The Cube: Inquisition _ pedestal, wire, hardware, blue light, hole in gallery wall.
Naturally, this installation references James Turrell with allusions to churches. Working from the supposition that the gallery is the church, a place to find enlightenment through perceptive reception, I set up a ‘transitional window’ by cutting a hole in the wall of the gallery. In theory, the gallery space itself sets up a blank vacuum of meaning for which to perceive and contemplate the outside ‘other’ or the sublime through the window. Suspending the pedestal across the opening allows it to act as the altar and cross beam while more importantly referencing the blissfully tortured, bound body. (i.e. the emulated crucifixion)
During the Inquisition this was a form of torture carried out on a device called The Rack and is closely related to Quartering. Today people enact body suspension by cables, notably done by the performance artist Stelarc. It seems almost ritualistic today, closer to meditation or sex than torture.
In ‘art for art sake’ terms the pedestal is one of the utilitarian masses, now levitated through through tension. A tool of the gallery now taken as glorified subject. The method of levitation fixes the pedestal in place which allows for elevation of the body, yet denies the assumption: bodily ascension into heaven. Thus, a static tableau is reached aligning the ‘body’ with a body shaped ‘passage’ through which it can never pass. An apt metaphor for the difficulties of art and religion.
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- Inquisition
Ryder in Roswell 