Indepth Arts News:
"Andrew Connelly - BREATHE: AN INSTALLATION"
2000-05-25 until 2000-07-29
Forum for Contemporary Art
St. Louis, MO,
USA United States of America
Best known for his large-scale sculptural installations that perform
themselves or more often than not become sites for collaborative
monologues and performance pieces, Andrew Connelly's latest work
Breathe - created specifically for the Forum for Contemporary Art - is
a continuation of his investigation into integrated environments that
emphasize motion and the dynamics of movement. With his interest in
the interrelationship of materials based upon an organic structure,
Connelly explores the literal movement of these forms in both the
natural world and beyond. His interest lies mostly, though not entirely,
in the interstices, the between worlds, the transitory, where one
undergoes change, passage occurs and transcendence is sought.
The white cube of the gallery is transformed to contain a kind of
biorhythm, a giant regenerative organic form that choreographs the
movement within, literally giving life to the space. Constructed from
wood, steel, PVC piping and scrim material, 12 pools of varying depths
are filled with water that is mechanically pumped from one pool to
another. Breathe is a hydraulic system of sorts, built to reflect and
reference the principles of life, organic form and how they perform in
the day to day. The installation also suggests movement to and from
the non-day to day, or as Connelly calls it, the space between or
moments awake.
The movement of the surface of each pool is reflected overhead onto
disks hanging from the ceiling, while an audible water level - slowly
rising and falling, flowing from one pool to the next - provides a
rhythmic orchestration, making reoccurring patterns in nature heard.
Breathe is a configuration based in nature and reality, yet refers to the
intangible and the ephemeral, asserting that nothing (known or
unknown) is inert, but that all things are continually in motion.
Rooted in both the experiential and the intuitive, Connelly builds upon
an event, a memory, as well as dreams and perceptions, that then
manifest into three-dimensional 'labs.' His installations or labs
become a platform for ideas, experimentation, performance,
collaboration and ultimately, transformation. Connelly's 'space
between' (between the pools and the reflection discs above) is a liminal
space between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the
abstract and the concrete, between the private and the public, between
the spiritual and the secular and between life and death. Connelly
mediates on the perceived distance between each of these sets of
oppositions and the often ambiguous space they occupy in our lives. In
the process he reveals a discontinuity of assumptions, temporal
moments of intersection and a dissolving of boundaries. Breathe blurs
the distinction between such dualities by identifying that the distance is
not so great. It is one continuous motion, existing in various ruptures in
time, which will eventually converge as nature demonstrates. Connelly's
pre-subscribed choreography and geometry integrates the dynamics of
human movement for a thoughtful reading of the microbiomaterial that
circulates within the body, maintaining the living force.
The three performance pieces accompanying the installation Breathe
were choreographed by Andrew Connelly, David Marchet and Cecil
Slaughter. Dancer and choreographer David Marchet has collaborated
with Andrew Connelly on several monologues and performance pieces.
Breathe is dancer and choreographer Cecil Slaughter's first
collaboration with the artist.
IMAGE:
Andrew Connelly, Breathe, studio shot of work in progress, 2000.M
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