CHAUFFER presents a solo exhibition by German artist Timo Kube. Sensibilities is an exhibition composed of works that incorporate and direct attention toward materials, abstraction, and objects. Situated across the gallery wall and floor, the objects appear primarily – but not entirely – abstract. The abstraction varies between hard-edged monochromatic forms and more subtle details of textures and variations of colour. Mirrors covered in silk, for instance, both reflect and partially obscure what appears to audiences through textures and colours; a canvas pressed and rubbed with white chalk, and mixed with a Japanese seaweed called funori, brings attention to the hand and touch; a dark cylindrical container holds water that germinates into an odorous bog. Sensibilities is an exhibition of materially condensed objects that open up viewing experiences aesthetically.
Audiences view objects that, more or less, resist definition and medium specificity; these might appear as paintings and sculpture but the experience in viewing the works opens up (the) senses of what they ‘are’. They may, conversely, appear more than they really are. Formally, there is some resonance with conventions of minimalism, where the notion of object is bolstered by mantras like ‘what you see is what you get.’ This might be all too obvious; however, the role of experiencing the materials – not only by viewing through senses of sight but also touch and smell – opens up some foundational phenomenological questions – What is there? Where did that come from? How did that come to be? What is given and who gives? Where does the work take place?
Experience is key to how these complex objects come across materially, formally, and sensuously. They have the capacity to appear both formally neutral and sensuously complex, viewable from a distance and yet emotive and proximate. The experience depends on how audiences as ‘viewers’ let themselves approach, come towards, or, one might even say, be disposed. Disposition also plays an important role towards letting the experience happen. That is to say, how each of us is inclined and oriented, or disposed, toward viewing; by letting the senses take from, or be given over to, the experience of what appears given. Letting sight, but also touch (from a distance, without direct contact) and even smell (there is a bog that slowly develops an earthy odour) form the encounter with objects that give something. Giving what appears by ‘being there’ – and possibly more. Sensibilities is therefore an exhibition that plays upon the senses and a variety of emotive responses to formally reduced yet materially complex works.
It is of course complicated when it comes to writing or talking about works that seem quite abstract. What more is there to know or say about works that – at least at first glance, briefly and hastily viewed – seem so non-pictorial, so non-representational? Not clear enough? Do they need more ‘explanation’? Are the works to be left to experience alone, to encounter what resists being known or (readily) said? Perhaps. As ‘art’, the works can be left as they seem: mysterious, ambiguous, ironic. Resistant to analysis and description. For Kube, it is not only art that plays a part in the work but also, and more essentially, an aesthetic experience. The following text can be used as notes for audiences as ‘viewers’ to give some context and, if one will, orientations too.
Experiences
The works are mounted at levels and set in locations that are amenable to aesthetic experiences. Experiences that, over time and with attention to the materials, ensue from something sensuous and indeed thought provoking. Subtle and changeable. Responsive and emotive. ‘Sensibilities’ has to do with a variety of experiences, and more specifically with certain phenomenological encounters. The experience is aesthetic by giving audiences ways of viewing foremost with the senses and through an encounter. The encounter is a sensuous
way of letting oneself be disposed towards objects that give what is essential, elemental. In phenomenological terms, the elemental is what is essential, the stuff that discloses ‘things-in-themselves.’
What is meant by things-in-themselves in this case? The notion of things-in-themselves is complicated, especially when it comes to connotations of substance and essence, as in the Latin Substantia and Essentia. The debates around this philosophical issue of essences and substances are enormous and therefore cannot be discussed effectively in this text. What should at least be noted is that for Kube the aesthetic experience has less to do with things as substances and essences and more to do with how works ‘locate’ and ‘constitute’ the
sense of a world. The things that make up the objects elementally, and more specifically as world-constituting, are, in this case, materials like silk, chalk, funori, or water mixed with anthracite. The materials locate something essential and indeed representational to the object-like works. These are not purely abstract works. Because the materials give a sensuous form to representation; chalk, water, anthracite, for instance, give and make sense of where they are commonly encountered – land, earth, world, and so forth. In this way, the world-constituting locality of the materials representationally challenge pure abstraction.
