when you walk into a gallery space there’s a hierarchy of how to behave, sometimes it feels like that turns into a trajectory of how we are supposed to experience art, you have to see it a certain way or you don’t get it, sometimes this imposes a logical structure on works that are more intuitive, it’s better if the experience is as flexible as possible, you can succumb to a specific kind of confusion, it’s not real is it, To be called a copy, to be called unreal, is thus one way in which one can be oppressed, what is considered authentic in one situation and false in another, what is considered real, how does that change in the gallery context, what gets to be real here, can the work’s unreality to make an otherwise impossible or illegible claim (so that) something other than a simple assimilation into prevailing norms can and does take place.
what happens only when something is a copy or false, often the false has a greater “reality” than the true. Therefore, it seems that all information, and that includes anything that is visible, has its entropic side. Falseness, as an ultimate, is inextricably a part of entropy, and this falseness is devoid of moral implications, what can occur here that can’t happen elsewhere, even for just a moment, especially just for a moment, a ‘temporary autonomous zone’, in which the rules of gallery experience are suspended, replaced by a provisional improvisation, and where an essentially intuitive response to the uncertainties of space and time is unavoidable, something else might happen here, in a utopian “rest” of this kind, towards some ultimate “no-place” of a collectivity untormented by sex or history, by cultural superfluities or an object-world irrelevant to human life, it’s not possible is it, it has to be absurd, otherwise it’s dangerous.
how does this impact the viewer, what does it feel like entering a space that belongs to someone else, trespassing, intruding, curiosity overcame my fear and I did not close my eyes, it’s kind of exciting, everyone’s going to do it, there’s a bit of an adrenalin rush, no-one will ever know, your whole body is experiencing everything tenfold, but you might get caught, the viewer, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice, what do you choose to be responsible for, how do you work that out, what’s going on here, what are you up to, we’ll just have to work it out for ourselves, sometimes in these moments, when intuition is the source of information rather than language and conscious perception, memories of past experiences mix with and inform the present, it’s hard to distinguish between the real and the imaginary of the present and the past, of the actual and the virtual, the notion of time has crashed into this immediacy, the now. We act in the fold of the present, an exponential present.
yet time seems to slow down temporarily, it lingers, it’s delayed, stops even, it is in stillness that one may be said to find true speed, the slowness starts revealing secrets to you, in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway, subtle details emerge, the glow of grime, which is really the polish that comes of being touched over and over again, the layers of dust, dismal sheets of dust constantly invade earthly habitations and uniformly defile them, it will eventually fall apart, disintegrate, merge, descend into the all-encompassing sameness, what lives, wants to die again. Originating in dust, it wants to be dust again. Not only the life-drive is in them, but the death-drive as well.
from the confusion, the “no-place”, the possibilities for the work expand, the artist obliges the audience to build separate parts into a whole, and to think on further than has been stated,…that puts the audience on par with the artist… going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life, the work develops with us, but we are always [taking] up only such problems as we can solve.
By Ruth McConchie
Exhibition by Jarrod Van Der Ryken
Artwork: Structural timber, iron facia, fibre cement sheeting, paint, timber framed glass door, timber framed glass windows, flyscreen, iron security bars, calico curtains, light twigs and leaves, television set, mattress, performer. 8.0m x 5.0m x 3.0m
Situating the viewer as an intruder to the privacy of domestic space,Empty Places/With Suspicion challenges personal reliance on the secrecy of intimate thought and activity. For the exhibition the gallery becomes the site of a derelict home; the decaying qualities and eerie ambience of which impart a sense of hopelessness and existential belittlement.
