Filed under: Comment & Opinion, Contemporary Art, Exhibition Reviews | Tags: Barbican, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Coffin, sculpture, The Curve
Yes, taken on a bloody mobile!
The Barbican deserves an arse-licking. Amongst the smotherings of the city’s suits its Brutalist concrete village and confusing internal architecture give a good welcome slap; an ideal preparation for seeing art. Although their exhibitions are often brilliant but pricey, the free and accessible Curve downstairs has been host to a consistent and varied range of commissions, the current Peter Coffin installation particularly worth visiting.
Unusual and laudable too that the Barbican doesn’t spoil its shows with dozens of meaningless installation shots on the website, although this video is a juicy taster. An array of Coffin’s past video works and informative text provides a context for those unfamiliar with the New York based artist, since this is his first major UK project and runs concurrently with his projected animations at the Tate Triennial.
The installation at the Curve breaks down into three constituent parts. The swooping outer wall is divided into screen-sized projection areas, where woozy videos in vivid tones show a swirling collaged viewpoint around a garden. The rest of the space is dark with selective lighting, and speakers spaced far apart emit surprise sounds of somebody whistling as they stroll, or so says the press release. It’s more like nutty birds or a Clangers tune in its harmonic irrationality, and in tandem with the videos’ huge portion of the space create a mood difficult to describe as anything other than ‘trippy’. Not as in the perpetuated cliché of monkeys in hats or trousers on wheels, but a genuinely bizarre and disorientating assault on the senses.
Better than nothing surely
Scattered through the long narrow space are also a dozen or so pairs of plinths with a real recognizeable object sitting on one of each: there’s a skull, a trumpet and a compass for starters. Alongside, a companion plinth proffers greyish pixellated and crystalline sculptures of their real counterparts. These non identical twins invite spot the difference – a shoe becomes a foetus, a trumpet develops a teeny tiny mouth piece and a skull is turned inside out.
A chubby vase of flowers is both satisfying and repulsive, looking something like a pile of swollen guts. Think of Claes Oldenburg’s ridicule of function in his floppy sculptures and elegant drawings, laughing at the objects’ deformation as they take on complex and absurd logic through their own rules. It’s explicit in the presentation of coupled plinths that the readymade has been scanned and excreted into odd misshapen lumps in a specific way unique to each sculpture.
The rules applied are not necessarily important in and of themselves, as the press release almost articulates in stating “for Peter Coffin, art is an alternative to rational thought” although I’d add that they aren’t mutually exclusive. The implication of ‘experts’ often comes across as an authoritative correctness that can make art look like a shrunken second fiddle to the rules of Science. This is avoided here through the mathematician’s collaboration with Coffin and their rationale to the modifications explained in a booklet at the gallery entrance, rather than running commentary or text throughout the installation itself.
You might guess that the crushed Budweiser can has been made into 3D double vision and the pine cone has been seen through a Rubiks cube, but it isn’t the explanation for why they are so formally arresting. It’s enough that they are playful and imaginative explorations, engaging and complicated.
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Corporate/techo kitcsh.
Comment by CAP 24 February 2009 @ 2:08 amMake that kitsch.
Comment by CAP 24 February 2009 @ 2:09 amwant to exapand on that a little?
Comment by annartist 24 February 2009 @ 1:28 pmI think that it sounds really interesting, I therefore don’t think much if art science uses to justify itself, especially if art is in opposition to ’sensible thought’. artistic thinking a different way of thinking, and therefore it under its own rules.
Comment by frianne 24 February 2009 @ 5:18 pm<iIn Untitled (Greenhouse), 2002, Coffin invited musicians, and sound artists to play to plants in a greenhouse situated in a gallery for the opportunity to experience a connection popularized by the claim that music may have beneficial effects on plants. Other projects have included portraits of a person’s aura taken with a specially designed Polaroid camera, found images of rainbows composed into a psychedelic spiral, trousers made for trees and a seven metre wide UFO flown over the Baltic coast and Gdansk.
Sorry but this is lame touchie-feelie hippy shit and the latest installment is just as crass and tasteful.
Scuse me while I torch the place.
Comment by CAP 26 February 2009 @ 10:13 pmwhats wrong with touchie feelie hippy shit! what’s wrong with tasteful? what are you comparing it with eh?
Comment by annartist 27 February 2009 @ 11:07 amI’m comparing it with video installations where placement or location exemplifies qualities of photography in relation to prominent surroundings. I’m comparing it with work where spatial continuity and orientation between content of screens involves the viewers movements, adjacent objects and architecture. These can be mainly architectural (Darren Almond, Doug Aitken, Gary Hill, Pierre Huyghe or Phillippe Pareno) or involve filmed performance (Shirin Neshat, J&L Wilson, Tony Oursler, Diana Thater) or actual performance (Ugo Rondinone) with archive or found footage (Douglas Gordon, Fiona Tan).
Essentially they are about stretching viewing conditions for a movie (whether film, video or digital, with sound or without) integrating these with the sampling of three-dimensional properties, either stand-alone sculpture or installation, site-specific, temporary or permanent. All of this work calls upon particular and acute sensitivity and awareness from the viewer in discerning subtle differences to mood and depiction. But this is not to be confused with surrender to cheap mystification and a deeply ideological alienation of feelings.
