Lisa Kellner

“What I am trying to negotiate through my work is the role contemporary art plays in a rapidly consuming and disposable world.  For me, clarity comes from exploring the relationships and tension between opposing elements.

Rooted in the language of decay, erosion and disease, my work merges intricate microcosms with immense topographies.  In all of my work there is an awareness of location (whether a centimeter wide area on the body or an aerial view of earth) that facilitates the exploration of place and its emotive aspects.  

 History, itself, is my primary focus.  The capacity to interpret and digest historical notions:  within the subject matter, its geographical and chronological place, and the formal presentation on the surface plane are the constants in my work.”

“Inner Urban Sanctum”
‘Here and Now’

Transformer Gallery
Washington, DC
Juni 2008
(© Lisa Kellner)

De installatie was verspreid over vier ruimtes. De bedoeling was er om de vervallen staat  van de ruimtes (in al zijn schoonheid) te accentueren.

Meer van dat? www.lisakellner.com

The Army of Luck

Boris Petrovsky (DE)
The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or: The Army of Luck
2010-2012

The Maneki Neko (jap., literally Beckoning Cat; aka Lucky Cat, Money Cat) is a common Japanese figurine which is believed to bring luck, attract customers and bring prosperity. The Lucky Cat waves with the raised left paw and holds a historic coin in front of itself with the right one. The Lucky Cat as talisman and selling product is wide-spread in Asia and meanwhile almost all over the world.

Luck is associated here with monetary and material prosperity. As talisman it is spread all over asian countries. For tourists the Lucky Cat became a kind of pop style Manga character which appears in growing numbers in western private households. As kitschy-petite like exotic souvenir it refers to a certain idea of western lifestyle.

The material element of the installation»The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or: The Army of Luck« is the »Lucky Cats’ Matrix«. It contains 520 shiny golden XXL Lucky Cats made of plastics which are arranged in 40 rows and 13 columns on a ramp-like stand made of aluminum (W 8 m, H 3 m, D 2 m). 

Visitors experience the Lucky Cats’ Matrix as a dot-matrix display which consists of 520 waving paw grid points as its »pixels«. In each cat a servomotor is built in to control the paws move exactly in position and speed. 

The visitors are requested imaginarily by the cats to interact as users: “Your concept of happiness is our lucky command. Write it on the keyboard”. 

Words and sentences up to 40 characters can be put in and are displayed clearly visible with the paws letter by letter as sliding text marquee. So to say, the users »choreograph« the Lucky Cats performance wordwise. Literally it is the »inscription« of an idea of happiness or a wish in the Lucky Cats’ bodies by moving their paws forward and backward.

For users, the Lucky Cats become multiplied »avatars« in the world of chance and happiness. But the Lucky Cats are also able to perform spontaneously as well: they can show 25 different salutatory and signalizing gestures as well as mass movements like the »Mexican Wave« or an ecstatic »hyperkinesis«. Every displayed sentence triggers audio events – sound samples of mass or group events, like entertainment shows, political speeches, demonstrations, sport events, parades, accidents, etc. from the beginning of the last century until today. The sounds express auditorily different states of mind, like joy, euphoria, desire, fear, hate, aggression and resignation, astonishment, outrage, pain, panic, desperation and fanatical excitement. The sounds are played in random order and unpredictable combinations. Different contexts and changing settings are emerging.

Are the Lucky Cats »one-armed bandits«? Or is it a gesture in the context of a political or religious movement? Is it a just a happy waving of the fun-loving, hedonistic society? Or is the assembly of Lucky Cats a revolutionary deployment of »wish machines« as »army of luck« or is it just another marketing campaign?

The lined up, gold-reflecting mass of the Lucky Cats in the matrix appears almost as an insubstantially copy-paste-animation. The Lucky Cats in the matrix as an industrial made product become an »ornament of the masses« for repetetive-stererotype and globalized-industrialized ideals. Do we need more and more Lucky Cats to generate more and more prosperity for more and more people?

(www.petrovsky.de)

Claire Morgan

Kunst, mijn grote passie en liefde van mijn leven. Maar ook een heel dankbaar onderwerp om doelloos uit uw nek te lullen. Daarom wil ik dit soort blogpost kort en krachtig houden. Enkel vertellen wat er te vertellen valt. En vooral niet de grote intellectueel uithangen. Want zo lopen er al genoeg rond. en de wereld is toch een beetje mooier met een cultuursnob minder.

Het mooie aan mijn job is dat ik mijn eigen archief heb. Beter nog, mijn eigen bibliotheek.
Ik weet dat dit niet heel erg sexy en opwindend klinkt, maar het is mijn klein paradijs. Een paradijs waar ik geregeld eens een schat vind, zoals bijvoorbeeld het oeuvre van Claire Morgan.

Geboren in Belfast, getogen in London. En vooral gekend door haar grote, organische installaties.

(Tacing Time, 2007)

“My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures. I feel as if they are somewhere between movement and stillness, and thus in possession of a certain energy. …”

Dit nu hetgeen wat ik zo boeiend vind aan haar werk. Het is niet alleen esthetisch heel aantrekkelijk maar haar werken zijn constant veranderlijk, niets lijkt wat het is. Op een eerst zicht lijken de sculpturen rigide, geometrisch volumes. Maar als je dichterbij kijkt, merk je dat het geheel bestaat uit kleine modules organisch materiaal dat zweeft in de ruimte.
Natuur is in essentie dynamisch. Alles groeit, bloeit en takels af. Nu, Morgan gaat deze fauna & flora gaan ‘bevriezen’ in haar installatie. En dit doet ze in een atypische omgeving, namelijk: de museale white cube. Daardoor krijg je een hele bevreemdend effect: geïsoleerde dynamiek. Haar werk beweegt niet, maar het is ook niet statisch.
Verrassend en uiterst fascinerend.