December 29, 2009
The excruciating extremes of Polish weather on a stripped landscape have perhaps informed Balka’s expression of ‘Topography’. The first floor of Modern Art Oxford houses grinding bleak empty white noises of exquisite interference in the intense and sublime film projections of Miroslaw Balka. The best piece I have ever seen in the small upstairs room is Balka’s ‘Flagellare’ series. This is video footage of solid ice being smashed from a block that is so purely white it ejects all sorts of grey tones. A scraping rhythm is accentuated by the texture of salt gritted onto the glass plates that are thumped onto the floor like a futon.
The medium sized room has the spinning ‘Carousel’ pieces, where each wall holds a moving projection of a landscape being panned by a camera. It is affecting and disorientating to perch yourself in the middle of the room and feel the topography being created around you as the spinning does not slow down for a second. The large upstairs room is full of a mosaic of pieces that mix naturalistic and abstract approaches to landscape. There is a story to construct here, like an original sculpture created in the mind of each spectator. Exhaust fumes are viewed on the roof belching upwards to the sounds of a strong engine struggling in despair.
Other walls bear landscapes that are so ordinary they make the contemporary nature of the whole installation completely disorientating and along with the dynamic industrial sounds that are transmitted out an emotionally releasing experience is created.
The medium sized room has the spinning ‘Carousel’ pieces, where each wall holds a moving projection of a landscape being panned by a camera. It is affecting and disorientating to perch yourself in the middle of the room and feel the topography being created around you as the spinning does not slow down for a second. The large upstairs room is full of a mosaic of pieces that mix naturalistic and abstract approaches to landscape. There is a story to construct here, like an original sculpture created in the mind of each spectator. Exhaust fumes are viewed on the roof belching upwards to the sounds of a strong engine struggling in despair.
Other walls bear landscapes that are so ordinary they make the contemporary nature of the whole installation completely disorientating and along with the dynamic industrial sounds that are transmitted out an emotionally releasing experience is created.