concern which stresses the emotional burden as a social currency.

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INSTALLATION

Cigs (2018) – as installed in “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM – is arranged in a disorganised and scattered way. It creates islands of rest and conversation, following the leitmotiv of the overall exhibition. TOCC takes it to its extremes.

TOCC uses the premise of Caitlin Merrett King’s works as a start: socialisation, the cigarette as the proscenium of a conversation or as the reason for a possible gathering or for meeting someone new. These elements combine with Michel Foucault’s thoughts regarding the “self-care”: as opposed to the normalisation of subjectivity and the standardisation of self as forced in a certain post-capitalist context, the smoking break is a moment of autonomy dedicated to self- and shared reflection activities. The smoking break becomes an instrument to emancipate and self-determinate oneself.

Therefore, Cigs (2018) turns into the reason for repossession of the common space and true sharing. Visitors are welcomed to smoke once sitting on the comfortable big cigarettes by Merrett King. Rolling papers, filters, and tobacco are available for those who do not own it, and ashtrays too. A collective and contemplative space to work on the honesty of personal relationships, beyond opportunistic bonds dictated by a reputational economy that bases its transactions on social currency.

The authorisation to smoke in an indoor space – in a way public, too – stands for a suspension of specific laws. Thus, it is a temporary utopia, free from strict institutional restraints and moral righteousnesses – or post-capitalistic impositions. Furthermore, such a proposal goes together with the problematisation of the institution role – one of the underlying topics of the exhibition’s concept curated by TYVM.
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ALYS OWEN

PROFILE

Alys Owen (1981), graduated in Fine Art Practice Sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art, creates environments which allow the visitor to rethink the relationship with all the little realities around him. Through different media, such as installation, drawing, video and sculpture, Owen explores and tries to discover new possible connections between nature, animals and human beings. This approach could be seen vividly in “Paradisaedae” (2012), a video showing individuals miming the “seductive” mating and courtship dances of the male birds of Paradise. The suitors jump and move rhythmically in public spaces, looking directly and intensely past the camera, re-appropriating parks, streets and car parks as new lands for their passionate rituals. Owen's interest in the individual perception of the external world leads her to another dichotomy which becomes relevant for her research, that between the real and the fake. The artist investigates the blurred line of ontological levels operating between identity subversions. “Colony” (2014-2018), features an army of several mushroom casts made in resin with glow-in-the-dark powder. Her gesture of casting a variety of mushrooms, making them phosphorescent, is meant as an act of artificial contamination, as a pollution of a being's DNA.

Recently Owen has developed her way of building experiential environments with a more performative dimension of the public. In “Sun to the Stone” (2016), the artist designed a 'fake' clinic, complete with three sunbeds made of black and white cast stones and headphones with relaxing music. The visitor is invited to lie comfortably on the loungers, experimenting physically with a state of inner harmony.

In this respect, the lyrical atmospheres conceived by Owen's works challenge undercut the rigid mental jail though which we normally read reality, suggesting a daily reconnection to ourselves and to the world beyond our communities.

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INSTALLATION

For “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, Alys Owen presents Colony (2014-2018), an installation made of resin cast fluo mushrooms. The work deals with the notion of fake, developing a reflection on the relationship between the original and the copy, a theme made visible also by its glowing-in-the-dark. The color unveils a toxic and almost radioactive nature of the mushrooms, suggesting implicitly the human manipulation. Colony has been presented for the first time in the exhibition “SO IT IS” (2014), at the Laurieston Arches in Glasgow, where it was displayed on a piece of wood - next to the old brick walls, under one of the archways, creating the shape of a radioactive urban cave. One of the traits of the work is that its installation is intensely based on the context. At The Modern Institute, Colony conquered the floor of the main exhibition space, engaging the other works and challenging them through its viral pervasivity.

The considerations which lead TOCC's re-installation proposal start from both the immutable nature of the casts and this site-specific identity of the display. This hypothesis tries to subvert the current experience of the visitor, as used in Owen's approach, thinking about new lands to contaminate instead of the proper ones, as – in the case of the gallery – the floor and the walls. Following this idea, the mushrooms are installed on the corners of the room, creating a dense colony line from the floor until the ceiling. The corners are thought as non-places, way interruptions, interstitial spaces between two dimension of continuity.

