Art and Space
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An ongoing feature within A Submersible, Art and Space explores spatial engagements and contexts within contemporary art. |
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Michael E. Smith at Modern Art, London
Response by Nick Balmforth |
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A spartan installation of sculptural works constitutes Michael E. Smith’s solo show at Modern Art’s Vyner Street space. The way the assemblages are constructed is inscrutable but also speaks of a blunt and calculated intentionality. The atmosphere is conspiratorial and imbued with the clinical coldness of a morgue. Sitting on the ground floor is a pair of upturned kayaks. The space is large yet one of the two is edged closely against the wall. This creates a tension between the way the pieces occupy the space and the kinds of spatial use the gallery seems designed to accommodate harmoniously. The surfaces of these works look cracked and ingrained with dirt, stained here and there with yellowish browns, suggestive of neglect and gradual decline. |
Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Modern Art, Vyner Street, London, 1 October - 14 December 2019. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2019, detail. Photo: Ben Westoby. © the artist. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
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The sense of spatial tension and material depletion is perpetuated throughout the show. The exhibition also features two worn out-doors. With their paint chipped surfaces and circular voids where handles would have been, they also feel redundant and emaciated. Transplanted into the gallery, they sit uneasily. One of these works is attached to the gallery desk at a raised height. It refuses to cooperate in the way in which an ornament like a vase might. If the piece were larger it could perhaps create a formal equivalence or partnership with the desk based on scale. Instead it makes itself known via interruption, partially cutting the line of sight between the exhibition space and the area where gallery staff are seated. The desk’s length and the way the door is positioned so incongruously mean the door looks lost. It is hostile towards its surroundings, but the outcome feels only aimless and discontented. Reaching the first floor, visitors encounter the second of these door-works. This one is positioned to partially obstruct a closed door leading to an area of the gallery that is not part of the exhibition. There is an absurdity to the gesture of using what was a door to disrupt a perfectly functional door. Also, the blocking isn’t even complete. Instead of a sense of resolution that a total blocking would provide, the piece just calls to mind the way a body would have to awkwardly twist to pass through. Like the door on the ground floor, this work also seems out of place and dissatisfied. With their disruptive and uneasy qualities, these pieces refuse to be ignored. But when they seize attention, all they offer is a morose antagonism.
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Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2019, door, 196.5 x 76.5 x 3.5 cm, 77 3/8 x 30 1/8 x 1 3/8 ins. Photo: Ben Westoby. © the artist. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Modern Art, Vyner Street, London, 1 October - 14 December 2019. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
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Elsewhere on the first floor, we find more of Smith’s characteristically stark and unnerving sculptural forms. Their restricted spatial footprint means the rest of the floor space is left empty. Leaving so much space unused as Smith does on both floors, the installation appears as an ungrateful guest, scorning the gallery’s hospitality. The gesture of leaving swathes of pristine, elegantly constructed and highly expensive gallery space vacant feels theatrical and decadent, adding to the dynamism created by the exhibition’s various spatial antagonisms. The pieces on the first floor also employ materials which speak of exhaustion. Many of the elements are pallid, their surfaces dirty, scratched and strained. Taxidermy and bones further add to the deathly atmosphere. The combination of such organic matter with cheap synthetic elements like bedding and furniture speaks of an absolute spiritual exhaustion, with no inclination left to respect the remains of the dead. This sense of depletion extends to the show’s muted lighting; not refreshingly light or not dramatically dark, the space is just weakly lit.
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Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2019, cement, basketballs, bedding, steel rod, 105 x 48 x 38 cm, 41 3/8 x 18 7/8 x 15 ins. Photo: Ben Westoby. © the artist. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Modern Art, Vyner Street, London, 1 October - 14 December 2019. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Modern Art, Vyner Street, London, 1 October - 14 December 2019. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
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Given the way that architecture is tightly bound up with the exertion of power over its users, Smith’s anti-architectural gestures have a liberating quality, suggesting an impulse to refuse and move beyond current states. However, this quality of the show sits in tension with many of the exhibition’s other aspects. The show’s challenge towards the gallery’s architectural authority has a disconcerting dimension, architecture being both a material and symbolic bedrock. Also, the liberatory aspects are encountered amid an air of aimlessness and dejection. This mood is created by Smith’s sculptural hostilities toward the space, and by the feeling of depletion that the impoverished material qualities of the works evoke. These tensions contribute towards a sense of restlessness. The show is suggestive of perpetual agitation, a nervous compulsion to repeatedly fidget while in a state of inner tension. The show is also restless in a distinctly ghostly way. This partly because of Smith’s extreme formal economy which still manages to create a heavy, foreboding atmosphere. This potency is suggestive of the uncontained. It evokes the ability of things to stretch out beyond themselves and to contaminate at a distance, calling to mind insidious and invisible forces. The exhibition’s ghostly agitation is further intensified by the way that what is living and what is dead are drawn into a taut and unresolved dialogue. On the one hand Smith’s drained and static pieces evoke lifelessness. However, the works are also energetic in various ways. This includes the way that the art-site relations feel fraught with tension. Also, the forms are so harshly minimal as to be dynamically theatrical. Smith’s works are also seemingly inscribed with traces from their previous lives, evoking hidden and deteriorative activity. The result is an ambivalent and unsettled exhibition where lingering deathliness is met with an enigmatic and spectral vitality.
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Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2019, backpack, catfish, 80 x 34 x 20 cm, 31 1/2 x 13 3/8 x 7 7/8 ins. Photo: Ben Westoby. © the artist. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London
Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2019, hands, popcorn, wire, 22 x 28 x 3 cm, 8 5/8 x 11 1/8 x 1 1/8 ins. Photo: Ben Westoby. © the artist. Courtesy the artist & Modern Art, London