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Overseeing all forms of liquidity in today’s art its natural habitat must be a pool.

The group show Pool is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the personal union of Great Britain and Hanover. One would probably think of it as a farfetched context, since this event does not really give away much for an art exhibition with contemporary artists. Looking at the work of the five London-based artists in the exhibition: Aaron Angell, Alice Channer, Nicolas Deshayes, Magali Reus and Cally Spooner, it is clear that the context here does not thwart a collaborative presentation that can exist on its own. This show has clearly independent qualities even if the historical context is a little farfetched. The artists developed thematic and material interests that intersect here and there. They all share a material language that is based on ideas of the steady and the fleeting, as well as the process of changing states.

The entrance of the lower level is occupied by an aquarium inhabited by axolotls and a ceramic head-like object. It is Aaron Angell’s project Peacetime Gallery (2013-ongoing) – a project space or a ‘gallery’ within a gallery that will host four solo exhibitions (by Isabel Mallet, Allison Katz, Esme Toler and Angell himself). As the title of the group show implies, the motif of water and its different states (frozen, liquid or evaporated) is a recurring theme, carried through all the levels of the exhibition space.

Cally Spooner’s sound installation U-Turn (2013) leads the viewer to a listening experience. The piece is sung by a-capella voices, made up of the noises that usually constitute interruptions in the flow of fluent speech. Accompanied by the sound script, it gives away what is usually filtered and therefore criticises the privilege of perfection and rhetoric over spontaneous speech and free exchange of opinions.

A kind of voyeuristic point of view is present in Highly Liquid – a high-res shot video by Magali Reus. In an extreme slow motion the video feature’s a man’s body in extreme close-up, showing the details of his body in friction with a continuous flow of water from an unknown source. The camera observes his abstracted and purely objectified body that is alienated and impersonal, and captures sculpted moments of skin. As the viewer cannot see the face or the full body, Reus plays with unfulfilled expectations. Her fridge-like sculpture series Lukes (2013) refer to functional devices that could have been useful, but turn out to be abstracted from their expected functions. The objects are minimalist, sterile and disconnected from their domestic environment with interiors filled with everyday objects, or rather their facsimiles. The manipulation of everyday things and their translation into forms that are more abstracted and alienated is central here.

Along the wall enamel panels are hung on eye level: Molars (2014) by Nicolas Deshayes, is a series showing pictures of upper bodies. Again, the viewer is confronted with an anonymous point of view. Almost as looking at underground advertisement, the artist plays with the ambiguity of the material, by using industrial manufacturing processes that are individually modified.

Deshayes interrupts the procedure in order to add spatters and drops to the otherwise smooth surfaces; another link to liquidity, which is also important in the production process of these panels. He draws the attention to materials we come into contact with on a daily basis; at the same time these objects are made resistant to human contact, since enamel as a material is now mainly used as a protective coating in public spaces.

On the upper level Alice Channer is also looking at advertisement aesthetics. She uses images of flowing water and a shower hose, and tiny pictures of bees and mint drops, printed on a silk banner. The object takes on a fluid shape in the way it is hung from the ceiling, spread on the floor in both directions. Channer plays with the perception and experience of gravity and its visibility.

Landslide (2014) by Channer is accompanied by steel sculptures – Hot Springs (2014) and Thin Air (2014) are super slick and thin objects that borrow their form from a jersey dress. Instead of being wrapped around the body like a second skin, they turn to something immaterial. The space itself seems to be immersed into a dimmed blue light, by taping the windows with foils; it emphasises the atmosphere of a cool poolside.

However the last space emanates rather warmness than coolness. Aaron Angell’s installation I will turn your money green (2014) consists of ceramics, reverse glass paintings and a wall collage. The collage is made through a process of gluing sheets of paper to the gallery wall, which are then ripped away to leave a ragged image; its final form unclear until it is impacted into the wall. The ceramics, in the shape of guitars, turtle-like objects and abstract forms, are placed on workbenches. Some might hold a candle but they are certainly not meant to serve as practical items.

Each work in Pool deals with objects and surfaces and the materials used are rich with contrast, swerving between the organic and the synthetic, flatness and corporeality. Liquidity is seen as a metaphor, for digital spaces and networks, but also for social developments in the present. Central themes that run throughout the show are the artists’ apparent interest in various physical states, the tension between solid and liquid, the relationship between the body and architectural space or public and private realms. These are concerns that are certainly present in contemporary art practice, with motifs that seem to be nowhere near exhausted. As the presented works imply, ‘pool’ is open to several meanings. And since the setting for the exhibition is actually a former public bath, the experience of this group show is intensified and an extra (architectural, bodily) layer is added to the theme.

Melissa Canbaz is a curator and critic

Pool, art from London
Kestnergesellschaft Hannover
April 4 till July 6, 2014
Goseriede 11
30159 Hanover

Melissa Canbaz

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