At the same time, through the new set up, Colony becomes a metaphor of “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours” and of all TYVM residency at The Modern Institute, since in the same way they have parasitized an environment, the gallery, taking a (temporal) interstitial space, infecting a time frame between two exhibition of the institutional scheduling.
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CLARE QUILTY

PROFILE

Clare Quilty is an elusive artist. A long and deep e-mail conversation has exposed a open and helpful individual. Nevertheless, Clare remains slippery and obscure when talking about precise and particular interventions. Yet a brilliant e-mail conversation came up.

For such reason, TOCC has decided to reveal some of its parts. The conversation is split up by thematic cores.

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IC: We just finish to read Lolita. There is one character who shares your name: an intriguing one, intelligent and a literary learned man. A director deeply fascinated with the young Lolita. Are you anyhow related to him? [...]

CQ: Damn you for allowing this vile character to be considered in relation to myself. You are not the first I can assure you. [...] I can assure you my feminist credentials are intact and beyond reproach. Passion, total honesty, and naiveté are superior to the hypocrisy, mendacity and false modesty that are used to disguise crime. We did not mean to be inappropriate. You must admit that it sounds a bit curious. Clare Quilty is a strong character [...], his multi-faced looks, his ability to disguise in multiple ways could be regarded as a sharp picture of a certain attitude. Naturally I forgive and adore your youthful enthusiasm and inquisitiveness, essential and desirable as they are. I see you have a penchant for film and literature and a subtle sensitivity with language [...]

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IC: How do you relate to historical example? Do you have some references?

CQ: I turn my head to look at the snow as it comes down and as you both will realize, there is no reason to stand so close to a falling tree. Words and images belong to the hidden world. Objects and operas flow gently through endless points of reference. A neolithic figure made of mud gently touches the silicon nitride leg of a surgical robot. Collective memory remains outside the accumulation of words that pile up around the discussion ricochetting between thoughts and actions. Historically, they were thought to represent the activity of the visual cortex in an idle state so we will leave them to float in the wind and rejoin the dust. Works of art, objects in most cases have endless points of reference, however our eyes often point toward precise direction, and follow an half-known path. Loosing ourselves in the tangled paths of the history is certainly a way of approaching what was before us. Nevertheless, in a messy stock we frequently find what we are looking for, even if we were not looking for it.

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IC: We just learned that you received a PhD. What is Trans-Molecular Rehydration?

CQ: The controversial subject of Trans-Molecular rehydration starts in general with the premise of adjacent agency (AA) with very low or no energy dissipation. Acting upon something from an-other place or position, most effectively from a sub-mundane realm. The aim is to manipulate the Interaction with or alteration of a phenomena from an adjacent or relating object in an indirect or non-causal manoeuvre without losing any energy from the primary source. The best way to picture this type of operation is to delve into a shadow world or an adjacent dimension from where one is able to act upon visible or present at hand phenomena in such a way that the transformation or translation of the phenomena appears to come from within- or is self manifesting. [...] Think of the movie "Solaris" and the book it is based on. Recall the play of the who/whats that are present and the who/whats that are absent in them and between them. Then think of your own darkest zones of incomprehension. Now think of making what you find there an agent of transformation without consuming yourself in the process. The next step is to try to do it all again whilst dreaming. Firstly we have to forget about trans-molecular rehydration in order to learn its lessons.

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IC: What are you planning to do at The Modern Institute?

CQ: [...] I will ask everyone to vacate the site. I require a completely empty room in order to gain access to all available valences and vibrations. When all information about the interior has been gathered, collated and contemplated, I will begin the lengthy and exhausting operation of exorcizing and cleansing the gallery. [...] I utilize many different methods including ‘smudging’ with sage and audio tonal refraction. The entire process takes between one and seven hours. Towards the end of this situation I will play some loud music ― usually Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album ― to get the refreshened molecules moving. It inevitably gets me shaking my ass until the flesh and the space are both malleable and ready to receive! [...]

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INSTALLATION

Clare Quilty offers to the audience of “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, an archive of his/her own story. A collection of books, a carpet, a fake rock creating a personal constellation, depicting memories.

TOCC proposes a set-up that results from the type of communication that has characterized the exchange between the artist and the Office for curatorial consulting: a virtual exchange, through “electronic messaging”. TOCC conceives a digital archive.

