While I walked...

At the time of this entry there is an exhibition on at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit going by the title “LifeStories”. This exhibition, curated by Luis Croquer presents multiple international artists who are dealing with issues revolving around personal history. The presentations are unorthodox in their presentation of the topic, creating some interesting takes on the subject. The piece that I felt was the most successful in the show is a piece by Jan Mancuska, an artist who at present lives and works in Prague and Berlin. His work is a black piece of textile rubber-band with white silk screened words on it. If I had to guess, the room the piece is house in is roughly 10ft x 15ft, with the band stretching from wall to wall creating almost an almost geometric wireframe.

The piece, “While I walked..In my studio in ISCP, 323 W 39th Street #811, New York, 2003” (hereto fore referred to as “While I walked”) reminds me very much of Judy Pfaff’s piece, “the Italians”. The strongest reason being the way in which the art fills theie space. Neither pieces take up much physical space, but because of the way in which they are situated and suspended they fill a room. Also the interactions the pieces have with the walls are very similar, none of the pieces seem to require the walls for structure, even those that are affixed to it. They have an airiness about them. Another similarity, and  probably the most apparent similarity is the pieces physical form, both pieces are composed of straight lines that create a geometric form.


Silk screened onto the suspended tape of “While I walked” is a long run-on sentence. The sentence can be picked up at any point because it is more or less an evolving thought that centers around the activity of walking around a studio. When you approach the piece your eyes are almost stumped by what the dimensions of the tape are. Similar to how it is difficult to gauge distance with one eye closed, your eyes have difficulty placing the tape in three dimensional space, making you leery of approaching it. Eventually, I just made the decision to tuck my head and walk far enough in that I knew I wouldn’t hit the tape and I found myself surrounded. All around me was a skinny black line, that now with the context of the walls lower and upper extremes I had spacial awareness.

What I would equate standing in that room to is formulating an idea. You stand in the middle of the piece, text all around you expressing essentially nothing, creating confusion but you are confined within this finite space. Just like when you are coming up with an idea or a thought you know at the very least the general space in your mind which it resides, even if you can’t put your finger on what you are trying to think of. In this regard I say that the piece fits the exhibition very well, because it conjures up memory, The memory on the tape is that of the artist but the piece causes you to think of your own memories that can be equated to the piece. The piece creates a blur in your mind, you look around with a lost feeling. You are not entirely sure where to go, what you should be looking at or what part of the test you should be reading. Almost as though you are sifting through old memories that don’t matter in search of one that does.




“As I walked” also lends the viewer a feeling of being inside of a much larger space. The tape does not have any definable dimensions at a distance, and as I said earlier unless you get very close to it it can be difficult to determine the pieces actual dimensions. Because of this when you stand in the middle the defined lines of the rooms floor and ceiling can easily begin to fade away and you feel as though you are in a much larger room than you are. Just like standing inside a large train station can be overwhelming or indefinable visually in terms of size “as I walked” creates that same feeling. You do not know your confines, you know that they exist, that they are there but you do not know “where” they are, where the outer extreme of your environment is. This grandiose feeling reenforces the idea of memory, as who doesn’t look back on an old memory as being larger or more important than it really is.

When seen in the context of the show, I have to say “As I walked” really shines. The piece has enough depth that you can have multiple takes on meaning and feeling created, while also forming an environment that even someone passing through would find interesting. Aesthetically the black tape on the stark white walls of the gallery is beautiful in its simplicity, particularly compared to the other pieces in the show. Many of the other pieces were sometimes overly complex in their concept to the point in which you were living the artists memory. This is fine, but because Mancuska’s work allows you to have your own memories fill the space it was more relatable, and seemed to be larger in scope.