|
"Alienation has to be exchanged for a warm element" said Joseph Beuys.
and alienation defines our relationship to some of the very elements
and objects that have been instrumental in constructing much of what
we call human environment : tools. The artist Nina Karavasiles creates
warm zones of visual sociability. From table-top constructions to wall
mounted shapes to earthbound installations to site-specific art, Karavasiles
bridges the gap between tools, and their products, and our ambivalent
relationship to them. She engages the viewer in considering how things
shape our thought and attitudes. If tools have a social value, then
in Karavasiles' use of them and their transition over to an art construction
represents an increased socialization of the tool and of art itself
through their associations. In her Fire Station piece Signifire, a coiled
cast bronze fire hose with a nozzle pointing upward out of it from a
mosaic bowl of colored glass, Karavasiles enacts the transference of
manipulation onto the objects initial use - value and intention. Therefore,
the nozzle and hose, even though extracted from it, become forever (again)
associated with fire-fighting, fire stations and fire fighters. There
is no mistaking the fact that the objects immediately call up their
original use and hold with in themselves and their shapes, materials
and placement, an historical commentary on their origins, uses and variations
of use. It is the viewer's approximation of this understanding that
enacts the exchange and transforms a seemingly neutral and removed art
construction into a "warn element." Pasquale Verdicchio Artist Nina Karavasiles |