The massive void – the abundant nothingness

Naja Rasmussen and Birgitte Ørom Curators, Esbjerg Art Museum  Oversættelse: Karsten Gramkow

The title of Troels Sandegård’s solo exhibition at Esbjerg Art Museum is both poetic and paradoxical. It challenges our understanding and imagination even before the exhibition experience. Can a void be filled with abundance? Can nothingness contain something massive? The words meet as strong contrasts, a classical oxymoron, in which the latent antagonism in itself is image-creating.

Experiencing a massive void is often connected to the loss of a person who was important, and whose lack of presence can characterized as an extremely present absence. Or – it may be perceived as a time characterized by the kind of great loneliness that follows a period of high intensity. Both examples are notions tied to emotions. In Troels Sandegård’s exhibition, something far more unsentimental, factual, and scientific is at play. His unique artistic work unites, much in the same paradoxical and image-creative way as the exhibition title, two areas of knowledge that are normally sharply separated, natural science and pictorial art. Thus Sandegård navigates both as a natural scientist and as a pictorial artist, much in the same way as his studio is also his laboratory.

The pivot of Sandegård’s concrete and yet abstract investigations is the exhibition room itself and our presence in it. He unfolds process and time simultaneously, both the time of space, the time of the work, and our conception of time.

Also to a classical performance work, or to a minimalist work of art, the concepts of time, space, and the spectator, i.e., the entire situation around the perception of the work of art, are the pivotal points. Michael Fried, the American art historian and critic, criticised the art practises of the 1960s – mainly Minimalism – when he, in 1967, wrote his influential article ‘Art and Objecthood’1. In the article, Fried delivers not only an acrid critique of new art and its, in his view, lenience towards the concept of autonomy. He also delivers a characterization of the theatricality and artificiality of the neo-avantgarde so extremely accurate that the article became trend-setting for the young ‘theatrical’ artists, and for their critics alike2. It now became possible to activate the authenticity of art, which prior to the historical avantgarde and later the neo-avantgarde was

1 Fried, Michael: ’Art and Objecthood’, in: Artforum, New York, summer edition (1967)
2 The historical avantgarde, represented in particular by the French artist Marcel Duchamp’s dadaistic and anti- institutional readymade, can be seen as an example of staged, artificial, performative art.

inextricably connected to autonomy and truth, through the theatricality and artificiality of art – its character of ‘objecthoood’.3

Likewise, a contemporary work of art can be characterized as theatrical, since it often in a direct way accentuates its own construction, structure or artificiality. This makes the reception and perception of the work decisive elements in the work’s production of meaning. This is true of the works in The Massive Void. They share the fact that they emerge because of our presence. Space, time and presence are basic elements that are mutually dependent in the exhibition. The room becomes an investigation into sensing and experiencing and into how our presence in the room subtly changes it with time. As is the case with Troels Sandegård’s production in general, this relational participation is not openly visible. Nevertheless, the tight concepts are visual delineations of the invisible exchange and relation between work and spectator.

This essay uses as its starting point the paradox of the basic forms of the works and zooms in on their reception aesthetic production of meaning. Thus, such a phenomenological reading of the relations between work, space and spectator begins with the sensuous experience and the direct perception of The Massive Void and in particular the work Exposed Greenhouse.

A CHANGEABLE SNAPSHOT

- Exposed Greenhouse

When you step into the exhibition space, you immediately become more attentive. The four art works in the exhibition have been carefully placed in the big (210 sq.m.) room, with walls that, with the exception of one, are white and naked, like a sterile laboratory. The works appear simple, displaying a strict finish underlined by the minimalist aesthetics. The expression of the works is so scarce that you unavoidably become aware of your own presence in the room.

