Standing floorstuck and unstrung

Standing Floorstuck and Unstrung

Solo show at KHM Gallery in Malmö. 2017

A structure stands glued to the gallery floor.

The structure was made to support a surface.

The surface was made to fill the vision.

The vision was filled to pause the thoughts.

When looking into the full blankness of complete darkness, or the water that rushes onto your eyes as you swim, some seconds filled by what is immediate and real drop into the mind. Could a made thing bring on that alert sensation? How high would it have to be? How wide? Months ago an adequate contour was found, hung from the studio ceiling with cardboard and string.

But the sea and the sky need no string. What seems like surface is just the closest part of depth.

The surface of the contour is not clumsy cardboard any more, but thin tissue paper. From behind this taut translucent membrane, 7000 tightly packed circles face the viewer. They are the ends of 7000 cardboard tubes, threaded together and piled higher than upturned eyes can peer past.

The cylinders of held air resonate but their little vibrations should stay quietly contained. They should: the contingently intricate mechanics of the thin-skinned pile will be tested in the making.

That thin skin will not be calm, even if it does prove strong. It shows 7000 examples of what perception can do to a circle. In a sideways glance it becomes an oval that narrows to a line. Perhaps the eyes will be too busy for the mind to pause.

Many months have passed since drawing the sea began the plan to make a huge mind-quietener. That wistful idea was often forgotten when the nature of materials became obvious and awkward.

The structure has itself gained a nature. It must stand for itself and obey its own logic.

Directions in Operation

Cardboard tubes, tissue paper, cellulose dope, super glue, braided fishing line
230cm x 420cm x 260cm
2017

With thanks to Samaneh Roghani for her photographs.

The patchworked tissue paper surface was held to the cardboard tubes behind it with little drops of superglue. Then it was made drum-skin tight with a layer of shrinking cellulose dope varnish. It shrank for days. When too-tense paper finally pulled from its glue-point, tears that looked and sounded like tiny lightening bolts broke across the cloudy membrane.