2012

Door and Milk Permutations
Luettgenmeijer, Berlin

Works

This series of works explores the formal characteristics of two objects whose subjective content is purposely trivialised through a focus on pure craft. traditional media are utilised to process life-events through a mish-mash of traits. The physical elements of each object are combined across a range of media, of which each brings its own formal rules and constraints to the process of depiction. This is similar to a musical technique employed in the album Conditions for a Piece of Music by Norwegian band Ultralyd: individual tracks are constructed from a pool of musical properties, each track being a permutation of one original set (this is commonly referred to as “theme and variations” in music).

The subjects Door and Milk are approached — with the melancholy of the album in mind — as both muses and elements ripe for new permutation:

Door: the closet door of an old lover’s bedroom. During many sleepless nights, the door became something to stare at, an object of both meditation and despair. a reconstruction of this object is included in the show.

Milk: a chalkboard for notating the distribution of milk products amongst nurses. originating from a hospital in The Netherlands in around 1960, the board carries a heavy patina, which stakes its claim to its status as a serious artefact. It comes from a time when dairy was thought to be essential in all areas of health and was administered with vigor.