The gallery’s initial infrastructure is extended:
A wall, a stage.
6 bells ringing in a looped zigzag, aleatoricly activated by a series of relays.
Wires spanning up an incomplete architecture and as an optical device blurring their surroundings, when being focused on them.
Iodine, an anti-septic, is distributed in a multitude of ways: humidified into the air, pumped on to different levels, coating vinyl foils.
Stage trimmings covered in concrete, iodine, pinot noir and resin, installed like teeth.
These extensions function as borders organising the visitor and his movement within the exhibition and disconnecting him from the organism he is inhabiting.
But then the carpet that is laid out uniforms everything, the original, the temporary.
The Swiss artist Tobias Madison (born in Basel in 1985, lives and works in Basel and Zurich) belongs to a generation of young artists who frequently open up the isolated process of artistic creation through the adoption of cooperative or collective strategies, and often assume the role of the curator, client and originator in the process. The roles that Madison adopts are as wide-ranging as the media in which he works: these include sculpture, video, projection, computer-generated and assisted painting, audio pieces, texts, photographs and scans. His works, which are processual in nature, are full of references and descriptions of found symbols and break through the boundaries and categorisations of the art system with playful ease.
For his exhibition at The Modern Institute Madison has invited collaborators Emanuel Rossetti and Stefan Tcherepnin to create a show entitled ‘Life & the Invitation& Vapour in Debri&’, which moves across these different fields. The artists have transformed the gallery into a series of loose components that begin with an imaginary second architecture in the space. Wires connect different parts of the room that at once are transparent and barely existing, but at the same time clearly define paths that the visitor can take within the exhibition. Flesh coloured cord carpet acts as a second skin to the walls and a base for the objects within the space. Reclaimed painted hoardings from ghost train cover the facade of the gallery and create a new entrance that leads to the stage where vapour and the debris will perform. Once inside the space a series of programmed bells are modelled after Atsuko Tanakas bell work from 1954. They ring in a certain order and to a specific time plan that again suggest another space, structure and architecture.
Madison, Rossetti and Tcherepnin’s artistic approach involving the occupation, redefinition and operation of spaces can be explained through past and ongoing projects including the ‘Drip Event’ at The Power Station in Dallas. Through these projects the artists open out the idea of an exhibition and explore the question of how feedback from external practises can be spatially represented.
As part of the exhibition, the band Solar Lice (Jeanne Graff, Tobias Madison, Flavio Merlo, Emanuel Rossetti, Gregory Ruppe, William Z. Saunders & Stefan Tcherepnin) performed their recent LP on Saturday 5 April, as part of the opening evening. This concert was the first part of a UK tour before Solar Lice perform at Hepworth Wakefield on 17 April 2014.