Pragmatically speaking, the materials give possibilities to the How: how the works take place, how they are born, how they are created. And indeed, how the works continue to take place, locate, and constitute the sense of a world.
One example that presents such an encounter is Untitled Bog. It is a work that continues to take form and change in its chemical formation. Here, a polypropylene container (conventionally purposed for pipes that are laid in the ground for water irrigation and also for manholes) holds a volume of fresh water. The water appears dark due to both the reflection of the matt black hue of the polypropylene, but also what seems ‘hidden’: anthracite, which is a variant of coal purposed also for producing graphite. Kube is specific about this material when he elaborates, ‘anthracite can turn into graphite in the material’s further metamorphosis.’ Industrially it is used for blacksmithing, heating and more so in our present day as a substrate to turn it into activated carbon for filtering fresh drinking water.’ Over days
and weeks, the water mixes with the anthracite and polypropylene; an organic and chemical transformation takes place that, in effect, complicates the supposed purity of the water. The water takes on a darker tone. Colours subtly buoy up, surfacing deep blues, purples, magentas; murky yet chromatic liquid subtly saturates the senses. Colourful gradients saturate the liquid surface of the cylindrical object. Bend over, view the liquid. See it shine. Like an idol, it bedazzles. There is more. The bog takes place through a transformation that
complicates connotations of organic nature. There is no pure organic formation of earthy and purely natural elements. No, because the polypropylene and anthracite keep intensifying the chemical composition of the water. Over the course of the exhibition an odour also grows. Audiences can smell and take it in, internalize the bog. They may or may not like what they smell. Transit also plays into the trans-formative process. The water has not been transported; instead only the polypropylene container has been shipped – overseas. Decanted is the water from Kube’s studio in East London, UK; water from (an undisclosed location in) Sydney, Australia poured in. (Commerce and markets arguably come into this transit and transformation but these notes do not have the space in this case to go into such issues, economic issues that underly the so-called real world.) What can be suggested is that the Untitled Bog appears as a kind of worldly conduit; it points to an outside. In the space of the exhibition it sets up an object to go around, go away to the other works, come back, hold still, view from above and in the round, and so on. This going-round might also become a bit disorienting.
To the ecological worldview, of material having a purely natural substance, Untitled Bog may just be a work that, alongside other works in this exhibition, poses something disorienting.
Viewing
Different angles of viewing change how the works appear. This might seem obvious. Note the stress on appearances. Appearances can be disorienting, even marvellously disorienting. Take for instance Untitled Silk (in Amber) #1. View it say at a diagonal, to the left and from a few feet away; one will see the rectangular – and portrait-like dimension – of the surface. Here, the work as an object appears materially textured and optically reflective too. But what about the viewer? Can you get into it, get lost in the object? Can you let yourself be as much a subject as the object viewed? Strange questions, no doubt. But look, think again. There, over the object’s surface, gradients of colour appear subtle, shimmering; the amber hue opens and fans out into tones that, if one moves slightly and slowly side-to-side, shift like air, shift from yellow to orange and red. The colours are also presented further through the materials, a chromatic gradient that shimmers from amber to fire to copper...
Now, step more to the front, perpendicularly facing the piece: there, ‘finding yourself’, like narcissus, appearing in the reflection. In the picture even. Although not clearly reflected, the silk obstructs the clarity of the mirror. Consider that the surface obstruction gives you, the viewer, ways of seeing yourself and other surrounding things; things appear in the space (studio, gallery) as if in a kaleidoscope. You may just see how you view things as they seem to appear to you: a texture of reality. Like silk, the texture and colours play on your desire. Untitled Silk (in violet) #1 curiously uses a convex mirror. The mirror increases the viewing of space – and beyond the viewer as one and alone. The convex mirror bends the object outward and therefore lets the surroundings become reflected ‘inside’, appearing within the distended mirror as a pictorial space. This play of appearances, of reflections and also shadowy figures, disorients the viewer’s position. The disorientation is towards any position – and arguably supreme orientation – of the individual holding onto their view as ‘purely subjective’. That is in attempting to view the works and space – and indeed world – as if detached and from some birds-eye view.
