Unstable Equilibrium
There are numerous aspects in the works Burning Boots and Defining Moments that unify them: the territory in which the videos were filmed (the river Lika in Croatia); the use of natural elements (water and fire); the metaphor concerning the search for balance in relation to the social, cultural, or psychological nature of the individual; the absence of any sound other than that of the principle action; the year of realization. Their unusual specifity paradoxically spawns a single installation in which the viewer becomes thoroughly absorbed; there is no clash of any kind between the works.
On opposing walls are the projections of two different demonstrations of a painstaking search for certainty and solid reference point. On one side, a pair of cowboy boots burns on the banks of a river. The flames blaze undisturbed while in the surroundings an apparent calm seems to reign. David Smithson’s piece is emblatic of a critical approach to life, the manifestation of humanity’s fears, the relevation of one’s own internal and external wounds.
On the other side, the surface perimeter of what used to be the supporting pilaster of a massive bridge, now submerged in the waters of a river, is rigorously marked by a series of white porcelain plates. The effect at a distance is that of a table ready to host a large group of people, though devoid of any ornament or superflous decoration. The second bare pilaster becomes the artist’s target: from up above he tries to throw the same number of plates onto it’s surface, in the frustrating knowledge that he will never succeed in achieving the same equilibrium or a certainharmony. Jerome Symons desperatly seeks to create order, to replenish voids metaphorically, and to reestablish a real, no longer only apparent, calm.
Both artists play on a symbolic level and their personal invocation becomes universal. The videos’ intentionally slow pace-achieved by only essential editing that is devoid of any affectio or artifice and the repetition of the actions-sharpens the intense sense of waiting that prevails upon every aspect. Every form of narrative is banished, there is no role to be acted out and the actions themselves dominate the scene. The boots slowly burn, the plates that break upon their violent impact on the pilaster or that lie idly in an irregular pattern either in or upon the water. These are works to observe in silence, the same silence as that of indiffirence, of solitude, of fear. Unstable equilibriums are those upon which we base ou exstence, fire which gives us warmth but can cause death and destruction, water as the vital source but also a symbol for the purification of our sins.
Daniele Perra
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David Smithson
Born in Dumas, Texas (1956)
Lives and works in Cologne and Pietersanta
1974-77 School of Architecture, Renselaer Polytchnic Institute, Troy, New York
1982-84 Robert I. Russin Sculpture Fellowship
1984 Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Wyoming, Laramie 1991-00 Guest lecturer at the Royal Dutch Academies in: Den Bosch, Arnhem, Rotterdam
1997 European Ceramics Work Center, Work period/stipend, September-December, Den Bosch, The Netherlands (a second work period followed from August-November, 1999)
Exhibits internationally.
