November 11 - December 09, 2004

Scott Wallis | Magazine | review

This three part installation, Magazine, began life as a machine. Several years ago I happened upon a vintage „Airequip" slide projector, a clumsy piece of equipment made obsolete long ago by the Kodak Carousel. Provided with it were twelve empty magazines, pressed metal boxes designed to load the projector and store the slides. They kicked around the studio, like so many other useless things, for several years, until they began to emerge as a readymade conceptual device, the origins of this serial installation.

Into each of the magazines 36 slots I have inserted a symmetrically painted two colour card. A rudimentary system was used to ensure that the colours and their pairings were distributed evenly; nine colours, paired once with each other, made 36 sets. The printed index on the side of the magazine, originally provided to identify the subject of each image, I have used to simply name the colours used in the corresponding slots.

The two painting series that spun out of the magazines are painted on transparent film and mounted with springs on screws 3/4" out from the wall. Using the same proportions, they model in light and shade the colour sequences established in the magazines. Suspended in shallow space, their respective colour bands and squares are stripped of an obvious ground, are pushed out into the viewers‚ space and are allowed to float with an enhanced saturation. Mounted in a regular spacing horizontally down the wall, the twelve pieces in each series have no real focal point. In attempting to track their variations and trace the various colour sets, the hypnotic effect of a minimal musical tempo is evoked

The three series that make up the installation strive to bracket out the clutter of subjectivity. To paraphrase Sol Lewtt, a machine generated the idea that became the machine that made the art. Magazine attempts to decelerate the panicky speed of contemporary visual culture, and provide a momentary meditative clearing.