Material Intelligence
A response to the exhibition by ANNIE AN
Cambridge University student art critic for the Cambridge Student
It's funny how contemporary artists work these days. The old art historical terms of painting and sculpture don't seem to apply anymore, instead we are faced with a new fashion, that of the installation. But it's not all bad, contemporary artists from Rachel Whiteread to the 8 artists are the new Kettle's Yard exhibition Material Intelligence, all make us think about the materials we are faced with every day in a new light. Under the Nietzschean Sublime Metaphysical Illusion, everything we know about the world is an illusion, and these artists call this illusion into question - is a cup really just a cup?
Despite all this esoteric rambling, I am still not keen on contemporary art! Usually when I walk into a gallery all I am confronted with is a smattering of dead animals and the odd penis, and perhaps a salute to Andy Warhol. However this can't be said for the works of this exhibition and especially that of Tony Feher and Shirley Tse, definite highlights of the show.
There is something intangibly beautiful about Tony Feher's Singing Room: the airy space, the light permeating the space around the bottles. It's a clever visual piece; all at once we are reminded of a harp, a sound wave and bottle music. Despite its witty references, the installation with its coloured spots and oh-so-reminiscent of "Panda Pop" bottles, maintains a kind of innocence. It is an innocence you can only get with sound, that ever-elusive art form that taps into some biological reaction within every human. Not like words or painting, sound engenders a response automatically without going through our brains and without conscious decisions as to whether or not we like it. Feher's installation does the same, it hits you like Beethoven's 5th, suddenly and harmonically without giving you anytime to bring out the critic's eye.
Shirley Tse's objects are intelligent, very intelligent in fact. The blurb that comes with the pieces tell us they are plastic, but contrary to the normal image of the cold, hard plastic, Tse's material seems to behave differently - they look more like cascading waterfalls of textiles, laced like artistic spaghetti in and out of itself, bending and twisting in every direction. The dark colour she chooses makes material seem like leather - warm and soft, not at all what you would expect from plastic. Tse cleverly exploits the different qualities of the material to make us question the true nature of plastics, resulting in these striking pieces. I just hope she'll make a massive one next time, one to fill an entire wall to give the full effect of the draping.
The artists in this exhibition really do bring out another side of materials, some more so than others. However, it is arguable whether these materials are intelligent because of the ways the artist has used them or are they intelligent dependant on the way the viewer interprets them.