The first thing to attract your attention is a greenhouse, connected to the ventilation system of the room – all a natural part of the existing piping in the room. Nothing grows inside the greenhouse, as could be expected, but on the glass grows beautiful formations and strange pictures, all made of mould. For the work Exposed Greenhouse, Troels Sandegård has collected fungus spores from the air and given them the best possible growth conditions on the glass surfaces of the greenhouse by applying to the surfaces fluid agar, a growth medium used by biologists for the growing of microorganisms. Before and during the exhibition period, selected glass plates were exposed to the atmosphere of the exhibition space, for the fungus spores from the air to attach onto

3 Fried, Michael: ’Art and Objecthood’, in: Artforum, New York, summer edition (1967)

the agar. Afterwards the glass plates were sealed and reinstalled in the greenhouse. During the exhibition, the work changed continuously due to the growth of the microorganisms. Soft, furry spores of mould fungi appeared in clearly defined circular formations, displaying many shades of green, white, and yellow, - even pink.

The result is mould ‘flowers’ side by side; they yield to each other without ever growing together; instead they slowly fill the sheets of glass with peculiar and beautiful pictures. As the sheets of glass are started and exposed to air at different times, the growth and the continuous creation and construction of the work – its shutter speed – appears subtly, but clearly. On the glass surfaces emerge cultivated and changeable snapshots of the air of the room, - a mapping of the spores bearing witness to our presence in this very room. Suddenly the air becomes visual and tangible, and in a sense time has materialized. As was the case in the oxymoron of the exhibition title, Sandegård makes possible what was impossible by combining something fixed with something changeable. In the same irrational manner, the repulsive joins the seductive. Under normal circumstances we connect mould with taintedness, with something gone bad and repulsive. In Sandegård’s work, however, our curiosity is triggered, and in a paradoxical way, we experience repulsive as beautiful. We see it as something which it is generally not, and Exposed Greenhouse therefore challenges the way in which we habitually experience our surroundings.

Our attention is directed towards the air, which we normally take for granted and only rarely think about. The work questions the traces we leave in the air through our mere presence; whether we all share and breathe the same air, or whether the air is in possession of certain characteristics, depending on where you happen to be. At a superior level, the work may pose the question of whether air is a link between us, or whether it may be nationally or geographically determined. Thus the work generously extends our experiences at several levels.

A SENSUOUS ABSENCE
- Extended Mirror (ghost) 02, Retrospective Pattern and Auditory Echo
Time, space, and presence are mutually dependent in the same way, and they are crucial in the other works of the exhibition. The work Extended Mirror (ghost) 02 involves us directly and in a way which makes us aware of our presence, as the work emerges immediately as a result of our respiration and reflection.

The work consists of a cube made of dark mahogany with spy mirrors on all four sides, and a hidden refrigeration device. The cube most of all resembles an exhibition or shop

showcase, but there are no real or concrete contents. The contents and significance of the work emerge solely from our presence and attentiveness. The mirror image of the spectator (or rather, the participant) does not look the way it normally does – instead it is transformed through the work and becomes a pale and hazy silhouette behind a veil of dew. Occasionally a drop of condensated dew cuts a clear line through the picture, which then quickly changes. The dew is the result of the meeting between the cool interior of the work and our breath, our body warmth, and the humidity of the air in the room. Through this meeting, changing pictures are created; pictures that depend on our presence and sharpen our perception of our bodies in the room. We look back on ourselves, seeing ghost-like or foggy apparitions that alternate between being clearly visible and blurred. In this sense we are absent and imperceptibly co-creative – at the same time. The work changes according to the weather conditions and humidity of the air in the room, and according to whether more people enter the room, or it is left empty. Extended Mirror (ghost) 02 is, in this respect, a polysemantic depiction and appearance of both the physical presence of the participant, her breath and body heat, and of the atmosphere in the exhibition space.

The works Exposed Greenhouse and Extended Mirror (ghost) 02 primarily visualize air as a phenomenon and our presence in the room; instead the investigation object Retrospective Pattern is time and, in particular the time of the room which is important. On the back wall of the exhibition hall emerges a pattern of 1 meter square, in different colours. The work is a neat uncovering of the previous colours of the wall, revealing what the wall looked like during earlier exhibition projects4. Moving through the present white colour to e.g. green, yellow, and black, and at the back, raw concrete from the building of the museum, we zoom into the history of the actual room. This retrospective grasp focuses on the time that is no longer here, on previous times. This is a colour-based concretization of the history of the exhibition space, rendering visible and perceptualizing the phenomenon of time. This visualization offers a peek into the memory and experience of the space, as an echo of presence by virtue of those activities and actions that took place in the room and which therefore contribute to the characterization of the room as it is now. Suddenly you direct your thoughts towards the question of how history may be made visible, or whether the existence of something or someone ceases only when we can no longer see it.