The aptly named Coffin is third rate, dead wood because he is content with superficial and predictable qualities from screens and surrounding objects, lighting and sound. Yes we view screens and sculptures ‘in the round’. Yes objects sculpted and photographed are rounded, scaled and subject to light/colour, focus and distance. But Coffin is way off the pace here and appeals to fringe intimations, the dark side and long shots to reason is a cop out. It saves him having to go there himself, rethink a few comfortable orthodoxies and the corporate chic that is just so at home in the Barbican.
What’s wrong with touchie-feelie hippy shit? Tasteful? Nothing, if you live in a coffin or denial.
Comment by CAP 28 February 2009 @ 1:42 pmI’m not too fond of this shopping list approach to what makes a great video installation. Sure, the elements you describe – involving viewer’s movements, architecture and so on can be interesting. Although I’d argue that Coffin’s projections are certainly playing off the swooping curve of the gallery. So architecture should get a tick.
Adding live performance, architectural additions to a projected plane and whatnot would make it something else – categorizing artists into their constituent methods is so dull. Surely seeing art can be an ineffable experience if it really gets to you – yes, there might be shared media with others, articulated concepts and so on. Am I hopelessly romantic in looking for an aesthetic experience that is more than the sum of its parts?
Despite Coffin’s ouevre admittedly choca with ‘cheap mystifications’ and appeals to the dark side – as in the music played to plants and the UFO – that’s the weaker edge conceptually, and not the overriding impression of the curve installation. The video itself is one aspect too, and not particularly interesting in and of itself. It’s a backdrop, fine.
Again I’m confused with this ‘corporate chic’ assault leveled at the Barbican. Compared with other similar scale public institutions in London – the ICA, Camden Arts Centre, Southbank – I feel there’s far less of that… but then I’m at a loss as to precisely what you mean by corporate and chic. As in sponsors and highly talked up over glossed drivel? Is it down to the graphics? Or the fact that it’s in the city of london? Or used for tons of corporate conferences. It’s woefully underattended as a cultural venue.
So if Coffin had chucked some of his silhouette sculptures in front of the screens it would be a better work? Why? And again – what’s wrong with touchie feelie hippy shit – in art or anywhere? Why is that living in denial? Denial of what?
Comment by annartist 28 February 2009 @ 7:10 pm- Well we all go shopping, even for ineffable. And the prudent shopper comes with a list. Although personally I’d rather my effables next to my seeables, to be effing honest.
- But I’m not offering a check list for Coffin, against rival brands. I’m pointing out what he says, whether he wants to or not, where he gets classed, even as a rugged individualist. It’s not necessary to deal with performance, severe (inert) duration, drama or more elaborate installation. But these help to show how a video installation works.
- Are there qualities perceived beyond words? Of course, but writing is hardly the best way to approach them. They require demonstrations rather than descriptions.
- Is a work greater than the sum of its parts? Sometimes. It depends on the parts! Well-worn and obvious tropes are sometimes refreshed merely by rearrangement. Re-combination and omission of some parts sometimes demand a whole new whole! Neither sum nor parts entirely determine a satisfying work.
-Yes, by corporate I meant the sponsored, over-hyped public space, it’s careful and conforming policies, such as this spin-off of The Tate’s Try-any-old Thing. But I agree that, compared with similar London spaces, The Barbican is underrated, under-visited (at least when I visit, but I tend to assume I visit at off-peak times – whatever time I visit). And I’ve seen good shows there.
- Would silhouettes in front of the screens improved it? I doubt it. But a row of knickknacks on plinths was always going to struggle for me. Coffin comes late to this practice and the bar has been set high.
- The video was not just a backdrop. The choice of a Japanese ornamental garden and kamikaze camerawork were all about shaping and scaling at a distance, nature striking chords in culture and tradition.
- Coffin Pete likes the steep dive off the low board, to get banzai with his bonsai but can always pull out before he gets over-excited or in over his head. That can be reassuring for some, keeping the feelings brief and cool. He keeps his space in separate screens, stays ahead of the curve. But the drag is that the camera is all he can do it with, that it’s always an exotic, esoteric place, that light is reserved for the tried and tired and that relating has to be so far out.
- But that’s what keeps the show no more than tasteful, comfortable and corporate. It’s a dabbler’s aesthetic, pretending to margins he has neither faith nor familiarity with. He can deny the precedents set, rivals and neighbours, but I know an effing pretender when I see one.
Comment by CAP 1 March 2009 @ 5:06 am“- Coffin Pete likes the steep dive off the low board, to get banzai with his bonsai but can always pull out before he gets over-excited or in over his head. That can be reassuring for some, keeping the feelings brief and cool. He keeps his space in separate screens, stays ahead of the curve. But the drag is that the camera is all he can do it with, that it’s always an exotic, esoteric place, that light is reserved for the tried and tired and that relating has to be so far out.”
I have no idea what you are saying, but I like how you are saying it.
Maybe an informed viewer (i.e. me, you, other people) can disassociate the ‘corporate’ space from their interaction with the work. Maybe they could even disassociate the artist’s intentions from their interpretation.
I think God is interesting, but I don’t believe in God.
I will point out that I haven’t seen the show, but I’ve always maintained that critique should be an Olympic sport (rarefied and maintained by amateurs).
Comment by jiminy cricket 2 March 2009 @ 1:33 pmsee the show jiminy! tis wicked
Comment by pinocchio 5 March 2009 @ 11:59 pmhttp://negativeequity.blogspot.com/2009/03/parabolas-and-fables-peter-coffin-curve.html
Comment by KP 14 March 2009 @ 12:37 pmTime for another post, ladies.
Comment by CAP 14 April 2009 @ 4:46 pm