MARK HUTCHINSON
Escape from
Studio Voltaire
22. 11. 2006 - 16. 12. 2006
vamiali’s gallery is pleased to present the first solo show in Athens
of Mark Hutchinson titled “Escape from Studio Voltaire”. The
project consists of two integral parts: an installation in the gallery
and a booklet to be taken away.
“…The
claustrophobic is […] an amateur escape artist. He needs in order
to physically survive, to be ingenius about his exits and entrances…”
Adam Philips
Hutchinson
presents drawings, diagrams and information showing how one might leave
the gallery space of Studio Voltaire in South London, should leaving by
the door through which one came in be inadequate. Multifarious plans,
ranging from the simple and practical, (routes through neighbouring streets),
to the elaborate and fanciful (escaping from the roof via hot air balloon).
According to his words “the installation is characterised by a kind
of absence. It is an excessive and fanciful set of ideas as to how one
might get out of Studio Voltaire: of how one might escape. The gallery
space, are only present inasmuch as they are an obstacle to be transcended.
Everything inside the gallery is directed towards everything outside of
the gallery and the fact of the gallery qua boundary. Here there is plenty
to look at but it is intended to direct attention, imaginatively, to everything
except itself. This is a project that can only fail; an escape plan that
is always doomed. However functional, mundane and descriptive the material
of the installation is intended to be, it still presents a kind of sight.
The desperate imaginings of means of escape confirm, through their pathos,
the failure to escape”.
The
booklet that accompanies the exhibition contains two main essays. One
is an extract from a case history of a self- declared claustrophobic artist,
from the work of 1970s New York based analyst Jennifer Bird. In the second
essay Mark Hutchinson uses the symptoms of claustrophobia as the terms
for an exploration in to difficulties faced by the critically and politically
engaged artist. The artist, like the claustrophobic person, can feel constricted
by the structures around them. For both it is the possibility of escape,
over its actuality, that needs to be kept alive through a process of vigilance
and imagination. Hutchinson’s recent works have set up relationships
between elements of installation and text, intending not only to dramatise
and affect the relationships between art, spectator and gallery, but also
to implicate reading in the process of looking.
Mark Hutchinson lives and works in London.
Installation views
All works 2004, ink on paper, 64x90 cm and 72x102 cm