While Retrospective Patterns makes the past visible, Auditory Echo makes it hearable. Auditory Echo consists of a sound proof room, in which there is a playback of sounds recorded in the exhibition space with sensitive recording equipment. The recordings are registered in intervals

4 Made by the conservator Filiz Kuvvetli, Fælleskonservering Vest, Århus.

of seven minutes, and sampled in layers until a certain decibel level is reached, then the recording starts over. In this way the sounds are detached from the situations which created them, and the sounds of a few minutes ago mix with sounds that are several days old. Excerpts from conversations and the sound of footsteps are united with the silence of the space as well as with other real sounds. This results in a sound memory, a reverberation. The work creates a frame for a (re)experience of something which you may or may not have noticed earlier, in the exhibition space. Occasionally the original sound of the space appears – the sound of the space in itself. Auditory Echo may be viewed as an extension of the ideas the composer and music theoretician John Cage had on the creation of a higher degree of sensibility towards everyday sounds. In 1952 Cage staged his work 4’33, a concert of a duration of 4 minutes 33 seconds, with complete orchestra, but without a single note being played. With 4’33 Cage sought to make the audience aware of the sounds of the space and the environment surrounding them – on the perception of the noisy silence of the orchestra. In a similarly elegant way, Sandegård’s unification of silence and sound in Auditory Echo not only demonstrates the sound of silence, but also that the massive void is never empty; it already bears evidence of traces of presence and attendance.

The performance of John Cage is an example of how the work of art in the 20. Century has changed its overall character from being autonomous and given to becoming dependent on the surroundings and, especially so, on the spectator taking part in the work. The autonomy of art is less important as an indicator of quality and this is partly a result of the neo-avantgarde’s representation of the (self-) staging, artificiality and processual character of art.

The theatricality of art, this decisive relationship between work and spectator, activates Sandegård’s exhibition in the subtlest of ways. As a result of his laboratory-like and processual way of working, the art works themselves clarify their construction and process, in spite of their high degree of finish. We ourselves are imperceptibly co-creators through our presence in the exhibition space, and at the same time we, in an understated manner, are made aware of our participation in the works. They all possess something concrete and basic, but they nevertheless also contain abstract and intangible dimensions. The works move our attention from that we think we know to that which is normally disregarded or invisible to the naked eye.

The Massive Void may be seen in the light of The Void,5 the ground-breaking exhibition by the concept and performance artist Yves Klein. The Void consisted merely of a white gallery space, an empty showcase and a blue curtain in front of the entrance door. A room

55 At Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 28. April to 12. May, 1958.

practically empty, a minimal work which drew the attention of the audience towards their own presence in a continued exchange of presence, absence, and creation. Klein’s work was a testimony to nothingness being what contains life in its entirety. Suspended between the physical and the spiritual, The Void clearly and purely presented nothingness in its entirety.

In much the same way Troels Sandegård reveals the already extant. Like a natural scientist he concretizes abstract phenomena and makes them comprehensible. He creates pictures out of what is seemingly absent, but really present. Thus, the absent suddenly becomes very present. Sandegård shows how the void is never empty, and how we are always already present. The void is perceived, neither as a predefined mass or as an empty space waiting to be filled. Intelligently, ‘nothing’ and ‘nothingness’ acquires a form; what is invisible becomes visible, what is intangible becomes tangible. In this way incompatible units are joined together and the spectator becomes a condition for and an active participant in the work of art in the massive void.

Naja Rasmussen and Birgitte Ørom Curators, Esbjerg Art Museum

The exhibition took place from February 13 to April 25, 2010