THE ART OF LOOKING DOWN

1. Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, Rahmanian, O You People!, 2020

The center piece of the first German solo exhibition of the Iranian artist collective Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at the Schirn is “O You People!”, a site-specific monumental floor painting. To create this immersive environment, the artists transform themselves into dastgāhs, an old Persian term for an entire set of tools needed for a specific task or the melodic matrix for improvisation in traditional Persian music.

Tools for the artists’ work include: Big ears, to listen closely to the current of time; dresses, to include a female perspective; life vests, to connect to the migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea. Armed with painting machines, the dastgāhs always follow the same ritual to create the basic structure of the piece. Afterwards the artists add numerous details in a more traditional way, creating a fascinating landscape, including huge water vortexes, oriental patterns, and carpet-like surfaces. In short: a maelstrom of stories overloaded with references from ancient to contemporary.    

3. Zuzanna Czebatul, Vortex (A New Day Coming), 2020

Inspired by the opus sectile technique popular in ancient and medieval Rome were materials are cut and inlaid in floors and walls creating patterns, Czebatul created her very own opus sectile floor out of concrete and pigments with the patterns referencing the architecture of the Centre d’art contemporain – La synagogue de Delme in France, a former synagogue turned into a contemporary art space. The Torah ark, the windows, as well as the columns at the entrance are translated into almost fluid like patterns gravitating to a dark vortex in the middle of the room, simulating the passing of time and the eternal movement of sand deserts.

5. Anish Kapoor, Descension, 2017

After installations in India and the palace garden of Versailles, Anish Kapoor’s “Descension” made it to Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2017, as part of the Public Art Funds’ 40th anniversary. A body of water continuously swirling in a vortex motion towards a center, for “Descension” Kapoor not only uses the ground as a canvas, but quite literally descends through it into the unknown. By leaving the water a natural blue, different than in India and France where he dyed it black, he created a deeper connection to the East River that runs directly next to Brooklyn Bridge Park.  

7. Do-Ho Suh, Floor, 2000

Visitors of the Indianapolis Museum of Art were encouraged to step onto the slightly elevated glass floor in gallery W403. 32 individual squares perfectly fill out the space from wall to wall. Standing on top, one starts to recognize tiny colorful dots and crouching even closer one can identify them as the hands of thousands of tiny colorful figures, supporting the glass plates above: The collective carrying the one. A recurring theme of Seoul-born sculptor Do-Ho Suh who engages architecture and space with the tensions between collective actions and the individual’s identity in his work. 

9. Karla Black, Includes Use, 2016

For her second show at David Zwirner in NYC in 2016, the Glasgow-based sculptor Karla Black created “Includes Use”, an expansive floor piece comprised of, who would have guessed it, colored toilet paper. Black is interested in everyday materials like sugar, soap, or tooth paste which she detaches form their original purpose and transforms into something ethereal, almost mysterious. Starting point for “Includes Use” was a rough chalk drawing on the gallery floor by Black herself that was then filled in with pools of colored plaster and powdered paint. These pools were encircled by delicately ruffled toilet paper in pale pink, light brown, and buff, giving rather the idea of an elegant confectioner’s cake than the ordinary daily life product.