warp exit 3.0
isolated steps
installation / 2009
with Anders Grønlien
The exhibition space is located in the entrance hall as well as the central corridor of a refurbished factory building completely opened in the middle in its whole height. The first room seems to have rotated, as if the gravity shifted. Furniture, lighting system and other objects used for the making of the exhibition have gently settled on one of the walls, like narrative clues of the creation process. Leaning on this wall, as an echo to the original architecture (footbridge, staircases, balcony), a staircase stretches into the heights of the open space. The original lighting system of the location —fluorescent lights, hang from the opposite wall.
In the main corridor, a wooden structure supports a ceiling made of black opaque paper turning the whole space into a dark chamber. This ceiling is pierced with a multitude of tiny holes, which look like a starry sky thanks to powerful lights placed above it. Once accustomed to the darkness, the viewer can see the thin rays of light materialized by smoke, and when moving through the corridor, they can see each star sparkles when looking up towards the lights above. At the end of the corridor, emerging from the smoke, a mounted photograph the size of a film poster, represents the galerists posing as alien ambassadors and seems to float in the darkness.
Inspired by Science-Fiction and Space studies representations, both fictive, the installation concept leans on the exhibition space as much as it transforms it. The configuration of the building, the people running the gallery space, and the movement of the viewer itslef all become the material of another universe, with different rules and points of reference.
Click here to see a video report about this exhibition made by Artycok TV.
Brehm´s life of animals, part II., volume II.
Prague, 1930
Text selected and slightly adapted by Jiří Kovanda for warp exit 3.0 - isolated steps
February – March 2009
Well, also I lived for weeks and months in houses were they lingered and also I was, the moment I saw them, taken aback. During the day their moves are somehow gawkish, however, when it gets dark, every observer and scholar must be, if not captured, then at least interested. I was always glad when I heard at night in my house their first call and then I could furtively listen to their rather scary volatilization and watch them hunting with the upmost zeal as well as other of their actions at all.
Their moves are always inconstant but still unusually intense and they surprise with their dexterity. They snoozle their body low to the ground onto which they move, they occupy large area, when climbing up the wall, they stretch their legs and feet. When they keep still, they like sitting on the wall with their head down. With their tongue they can lick with their eyes no difficulty at all.
At night they are as restless, excitable and vivacious as other beings during the day. Their largest communities live most often in unrest and disorder, they chase and follow each other, start quarrelling and use their dentition with force and vehemence.
I have caught them innumerable times, held them in my hand and observed their laminated cushions, but I have never seen the slightest damage caused by touch since I could not feel anything since there is no such sticky humidity that had been thought to cause them adhere and to be venomous. On their feet they actually create vacuum thanks to which they leech and are attached to surface only as a consequence of airy pressure towards the object onto which they move and they can climb up on mirror surface, marble desks and the likes as well as they can run very briskly away from them as on the flat ground.
