A 3-dimensional cube nearly a meter squared stands alone in the darkened gallery. Smudge marks appear on the blackened surface of the cube, indicating the presence
of two people, a man and woman, naked and slowly moving around inside. As their bodies rub against
the soot covered interior walls of the cube, the dark powder transfers to their skin, so that while the cube
itself is slowly wiped clean, the moving bodies inside become veiled and harder to see.
The implied activity inside the cube invites comparison to the story of genesis, birth, and to questions of
physical and existential freedom. Simultaneously, the gestural material-play dominating the projected
planes of the cube opens a discourse on the role of surface in Sarkisian’s art form. The projected video
relates to the illusion of pictorial space in a painting: just as with a painting, the viewer perceives depth
with the knowledge that the depth is merely an illusion. As the figures wipe the carbon-like soot from the surface of the cube, abstract color fields of black, yellow and orange slowly transform through an
expressionistic manipulation of pigment. Yet rather than moving from abstraction to clarity, the figures
obscure themselves, and the walls of the cube continue to ebb between worlds of materiality, impliedspace, and figure-ground relationships
No comments:
Post a Comment