Books or artworks presented have been digitalised: books are accessible via e-books, artworks via images and photographs. The digital archive allows for an easy overview of all the works and plays, provocatively, with the distance that has characterized the relationship with Clare Quilty. A productive and dynamic distance: digital queries and digital archiving are the common way of approaching critical studies or art research.

Just one workstation has been provided: the visitor who wants to know more about Clare Quilty has to focus and be aware. A massive dome, made of transparent plastic, isolates the researcher, conveying attention, scrutiny and analytical thought.

People can access the archive in the opening hours of the exhibition. Furthermore, a limited online version of the same archive will be available to everyone, with the permission of TOCC and the artist him/herself.

The room appears to be at odds with the main rooms of the exhibition. Clare Quilty’s room emerges as a contemplative and absorbed moment: a study space, devoted to meditation and investigation, an alternative space-time cut out. It jokingly stays at odds with the exhibition (except for Hannah Reynold’s room - which represents a sort of emotional prelude): where artworks are physically present, they are desecrated; where digital shadows of artworks are available, they acquire a sacred and autonomous space.
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HANNAH REYNOLDS

PROFILE

Painting is often considered one end of a historically-conjoined binomy, a seamless pair, with the word “art” carved on the other end. The identification, as a shared feeling, of the sameness of these two terms is obvious and subconsciously works within the community expectations: to paint is to speak the art language at its finest level. One should know the history behind it, understand the grammar - the materiality of its tools, the diversity of the techniques - and the rhetoric - the natural expressivity, the vocation and the impulsive struggle, the obsession.

Hannah Reynolds (1992, Glasgow) earned her degree in Painting at Glasgow School of Art. Her paintings and drawings follow two parallel paths: the first with a formalist structure, obsessed with the recurrence of themes and shapes, yet abstract in its final form; the second shaped by a realist and naturalist standpoint - sketches of pleasantly childlike flowers.

Her œuvre constitutes a diary of the visual: she does not indulge in the emotional life, nor the endless maze of contrasting feelings or the intimate answers to external facts. And yet, nor it is a visual diary, but the bare representation of what Reynolds gathers below her gaze. The reference of her paintings is a blurred mess of fragments: tales, cinema cuts, excerpts of music, famous album covers. These references are accessible to everyone, voyeuristically watched, introjected, strengthened and then reproduced. Thus, her language is shaped within this diary of the visual.

Wittgenstein used to argue that a language cannot be private: the terms cannot share as a reference phenomena within one’s own private mental life since there would be no possibility of verifying their correctness, nor could anyone rightly argue to speak rather than just thinking of speaking a language. This requires a public dimension, if not effective then at least possible. And here is where these props come back. Although reworked, they allow to sew the gap between an obsessive and independent - private - expression and a readable one. The diary of the visual is bestowed the status of language. Thus, Reynolds drafts a personal language, yet public in its premises: the syntax draws recurring forms, continuous patterns; semantics plunges its hands in the domain of collective memory.

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INSTALLATION

The installment proposal for Hannah Reynolds artworks focuses on the same premises as the current expositional setting, yet these are brought to their extreme consequences here. In “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, a carpet is installed both on the walls and on the ceiling; representing a tent – both shelter and temporary social occupation. TOCC replaces it with an intimate tunnel-like maze. Hannah Reynolds keeps a diary of the visual, private and delicate, but her language is accountable to a public reading. Drawings and paintings keep coming back to personal shapes and obsessions: re-describing compulsively the same patterns in a game that borders on incommunicability. The public’s concentration must be on point, and this is exactly what TOCC is challenging. The tunnel-like maze forces the visitor to bend, to touch Reynold’s works. Thus, it is possible to feel the private taste of her works, and grasp their significance within the public context.

The visitor is challenged by the short height (1.40 m) of the ceiling and by obstacles on the floor. The inside of the maze is covered in a smooth cloth, a light chiffon of natural colours. The ramp and the stairs represent a choice for those who follow the path, and yet the only chance to move from one to the other of the two paths is where they collide – hindered by the diversity of the floor and the ceiling. An intimate journey into the inside of a language which requires understanding and concentration.

