Heaven
October 27 –
March 30 2013
Scrap Metal Gallery
Note: This is my last blog from Toronto, I’m back from
travelling now and I’ll be posting London shows by the end of the week.
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| Approaching Scrap Metal |
I’m starting
to think that some majority of cool contemporary art is to be found in the most
unassuming of back alleyways. This also probably accounts for the delight I
feel when discovering world-class work in a back enclosure a few streets off of
definitely-not-in-the-least-bit-swank Lansdowne Avenue in Toronto.
I’m speaking
of Scrap Metal, the art foundation set up to show work from the collection of Samara Walbohm and Joe Shlesinger. The exhibition on
now is entitled Heaven and it’s an immersive
installation by the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka. The last time I saw an
installation by Balka was in 2010 at the Tate Modern, and in my head,
I’m quietly reeling (Tate Britain to tiny alleyway in Toronto!) The scope and
scale are tremendously different of course, but all this makes me excited for
what’s happening in Canada.
Heaven is
composed of 68 lengths of twisted Perspex coated with a colour-tinted
reflective coating. They have been suspended at various heights throughout the
space, in an orderly but rather ad hoc way, with simple pieces of fishing line
holding each in place.
The rods are quiet and glistening and
startlingly elegant. As I step into the space I notice that the minute air
currents generated by my movement have started the plastic hypnotically
twisting, the effect of which is either beautiful and dazzling, or borderline
cheesy holiday mall decoration.
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| Caught in the reflection |
Stepping nearer to one of the pieces, I notice that my now golden reflection has been strangely rotated 90 degrees. I have the impression of constant small movements and sparkles of light throughout the space, and the Perspex strands starts to feel vaguely disorienting as the optical illusion of each twist gives the impression of corkscrew rising and falling to a silent rhythm.
The nature of this feeling evoked by
the movement and the glitter and the way the work fills the space is rather unobtrusive
and non-specific. I imagine it would be very easy to spend time with this work,
and bask in its small, measured movements and dream-like atmosphere. I thought
of party streamers, giant icicle decorations, wind chimes and all sorts of benign
and pretty things. This is not the usual territory of Balka though, and sure
enough there is a twist in the story, which comes in the form of the
explanation.
This ‘heavenly’ work is actually
composed of 68 rods which ‘suggests the difference in years from when the
Nazi’s introduced the “final solution” for European Jews to when Balka created
this work’.
Oh my. How does one assimilate such a
piece of information? The installation goes from a rather gentle aesthetic
experience to one tinged with uncertainty and apprehension. And I think the
real heart of the work is in this sudden switch, this overturning of initial
impressions through knowledge, where perception is (literally) turned on its side.
What one once saw as a peaceful place
becomes filled with dread and immediately there arises a powerful sense of
guilt. You were ignorant, you did not know, you did not realize, you were
charmed by the simple beauty, and you were even playing amongst this memorial
to death and destruction…where is your humanity?
I’m remembering now some key bits of
information from Balka’s biography. He is only in his mid-fifties, not even alive
when the holocaust happened, and many years shy of this grim anniversary, as well as being non-Jewish, however his entire body of work is heavily immersed in the history of
his place of birth. There is constant reference to the savage destruction and
painful memories of a past that was not ‘his’ but is inescapably his.
The world moves on from even the most
painful things, it is just the way it goes. But in Balka’s work you get
the sense that the residues of the past, and the stories that our ancestors
tell us, persist - across generations and far beyond their origin. I find myself
thinking ‘if only this were a thing whose beauty could just be enjoyed’. But it
is not so simple, and as a viewer I suspect that the artist wants us to feel
how, for him, ‘heaven’ has become impossible. Under the weight of guilt even
the most beautiful things are crushed.
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