"Robert Clark: Plans For The Real World, Parts 1–12"
2000-04-29 until 2000-06-12
Henry Moore Foundation Studio
Halifax, , UK United Kingdom

The space, a temporary set-up. The protagonists, not all there. The audience, unknown… These initial studies for Plans For The Real World were seen in Robert Clark s solo exhibition in the autumn of 1996 at the Cornerhouse, Manchester. Now the completed twelve-part work receives its first full showing within the prestigious post-industrial grandeur of the Henry Moore Foundation Studio.

Plans For The Real World, Parts 1–12 takes its evocative base from the atmosphere of expectation and suspense of dawn and dusk. Prominent elements of painting, drawing and text are disorientated by combination with photography, sculpture, found objects, assemblage, theatrical lighting and recorded sound. The format of each section is created to tempt the viewer into a more intimate involvement than is usually the case with single-perspective works. Arcades, peep shows, stage sets, shrines and fragments of ruined showrooms are hinted at in a sequential build-up of ephemeral monuments. A Doppelgänger or alter ego figure is a recurring presence.

In an atmosphere of celebratory pathos, an enigmatic and perplexed dialogue is built up through letters, messages and notes that this figure (Kanis) and the artist send to each other:

On second thoughts forget it.
The world is very very tiny.
The other side of it might not be thoughNULL

With exquisite and delightful artfulness the fragmentary visual and written narrative begins to find ways of painting the artist utterly out of the picture.

Plans For The Real World is an anti-epic, fictional autobiography of uncertainty.

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