Within this architectural frame, her works are displayed as simply as possible: hung as posters onto the cloth, they recall teenage pictures next to a bed, memories from a night-out with friends. Arranged not according to an aesthetic order, nor colour-wise, they find a distinction which follows the two parallel paths of Hannah Reynolds’ production, still merging within the public’s boundless gaze, creating associations through cuts in the curtains.
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CLARA URSITTI

PROFILE

The scent of war is a story of gas and gunpowder, death and disease, and rotting human flesh. It is the scent of memory, too: lingers within the nose of those who lived through the war; and summons it to the mind of those who were spared by its destruction. The scent of ‘90s dance-club scene is Cool Water, tinged with Marlboros and sweat-soaked jeans. It is about recklessness, a handful of desires and adventures. Clara Ursitti’s scent is a vaginal odour, depicting an intimate story, describing an identity.

Clara Ursitti (1968), born in Canada and based in Glasgow, graduated in Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art and then focused on scent art. She delved into the chemistry of fragrances without any conventional academical career; a political statement that highlights the autonomy of the artist’s unique standpoint.

Poison Ladies (2013) grouped 25 scented ladies: gatecrashing an art opening, they stained the air with coriander, plum, aniseed - Dior’s Poison. A odoriferous intrusion facing the anesthetization of the white cube. As David Howes states, a museum mirrors the sensory separation: works of art cannot be touched or smelled, as if they never had any material consistency. Clara Ursitti brings back the corporeality of a synesthetic knowledge. It allows a communication which is not verbal or visual - a feral interaction within the given environment.

Baumgarten considered aesthetics the basic form of knowledge, the very first possibility to usher into the realm of beauty. As a result, each sense shared the same value: sight like touch, hearing like taste, and the smell. There was no hierarchy. Then the western culture changed its path: visual perception flooded every single corner, from languages to conceptual constructions. As a footnote, there are no terms strictly related to describing the odours. Ursitti claims the innate aporia of language, its necessary parallelism detached from reality, two objects which cannot overlap. Language is not enough and yet retains its tyrannical status. Thus, it is the artist’s goal to study its peripheral crevices: where once they tried to teach English to dolphins (an US experiment carried out during the ‘60s), Ursitti sits down and listens to them, trying to understand (Peter, 2008); where contemplation rules, we need to open our nose and claim back our body within an expanded field.

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INSTALLATION

For “A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, Clara Ursitti proposes Cool Water (2018), that recalls the ‘90s dance scene, the music of D’Agostino and Eiffel 65, the first onset of Italian and American dance music. Cool Water (2018) sprays the ambient air with perfume every 10 minutes. TOCC offers a more participatory staging for this work.

At the entrance of the gallery one boy and one girl are spraying every person willing to visit the The Modern Institute. The work of art is thus distributed by visitors on their own – flooding every room, scattered by the participants.

With such a choice, recalling Ursitti’s previous works – Poison Ladies (2013) e L’Eléphant? (2016) – the stroll through the staging of the exhibition is transformed into an involuntary performance open to everybody. Furthermore, on a symbolic level, it tries to represent the club environment: the perfume sticks on people’s bodies and it does not come from hung machinery – it is worn. In addition, two ‘90s-clad people are walking randomly to smell of the perfume.

This atmosphere recalls the typical disco setting: not only due to the smell, this performative install matches with what TYVM has set to be a pastime. The opening is coupled with a bar where drinks and beers are available, next to a dj-set, turning the room into a dancing stage. As a result of Ursitti’s set up, her work of art brims over the borders of the staging space once the visitors leave the area. TOCC is proposal focuses on a game of contrasts, indoor-outdoor, bringing back the idea of a pavilion as a form of occupying the space – working on political terms: the body is turned into a first expression of an occupation highlighted by stressing the smell.
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A HOLE IN THE SKY / IS OPEN / A HOLE IN THE SKY / IS WIDER /

CONCEPT

“A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours” is the first of the three evenings that the artist collective Thank You Very Much are curating at The Modern Institute, as part of their residency.

Closer to an event rather than an exhibition, “A hole in the sky […]” is an invite to shift perspective and to reconfigure the relationship among indoors and outdoors. As a link between spaces, the hole is not only something generative and productive. A breach could also conduct towards an abyss, revealing the Pirandellian “hole in the paper sky” (Henry IV) or the inconsistency of a fictional reality as in The Truman Show’s deceptive scenography.