Depending on the viewer’s disposition – no one is forcing or controlling them – such experiences can be disorienting. Disorienting in ways that de-centre the viewer. Disorienting in ways that – and, though painful and unfathomable this may be for some – may also open different forms of world and world-view – beyond the supremacy of humans being the supreme species at the centre of the world.
The disorientation of the self: the disposition to ‘subjectively’ view things outside, as if detached from the object, is now challenged psychologically and ideologically. The world-view of the detached observer, of viewing as if oriented by being-at-the-centre-of-the world, is now reflected. Out of joint. Go around the exhibition, from the water-filled container to the objects on the wall, back and forth, round and round... The disorientation is in, and up to (if disposed), the viewer giving themselves over to the objects viewed.
Return to the silk covered mirror. There the viewer appears more shadowy, a hazy figure floating amongst other figures appearing in the surrounding space. Now even quite anonymous. The viewer now appears an absent yet present figure, much like a stain in the picture. The silk gives a seductive quality to this sense of figural loss, a desire of viewing oneself there and not there at the same time. Desire in giving oneself over to the work. Desire to be visible and in a space that renders the ‘I’ invisible. Desire to lose oneself and appear..... in-visible.
Visible and In-Visible
In-visible? What is meant by the in-visible? The in-visible can be considered as the sense of how the viewer might encounter themselves in the work – and not by direct participation or interaction. The in-visible has to do with how the viewer can become as much visible, and indeed disoriented, within the object as they are also appearing to themselves – an object of desire. The desire to see oneself, to orient oneself, to feel and centre oneself... Or not. In-visible then as the experience of viewing oneself in the work as a kind of partial-object (reflected as a head, shoulder, torso, hand, and so on). The note in this case may seem complicated. But it is to say, and to put it very plainly, that there are possibilities of losing oneself as a viewer in the experience. The losing might be more specifically considered as an experience of giving, giving oneself over to works that are not merely (abstract) objects. In this way the viewer is a subject that gives themselves over to being visibly ‘included’ as an object of desire that is encountered aesthetically in the experience.
Abstraction may seem to be quintessentially formal and non-representational. One might briefly glance and then simply judge by thinking ‘Oh, those look like a bunch of minimal objects.’ The appearance of colourful rectangles and a dark cylinder might imply this quick judgement. However, depending on the viewing experience and indeed disposition (inclination, orientation, desire) the works can disclose materials and complex details, such as gradients and textures, that not only give something pictorial but also draw in the viewer as an in-visible figure. Again, because the viewer is visible as an object they appear within and in common with the works. But with a twist. The viewer is there, present and yet struggling to NOT see themselves as the fundamental subject or thing/object. This is perhaps the hardest task: to give up oneself (individually and as species) in being the centre of the experience and world. The experience of becoming a subject enmeshed with the object, in-visible, might seem philosophically overcomplicated. However, the encounter with mirrors and other reflective surfaces – covered by fabrics like silk – gives the viewer an aesthetic experience that challenges distinctions between subject and object, and the self-centring view of themselves as detached and supreme.
You are in the work because you appear there with the objects. You appear in ways that relate and indeed connect you with objects as things, and things that appear outside. Appearing by being with things out in the world, and without being able to go ‘inside’ any individualistic and detached self.
The disposition in viewing oneself as a detail, as a shadowy figure, is a way of giving you as the viewer over to the very object and world given and to be viewed as such. To lose yourself can seem negative, can indeed become painful (in a very crucial way, not to be ignored or subdued). And joyful at some other point. Experience will tell.
These notes are in no way intended to explain, figure out, or give more than what the works give. May the experience take the lead, open up views, meanings, worlds. This in so much as a viewer you might just get caught up in objects that reflect desires, desires that are in you and more than you alone.
- Robert Luzar -