Carsten Nicolai
The Pace Gallery, New York, USA
“moiré”, Carsten Nicolai's show at The Pace Gallery, highlights an intersection between deliberate artistic production and notions of quality. In these works, the artist's creative process follows a particular methodology, where the expected result, the creation of moiré, was delimited before the conception of the artwork; which was then developed to accomplish the aforementioned function. For “moiré”, Nicolai, aka alva noto, omits the use of sound, relies on discreet mechanisms of motion and minimizes the visibility of the video screening. These restrictions help to circumscribe the apparently simple principle behind the works, to enhance its presence and to tighten the structure of the show.
Nicolai consistently reproduces the moiré in different mediums, including drawing, installation, sculpture and video. The wavy and capricious pattern is usually regarded as an anomaly; it alters the perceived texture of the object, disrupting the visual experience of a surface that is expected to look uniform. It can be found in common surfaces: in an intricate image on a monitor, in a folded silky fabric, or in the juxtaposition of two window screens. Moiré can also occur in printed images when, for instance, two grids are superimposed in an inadequate angle. In the show, this variant is approached on moiré glas, an sculpture placed near the entrance of the gallery, constituted of a black steel base shaped as an hexagon, a pole in its center, and six vertically positioned glass plates, fixed in accordance to the base's vertices. Every glass plate is printed with fine sequences of black dots and lines that, in consequence to the movement of the viewer around the piece, overlap and describe moiré. Considering the arrangement of the panels, the sequences are hard to distinguish from a distance, and to start walking toward the piece results in a frenzied and unpredictable undulation on the panels' surface, a somehow candid and welcoming gesture that, because of the object's location in the space, is indirectly visible at almost all times.
In contrast, the screening of moiré film, a video work that describes an artifact similar to the one that happens when images of screens are transmitted through a television or computer monitor (for example, the LED screens that surround soccer fields for advertising purposes), goes almost unnoticed. The monitor is embedded in one of the sides of a black cube placed on top of a white pedestal; both have the same dimensions on the base, and appear to be a bicolor, unitary object. Nicolai previously made use of the moiré in video in spray (2006), a work where white dots create dynamic patterns over a black background. On the other hand, what we see in moiré film is an eddying gray surface without a visibly defined grid overlapping it, so the moiré appears as a smooth, tridimensional iridescence, always in flux. In the installations, the artist makes use of several contrivances to produce motion. The numerous black strings that comprise moiré tape and moiré schatten are respectively attached to a spinning magnetic tape, and a wall-sized membrane box that is rhythmically filled and emptied with air. moiré rota is made of a fast-rotating pole and strings with LED lights attached at their ends; an ingeniously conceived piece somehow reminiscent of Attila Csörgo’s Spherical Vortex (1999). Nonetheless, the engrossingly complex elaboration of moiré drawings, executed by hand, properly synthesizes the experimentation behind the artwork. Countless black lines run down the paper depicting a frozen moiré. There are no grids, lines or dots to justify the existence of the pattern in the otherwise clear paper. The greatest merit of these works consists in the representation of an ephemeral, unattainable artifact; not creating conditions to produce it, but to reproduce it. The irregular starting points of the voluptuous lines are not disguised under a frame, but in full sight, reminding that this is not, and does not pretend to be, a mechanical representation.
With “moiré”, Carsten Nicolai sharply addresses preconceptions about desire and perception. By isolating the artifact, he subtly critiques its narrow categorization as an unwanted phenomenon that, if possible, must be avoided. The artist’s reflection on standards of quality in the media brings about different perspectives in the interpretation of everyday experience, stimulates curiosity, and reinforces the pivotal role of science in the artistic production.
Nicolai consistently reproduces the moiré in different mediums, including drawing, installation, sculpture and video. The wavy and capricious pattern is usually regarded as an anomaly; it alters the perceived texture of the object, disrupting the visual experience of a surface that is expected to look uniform. It can be found in common surfaces: in an intricate image on a monitor, in a folded silky fabric, or in the juxtaposition of two window screens. Moiré can also occur in printed images when, for instance, two grids are superimposed in an inadequate angle. In the show, this variant is approached on moiré glas, an sculpture placed near the entrance of the gallery, constituted of a black steel base shaped as an hexagon, a pole in its center, and six vertically positioned glass plates, fixed in accordance to the base's vertices. Every glass plate is printed with fine sequences of black dots and lines that, in consequence to the movement of the viewer around the piece, overlap and describe moiré. Considering the arrangement of the panels, the sequences are hard to distinguish from a distance, and to start walking toward the piece results in a frenzied and unpredictable undulation on the panels' surface, a somehow candid and welcoming gesture that, because of the object's location in the space, is indirectly visible at almost all times.
In contrast, the screening of moiré film, a video work that describes an artifact similar to the one that happens when images of screens are transmitted through a television or computer monitor (for example, the LED screens that surround soccer fields for advertising purposes), goes almost unnoticed. The monitor is embedded in one of the sides of a black cube placed on top of a white pedestal; both have the same dimensions on the base, and appear to be a bicolor, unitary object. Nicolai previously made use of the moiré in video in spray (2006), a work where white dots create dynamic patterns over a black background. On the other hand, what we see in moiré film is an eddying gray surface without a visibly defined grid overlapping it, so the moiré appears as a smooth, tridimensional iridescence, always in flux. In the installations, the artist makes use of several contrivances to produce motion. The numerous black strings that comprise moiré tape and moiré schatten are respectively attached to a spinning magnetic tape, and a wall-sized membrane box that is rhythmically filled and emptied with air. moiré rota is made of a fast-rotating pole and strings with LED lights attached at their ends; an ingeniously conceived piece somehow reminiscent of Attila Csörgo’s Spherical Vortex (1999). Nonetheless, the engrossingly complex elaboration of moiré drawings, executed by hand, properly synthesizes the experimentation behind the artwork. Countless black lines run down the paper depicting a frozen moiré. There are no grids, lines or dots to justify the existence of the pattern in the otherwise clear paper. The greatest merit of these works consists in the representation of an ephemeral, unattainable artifact; not creating conditions to produce it, but to reproduce it. The irregular starting points of the voluptuous lines are not disguised under a frame, but in full sight, reminding that this is not, and does not pretend to be, a mechanical representation.
With “moiré”, Carsten Nicolai sharply addresses preconceptions about desire and perception. By isolating the artifact, he subtly critiques its narrow categorization as an unwanted phenomenon that, if possible, must be avoided. The artist’s reflection on standards of quality in the media brings about different perspectives in the interpretation of everyday experience, stimulates curiosity, and reinforces the pivotal role of science in the artistic production.