But then again, as the title says, “a hole in the sky is yours”, and the choice to assume the risk lays in the visitor’s hands. Maybe the role of the ideal visitor is played by a caterpillar: basically aggregative, metamorphic, soft and colourful – an avant-gardist lepidopteran provided with grit and a desire to know.

The Temporary Office for Curatorial Consulting (TOCC) proposes an exasperation of this explorative dimension, figuring out a passage towards something that not necessary belongs to the realm of the binary logical system. The aim is to push the boundaries of the works’ potentialities forward, to their limits. In this sense, the single projects and their installments are restructured:

changing perspectives, overturning the sense, demystifying and re-sacralising the artistic interventions. The very intimate and sensual body cathedral by Tamara MacArthur is shifted outside; Hannah Reynolds drawings are hung in a small and claustrophobic corridor as if to force a physical contact; the Claire Quilty archive is transformed from physical to digital. Moreover, the surveillance in Peter Basma-Lord’s works is exasperated; the light sculpture by Nick Evans is hung upside down from the ceiling, inviting a change of perspective; Alys Owen’s glow-in-the-dark mushrooms reminds a parallel psychotropic universe; the pillow cigarettes stitched by Caitlin Merrett King permit a cheeky smoke break; the Cool Water fragrance introduced by Clara Ursitti stucks visitors directly, imposing a shared experience.

At the end, the main room is transformed into a dancefloor, a political platform where the self and the community coexist and where the caterpillar could fulfill the metamorphosis, becoming a butterfly.

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INSTALLMENT

“A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, works around a temporary set-up, as a theoretical ground for both the exhibition concept and the installment proposal. A tent is a momentary invasion, a nomadic camp which disintegrates the usual whitecube structure of the gallery splitting different spaces.

Tamara Macarthur’s artworks define a sensual and corporeal entrance: the audience is compelled to almost touch the works to get ahead in the gallery space. Once inside, a blue light within the toilet facility, recalls the anti-drug system, typical of public restrooms. The audience move through TOCC’s office, to then meet Hannah Reynolds private works, hung on soft walls. A fork forces to choose: following one way there is Clare Quilty’s archive, following the other it happens to be in the main room. Here the visitor can smell Cool Water (Clara Ursitti) – spread from above – while lying on big cigarettes (Caitlin Merrett King). Nick Evans’ modernist sculptures give rhythm to the space, sometimes the eyes meet a fluo mushroom (Alys Owen), sometimes they may meet one of Peter Basma-Lord’s useless house alarms.

TOCC identifies a shared criteria for the set-up proposal of the overall exhibition: the conceptual grounds that guide TYVM’s intervention have been pushed to their limits. The concept guidelines are spatially translated: the inside/outside dialectic, the repossession and the reactivation of the space, the institutional critique.

Tamara McArthur’s artworks – thought to be installed in the inside – are placed just in front of the main door. Once inside, visitors find a woman’s torso designed to be hung above the entrance. TOCC’s office becomes as the second step in the visit: the curators are available to answer the public’s questions. Now the visitor is forced to bend: she enters in a contemplative dimension to come into contact with the almost private language of Hannah Reynolds. If she follows the reflective atmosphere, she ends up being in the transparent dome that contains Clare Quilty’s digital archive: a silent space, devoted to study and research. On the other way, the visitor enters the party: the main room is covered with mirrors on the wall, recalling a famous dance-club in Milano (where Il Colorificio, founder of TOCC, is based). A bar in the very center and a DJ booth to the side define the function of this room: a dance hall. Caitlin Merrett King’s cigarettes are islands where one can take care of him or herself, on the corners mushrooms (Alys Owen) seem to spread psychotropic substances. Hung on the ceiling, Nick Evans’ sculpture redefines the perspective, while being reactivated. Cool Water by Clara Ursitti warms up the atmosphere, disguising the space as a ‘90s dance-club. Peter Basma-Lord’s artworks supervise the party, as monitoring instruments.

Thus, TOCC designs the spaces for “A hole in the sky [...]”, pushing the traditional curatorial role over its own boundaries. The topics of demystification and temporary occupation, at the core of TYVM’s intervention, has become powerful and critical instruments in the hands of TOCC: allowing for a multi-layered and a polysemic attitude.

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