I wasn’t sure what to expect from Dublin Contemporary 2011, being unsure as to what exactly contemporary art is! The exhibition theme didn’t exactly invoke optimism either, not surprising give the title; Terrible Beauty—Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of Non-Compliance, taken from William Butler Yeats’ famous poem “Easter, 1916”.
Yet, forsaking the theme, amongst the weird and wonderful, and downright bizarre was also the cool! I was fascinated by an installation called Studio 1: Plus/Minus by Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly a duo who produce video installations and experimental films. Like so much of the exhibition; where the prevalent colour scheme throughout the artworks is shades of grey, black and white, their interactive installation is a large black and white stripy projection. Yet this is where the similarity ends, the Cleary Connolly exhibit is playful, elegant and inviting.
Plus/Minus is set up with cameras and projectors and places the visitor within the film! As visitors enter the room, the stripes are deformed and echoed by the visitors’ moving silhouettes! The projected stripes are distorted and create new patterns on the wall. The installation plays with the theme of the shifting boundary between art and life.
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