The work made me think about the difference between when things are vague or unclear close up and when they have that same quality at a distance. When they are vague at a distance you presume an absent clarity, that they are clearer than they seem. Close up, the lack of clarity becomes less mysterious and more blunt.  The objects and videos in this work remind me of things that don’t get any clearer when seen close up.

I am also thinking about the different elements in this show as repetitions or echoes, present for the purpose of explaining themselves or each other.  To me this is  where the quality of performance lies – in their involvement in the act of showing something. Perhaps this is most evident in the video with the red table being folded out and in again, but the rolling back of the plastic, the paper shoved to one side and the act of filming heat waves on an empty road all seem to have this quality (although to different extents). I think this gives them a feeling of ‘standing in’ – either for each other or for something else – which limits the amount one cares about some of their material qualities (the folds of the paper, the patterns in the mud etc.). The feeling of repetition or echo takes the gathered elements in the direction of being diagrams

For example, I like that it is unclear whether the clay functions more as part of a kind of stage set (making you think of a location), as a material that can be shaped in certain ways or as a diagram of something else.

Clay creates a feeling of suspicion that is different from when something is clearly offering an illusion. It has a theatrical feeling of pretending to be clay, or clay on a stage, at the same time it there is something diagrammatic about it and at the same time it is just clay. The combination of taking up quite a lot of space without clearly doing just one of these things, or trying to do all of them, I find interesting.

I also think the installation seems to provide one with the raw materials for a story without ever attempting to tell that story.  I guess this links to the tiger film, which has a name reminiscent of a fable, but in which no story evolves.

Esmeralda Valencia Lindström
‘Plans for the Morning’