In “Material Presence,” seven artists consecrate the mundane and the discarded, using prefabricated and industrial objects to create installations and sculptures. For some, the use of such materials is central to their work: In the Ukrainian artist Alexej Meschtschanow’s Dämonen benutzen geschlossene Türen (Demons Use Closed Doors), 2007, for example, spidery forms made from metal pieces encircle a door and hoist it at an angle, like ants looting a giant morsel. But for other artists in the show, preoccupations rest in their arsenals of resources: Found and industrial components are treated no differently from more natural alternatives. The exhibition’s materials, so widely employed since Duchamp displayed his bicycle wheel, ultimately fail to unify the show’s diverse content into a cohesive vision.
Nonetheless, the exhibition is striking, in no small part due to three British artists: Graham Hudson, James Ireland, and Mark Titchner. Ireland’s work deconstructs landscape’s most basic elements, and Titchner’s symbol-laden installation, with its murky sound track, biblical references, and repeated forms, suggests the mystic and occult. In a site-specific sculpture commissioned for the show, Hudson uses scaffolding and wooden pallets to create On Off, 2008, a three-story-high spiral. Occupying the main hall of the gallery, On Off features a series of turntables, controlled by timers that switch them on, accelerate them at staggered intervals, and then turn them abruptly off. Hudson layers the sound of records revving up and slowing down to chaotic, carnivalesque effect; the sculpture’s uneven construction and flashing lightbulbs heighten the viewer’s experience. Traversing the gallery—a former Methodist church—is akin to circumambulation; here, the transfiguration of the commonplace is complete.
