The Project Room
These spaces of mischievous deconstruction will indisputably impose a paradoxical test
| 01 Apr 2008
The Project Room's offering during this month's Gi festival is one of reconfiguration: pulling together a medley of sculpture, installation and collage from the respective talents of Karen Cunningham, Luca Frei and Babak Ghazi. These disparate practices converge at the point of the subject, with each questioning the received structures of exchange between the individual and society, the individual and information systems and ultimately, between the individual and the self. This manipulation of boundaries and divisions between notions of the viewer as receptor, creator and observer pull the exhibition in line with the wider concerns of the festival - negotiating the terrain between the public and private.
With strong visual and semantic references to the work of William Turnbull, Cunningham's practice holds the most explicit allusions to the Scottish Art school education which links all three artists. Idoliser (2007) juxtaposes symbols of a tangible modern and evasive postmodern subjectivity, both held high for scrutiny upon a plinth. Where Cunningham's comparisons lay bare the obstacles inherent in self-determination, Ghazi's work expands them. Creative Review (2004) points towards the surreptitious ideologies behind independent thought, the titles of four magazines conjoining to form a swastika. In his collage, Fuck Dance, Let's Art (2006), Ghazi sets up a binary between the two ultimate acts of creation. In many senses this is a title composed of four verbs, epitomising the notions of process that undercut much of Frei's work and are certain to play a fundamental role in this month's show. Central to his practice, Frei has noted "becoming [as] no longer a secondary characteristic but an operating mode". This pervasive mode will no doubt challenge the viewer. These spaces of mischievous deconstruction will indisputably impose a paradoxical test. Highlighting the futility of a conclusion, they are sure to meditate upon the multiplicities of being which are thrown up in the internal and relational processes at play in and between the works of all three artists. [Rebecca Pottinger]
With strong visual and semantic references to the work of William Turnbull, Cunningham's practice holds the most explicit allusions to the Scottish Art school education which links all three artists. Idoliser (2007) juxtaposes symbols of a tangible modern and evasive postmodern subjectivity, both held high for scrutiny upon a plinth. Where Cunningham's comparisons lay bare the obstacles inherent in self-determination, Ghazi's work expands them. Creative Review (2004) points towards the surreptitious ideologies behind independent thought, the titles of four magazines conjoining to form a swastika. In his collage, Fuck Dance, Let's Art (2006), Ghazi sets up a binary between the two ultimate acts of creation. In many senses this is a title composed of four verbs, epitomising the notions of process that undercut much of Frei's work and are certain to play a fundamental role in this month's show. Central to his practice, Frei has noted "becoming [as] no longer a secondary characteristic but an operating mode". This pervasive mode will no doubt challenge the viewer. These spaces of mischievous deconstruction will indisputably impose a paradoxical test. Highlighting the futility of a conclusion, they are sure to meditate upon the multiplicities of being which are thrown up in the internal and relational processes at play in and between the works of all three artists. [Rebecca Pottinger]
11 Apr - 27 Apr