Aspirin, morning milk and other mysteries
FULL HOUSE - The Kouri Collection and American Minimalist Adventures presents artworks from the giants of Minimalism. It illustrates the influences of the restrained and austere aesthetics and industrial materials of the 1960s on the surprising and everyday art of the subsequent generations of artists. Minimalism or the trends in Contemporary Art it inspired are not coherent movements.
Chief Curator Arja Miller tells how light, aspirin and milk transformed into works of art for a major exhibition at Kiasma.
WORK OF ART AS A LICENCE
Many of the works loaned from the Guggenheim museum in New York for the FULL HOUSE exhibition represent contemporary art in which the physical work of art has been replaced by the idea for a work. This idea then travels in the form of instructions and other documents from the artist. The borrower of the work, as it were, receives a licence to realize the work according to the instructions provided. It is the responsi-bility of the lender to ensure that the instructions are followed to the letter.
Questions and installation plans have flown endlessly from Kiasma to the other side of the Atlantic. And not just in the form of e-mails. Four litres of Kiasma’s wall paint were sent to Guggenheim museum’s conservators for Ricci Albenda’sPortal to another dimension so that the work could be embedded in the right kind of panel.
Koo Jeong-A’sOslo is a miniature mountain landscape, like a small Nordic scene bathing in bluish light. The artist works diligently, creating still lifes that contain the appearance of permanence and solidity from inconsequential, fragile and breakable materials. A sur-prising perspective to this picturesque atmosphere is offered by the fact that the cone-shaped mountains have been moulded from aspirin, the most commonly used medicine in the world. For the work, we received written instructions on the size of the base plate, lighting and the quality of the aspirin powder. We could not use ready-made aspirin powder because its consistency was too fine. So, we broke the aspirin tablets ourselves with an electronic coffee-mill.
THE POWER OF LIGHT
If Koo Jeong-a’s mountain range were not bathed in blue light, the work would not appear anywhere near as fairytale-like. Skilled use of light creates the mood of the work and the exhibition has many works in which light plays a major role. James Turrell’sShanta Pink has been created entirely by using just light. Basically, bright light is projected from a certain angle to the corner of the room. From afar it looks as if a bright pink cube was hovering in the corner. You want to see the light cube from closer up but this causes the illusion to disappear. The three-dimensionality was a trick of the light.
Even though the idea behind Shanta Pink sounds simple, it is a complex piece and its realisation took an enormous amount of work. A new room had to be built inside the exhibition space. James Turrell’s assistant also participated in the realisation of Shanta by inspecting the installation drawings and by installing the projector in Kiasma.
Aside from all the technical challenges and pressures that light presents, it’s good to remember that it also has a spiritual dimension. Turrell says his projected works are ”holes in reality” and reminds us that our relationship to light is instinctual. We turn our eyes to the light almost without thinking; when we stare at fire, we drift off in wordless contemplation.
BLUE TARPAULIN
Olafur Eliasson’s art is also linked with immaterial minimalism. The materials of his work Your inverted veto displayed in the exhibition are yellow and white light, and a wall made of tarpaulin in the exhibition space. Guggenheim sent us a stack of hand-written instructions and drawings. More instructions were received from the artist’s studio as well as an approval of the plans. The technicians and the exhibition architect struggled with details relating to the work. The tarpaulin had to be the right thickness and colour. Moreover, they had to decide where the work could be built, how the tarpaulin should be hung and where the entrance hole would be cut, and how the lights should be installed. The end result is surprising. Eliasson’s work is like a laboratory, where anyone can study the reality created by light and their own perceptions.
WHOLE MILKS
The display of the works in the Kouri Collection also required special measures of their own. For example, the Kiasma conservators had to study what kind of milk produced enough surface tension for Wolfgang Laib’sMilkstone.
The museum guards take care of the maintenance of the work during the exhibition. In the mornings, the milk is poured slowly over the stone and in the evening it is washed away. The daily ritual is repeated the same way until the end of the exhibition. Somehow, how-ever, the white stone and the even whiter milk on it manage to emanate peace and permanence.
Arja Miller
