Diamonds on the soles of her shoes - Alicja Kwade - Matthew Smith - Raphael Zarka - Curated by Niru Ratnam
10 Feb - 27 Mar 2010
Les formes du repos n 10 (pipeline) 2006
People say she's crazy
She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Well that's one way to lose these
Walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes
(Paul Simon)
How might newness enter the world? One way is through the alteration, distortion, translation or re-contextualisation of what already exists in the world. The three artists in "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" have, in different ways, brought new objects of knowledge into the world. And at a time when a new object of knowledge, in the form of a new gallery space, is inaugurated, it seems apt to explore this idea more.
Alicja Kwade (b.1971) has used mirrored clocks, Kaiser Idell lamps, cut diamonds, and stones polished to look like jewels in previous works. She has destroyed the form of some things, restored old objects and covered new objects, often producing a façade of objects which are in a very different register to the almost-forgotten original, which mostly exists as a trace. Critics have described her work as contemporary still-lives, in that she re-orders what already exists in the world into a particular new arrangement that exists as a whole, albeit temporarily with its own impermanence often inscribed within it - the repeated use of clocks indeed might attest to this.
Matthew Smith's (b.1976) works consider the configuration of objects in the world to suggest that meaning arises from context and is inherently relative and precarious. Smith has used duvets, commercial shelving, wooden tablespoons, record covers and nails in his work, all transformed through the way they are arranged in order to destabilise their original function. It is possible to argue that each of Smith's objects have become a variation on (again, a lost) original and that these variations produce the "new". Objects themselves might not change, but different configurations of them will unhinge previous assumptions and associations.
Raphaël Zarka (b.1977) has said about his practice: "Let's play with the things that are already here, already around us, rather than pretend we are inventing something new." These fragments are often odd objects in the world who have seemingly lost their function - a disused testing track for the never-to-be French Aerotrain or concrete breakwaters whose intricate forms are puzzling for example. Zarka seems to almost rescue these objects and imbue them with new meanings - but through the repetitions of these forms across different works, meanings that are private and internal. Zarka invents an imagined, interior, new language that viewers can hear repeated echoes of.
She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Well that's one way to lose these
Walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes
(Paul Simon)
How might newness enter the world? One way is through the alteration, distortion, translation or re-contextualisation of what already exists in the world. The three artists in "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" have, in different ways, brought new objects of knowledge into the world. And at a time when a new object of knowledge, in the form of a new gallery space, is inaugurated, it seems apt to explore this idea more.
Alicja Kwade (b.1971) has used mirrored clocks, Kaiser Idell lamps, cut diamonds, and stones polished to look like jewels in previous works. She has destroyed the form of some things, restored old objects and covered new objects, often producing a façade of objects which are in a very different register to the almost-forgotten original, which mostly exists as a trace. Critics have described her work as contemporary still-lives, in that she re-orders what already exists in the world into a particular new arrangement that exists as a whole, albeit temporarily with its own impermanence often inscribed within it - the repeated use of clocks indeed might attest to this.
Matthew Smith's (b.1976) works consider the configuration of objects in the world to suggest that meaning arises from context and is inherently relative and precarious. Smith has used duvets, commercial shelving, wooden tablespoons, record covers and nails in his work, all transformed through the way they are arranged in order to destabilise their original function. It is possible to argue that each of Smith's objects have become a variation on (again, a lost) original and that these variations produce the "new". Objects themselves might not change, but different configurations of them will unhinge previous assumptions and associations.
Raphaël Zarka (b.1977) has said about his practice: "Let's play with the things that are already here, already around us, rather than pretend we are inventing something new." These fragments are often odd objects in the world who have seemingly lost their function - a disused testing track for the never-to-be French Aerotrain or concrete breakwaters whose intricate forms are puzzling for example. Zarka seems to almost rescue these objects and imbue them with new meanings - but through the repetitions of these forms across different works, meanings that are private and internal. Zarka invents an imagined, interior, new language that viewers can hear repeated echoes of.