Modus: Pause Ambient 4

TEXT ACOMPANYING EXHIBITION

Ambient No. 4

From the entrance, the gallery is filled from floor to ceiling by a gigantic white ‘light’ cube. The cube is made of long sheets of tracing paper hung vertically side by sideand secured to the floor and ceiling with long aluminium L-profiles. It is possible to walk around the cube by the walls of the gallery. The side of the cube along the back wall of the gallery is left out and reveals a gap – an empty space in the filled gallery. In this way we have a situation of two open cube shaped spaces opposed and nested into each other creating an illusion of a new, third, closed space (the back wall of the gallery optically and experientially replaces the missing tracing paper wall). 

The tracing paper walls parallelly follow the rectangular neon lights on the ceiling creating a tense space of captured light under articfical light, while druing the day under natural light (which enters through the windows along the left wall of the gallery) a serene interplay of penetrating light and shadow takes place. As an architectural element, the tracing paper wall has the function of a taught, full, white wall – partition. As a material, tracing paper denies this function (tracing paper is also a transparent, flimsy, rustling, fine membrane, which lets light through and refracts it, moves when a person passes through the gallery, and records the changes in space, colour, movement and sound.)

By inviting the observer to actively participate in the exploration of space, colour and sound, the ambient questions the serenity and monumentality of this ‘temple’ of light, emptiness, stillness and silence. The viewer is captivated in a position of anticipation three times: at the entrance, in the corridors and within the space of the cube. The sense of being imprisoned in a labyrinth of white is shattered by vertical fissures in the walls of tracing paper which reveal a glimpse through and into the cube as well as an overview of the entire space, allowing the viewer liberated movement. The passage of the viewer animates the long sheets of tracing paper and the tone of white turns into the sound of the walls.

The work is an investigation of the permanence of emptiness (spatial, temporal, spiritual and emotional), i.e. a curiosity at the paradox of pause as a moment of arrested time. In this sense, the tracing paper cube is a pause (break) in the continuity of the gallery space, as well as the continuity of light (both artificial and natural). The tracing paper walls are broken by ‘cracks’ – pauses, and walking through the corridors between the nested spaces animates the tracing paper walls breaking/pausing the silence with sound.

Barbara Vasic
Original in Serbian, published in Projekat magazine, Novi Sad, 1996