Monday, December 19, 2005
The Brown Envelope from P.
Today I received mail from an old friend in London. It came in a brown envelope, and was filled with a series of postcards, as well as pamphlets for two shows at Turbine Hall at the Tate - Rachel Whiteread's Embankment and Bruce Nauman's Raw Materials
Included was a beautiful card in a gilded envelope. I like the card very much, but I like the envelope especially - it sits beside me now. It is gold all over, a rich russet gold. And there is a poem on the back of the card, an extract from Serenade by Oscar Wilde:
The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark Aegean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! The purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!
Amongst these delights was also a very good photo of Embankment. Now this installation by Rachel Whiteread consists of thousands of reconstructed common cardboard boxes in translucent polyethylene. In her photograph, my friend managed to capture the whiteness of the boxes, and for some strange reason, every viewer wandering in the installation at that moment is dressed in black. A reflection upon London fashion in winter? Perhaps. Whatever it is, these figures in black complete her work, and I believe Embankment should never be photographed without at least a few people in dark clothes milling about.
Quite a few people have thought that I like Rachel Whiteread's work, and I suppose I can see why. But the truth is I am undecided. On the one hand, I love a good cast, and that is what her work is all about - taking perfect casts of monumental things. She made one of the interior of a library that I am particularly attached to. However, it seems austere to me, severe, too serious even. And something fundamental in me resists against the monumental, the all-in-one grand statement. I like works that hint at poetic games and puzzles. A kind of system invention that has idiosyncratic rules! I also like works that take other works as starting points, hence I am a great admirer of Elizabeth Presa who uses a good deal of Derrida's text in her sculpture. Then there is Paul Auster, whose novels and prose are like a noir game or murder mystery without a solution.
I would consider Marcel Duchamp a mentor, a kindred spirit and all-round mischief maker. One day in the future when I am ready, I will make a series that is to be like a conversation with him. In my own work, I believe the idea of the game or toy will continue, but I hope they grow more mature, that the puzzles become both simpler and more sophisticated. Once the year is out and I begin working in earnest on the Australian Embassy show (opening April 2006), I look forward to constructing a series of text-filled kaleidoscopes.
My dear P., thank you for sending me all this stuff. As you can see it led to all kinds of thoughtful meanderings.
Included was a beautiful card in a gilded envelope. I like the card very much, but I like the envelope especially - it sits beside me now. It is gold all over, a rich russet gold. And there is a poem on the back of the card, an extract from Serenade by Oscar Wilde:
The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark Aegean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! The purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!
Amongst these delights was also a very good photo of Embankment. Now this installation by Rachel Whiteread consists of thousands of reconstructed common cardboard boxes in translucent polyethylene. In her photograph, my friend managed to capture the whiteness of the boxes, and for some strange reason, every viewer wandering in the installation at that moment is dressed in black. A reflection upon London fashion in winter? Perhaps. Whatever it is, these figures in black complete her work, and I believe Embankment should never be photographed without at least a few people in dark clothes milling about.
Quite a few people have thought that I like Rachel Whiteread's work, and I suppose I can see why. But the truth is I am undecided. On the one hand, I love a good cast, and that is what her work is all about - taking perfect casts of monumental things. She made one of the interior of a library that I am particularly attached to. However, it seems austere to me, severe, too serious even. And something fundamental in me resists against the monumental, the all-in-one grand statement. I like works that hint at poetic games and puzzles. A kind of system invention that has idiosyncratic rules! I also like works that take other works as starting points, hence I am a great admirer of Elizabeth Presa who uses a good deal of Derrida's text in her sculpture. Then there is Paul Auster, whose novels and prose are like a noir game or murder mystery without a solution.
I would consider Marcel Duchamp a mentor, a kindred spirit and all-round mischief maker. One day in the future when I am ready, I will make a series that is to be like a conversation with him. In my own work, I believe the idea of the game or toy will continue, but I hope they grow more mature, that the puzzles become both simpler and more sophisticated. Once the year is out and I begin working in earnest on the Australian Embassy show (opening April 2006), I look forward to constructing a series of text-filled kaleidoscopes.
My dear P., thank you for sending me all this stuff. As you can see it led to all kinds of thoughtful meanderings.
Labels: friends
¶ 3:38 PM
