Thursday 3 October 2013

Ayse Erkmen: Intervals

The Curve Gallery in the Barbican is currently playing host to an installation by Turkish sculptor Ayse Erkmen. Titled "Intervals", it is a site specific piece based around theatre backdrops. The long, narrow space of the gallery is divided up by a selection of backdrops which rise and fall, at intervals, to allow and restrict the viewers' movements through the space. The Barbican have put clip up on Youtube which will give you a better idea of it than words.

It's a fascinating work, and out of everything I saw on my day in London it was the thing I found the most engaging.

There seem to be two main thrusts to the piece. The first, and most successful, is to celebrate the work of the theatrical scene painter. Seeing high-quality scenery close up is an eye-opening experience, and shows the painting to be confident, competent and charismatic. It was very evident that different people or groups had made different backdrops as the styles were as varied as the subjects and the best painted ones put some "proper" painters to shame. There were a few - especially the half tiled wall with the rotting plaster - I could have studied intently for a while. The economy of colour and mark, the boldness of the gesture and the eye for texture was fabulous. The use of stencils appears integral to the craft and it was sufficiently well done here to make me want to explore it myself. Most of the scenes, although designed to be seen at distance, held up well to close scrutiny.

The other thrust was the use of the theatrical device of scenery being lifted and lowered to manipulate space and control the viewer's pace through the gallery. I found this an interesting idea which really doesn't translate into words. It makes the scenery far more engaging than perhaps it would otherwise be, and encourages you to view each canvas from both close up and relatively far away. Relays clicked, motors whirred and everything went up and down, controlling one's pace just as surely as the script does in the theatres that normally host such things. It had the strange effect of changing the gallery from simply being a place to view the backdrops to also being a moment in time to view them.

It was while one backdrop was dropping down behind me that I realised that perhaps the ideas encapsulated in the installation could and should have been pushed much further. A simple relationship between the backdrops is caused by the constant veiling and un-veiling and this is emphasised in some cases as the lighting in the gallery casts shadows as things rise and fall. These altering relationships could have been developed far more with the adoption of a couple of other theatrical tricks. It is years since I have been to the theatre, but the bit of magic which always entranced me most was the way some scenery was painted or fixed onto fabric that was so thin it would appear or disappear depending on whether the lights were on it, in front of it or behind it. If this trick had been used here, with theatrical lighting instead of gallery lighting, or perhaps with further items of scenery that only partially obstructed progress and vistas then the whole piece could have been magical, an infinite kaleidoscope of ever changing spatial and visual relationships with the artist not just controlling the way the viewer moved through the space but almost co-opting them as actors in their own private play. It wouldn't have simply celebrated the anonymous scenery painter but it could have blurred the lines between theatre and art as surely as any performance artist.

In short, the installation is an interesting idea that is well executed, thought provoking and is more involving than it sounds yet it left me feeling slightly whelmed. It could have been so much more, and I hope Ayse pushes the idea further in future.

The show is free and runs through to 5 January 2014.

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