This environment is a late work by Joseph Beuys, conceived in 1985 for the Anthony D' Offay gallery in London. The presentation here exactly reproduces the original installation. Plight refers to a precise event: to dampen the sounds of building work next door, Beuys has promised the gallerist a work that opposed silence to sound. The installation consists of two spaces lined with thick rolls of felt. Once inside, the visitor experiences a sense of warmth and an ambivalent sense of isolation or insulation, of being both protected and cut off from the world. In Absorbing sound the felt renders even more incongruous the presence of a silent grand piano, on which lies a blackboard and a thermometer. The ambivalence and complexity of the work are reflected in its very title, which evokes, ideas of danger and constraint, and also obligation, and with it promise.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Joseph Beuys
Plight, 1985, (Gallery viewing Centre pompidou, Paris)
This environment is a late work by Joseph Beuys, conceived in 1985 for the Anthony D' Offay gallery in London. The presentation here exactly reproduces the original installation. Plight refers to a precise event: to dampen the sounds of building work next door, Beuys has promised the gallerist a work that opposed silence to sound. The installation consists of two spaces lined with thick rolls of felt. Once inside, the visitor experiences a sense of warmth and an ambivalent sense of isolation or insulation, of being both protected and cut off from the world. In Absorbing sound the felt renders even more incongruous the presence of a silent grand piano, on which lies a blackboard and a thermometer. The ambivalence and complexity of the work are reflected in its very title, which evokes, ideas of danger and constraint, and also obligation, and with it promise.
This environment is a late work by Joseph Beuys, conceived in 1985 for the Anthony D' Offay gallery in London. The presentation here exactly reproduces the original installation. Plight refers to a precise event: to dampen the sounds of building work next door, Beuys has promised the gallerist a work that opposed silence to sound. The installation consists of two spaces lined with thick rolls of felt. Once inside, the visitor experiences a sense of warmth and an ambivalent sense of isolation or insulation, of being both protected and cut off from the world. In Absorbing sound the felt renders even more incongruous the presence of a silent grand piano, on which lies a blackboard and a thermometer. The ambivalence and complexity of the work are reflected in its very title, which evokes, ideas of danger and constraint, and also obligation, and with it promise.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment