'Ruth Sacks at Galerie Cortex Athlectico' by Didier Arnaudet In this kaleidoscope of documentary moments, containing internal and external impressions of accumulated traces, fiction and autobiography blend and permeate each other in a vibration of uncertainty. Yet they let us guess that they are still independent and doggedly active, despite all their overlapping. This is achieved either through a direct sequence of events, using lateral reference, or making use of unpredictable magnetization, which in turn induces a new chain of events made up of unequal processes. These vary in size and quality of presence. Open Studio presents itself as an artist's studio inside a gallery. This installation accumulates handwritten notes, images, books, materials, projects, tools, stages situations, dialogues and theories. The imaginary character who occupies this working place is presented as the look-alike of the young South African artist Ruth Sacks and, by pure chance, shares the same name. The artistic implication of this fictive persona resonates similarly to Ruth Sacks' one but also dares fabrications, excesses and short circuits that the real person would be afraid of adopting. The only way to interpret this is to come to grips with the full density of these moods and elements to try to decipher its tensions, arguments and events. It is then that the meaning of this initiative appears with all its audacity: This is about representing what a human psyche is and all the things that fill it up, agitate and make it more incisive, as seen in the random mess of fantasies, legends, stories and snippets of knowledge on display. Open Studio conveys removed fragments from an autobiography whose psychological structure is infinitely playful, mobile in its associations and presents a corpus of mythological, scientific and theoretical references which are more or less recognizable. These fragments do not interfere as visible and obvious grafts but as integrated segments that are a part of the complex artistic personality. Because of its capacity to constantly vary its proposals and their functions in terms of readability and visibility, Ruth Sacks' practice evokes the actions of a web. This emerges on the surface as the idea of an experience of circulation and focus. The piece shown in the gallery office of Cortex Athletico reveals the result of the translation and success of the laboratory seen in the Open Studio installation. This object is an aggressive shield that is also a fakir's carpet made up of little Eiffel towers on a grid pattern. This sharp and efficient texture serves as a device which works to reveal a reinforced and well observed material. The object also speaks of a capacity to grasp and record movement. Immersed in a world that invents its own reality and legend, the thought presented here is confused with the process of its own development. But this concrete manner of thinking, constantly reactivated, at the same time operates with sufficient distance. Thus, through humour (and all the weapons it disposes of), the meaning of any interpretation which might try to implant itself, even lightly, as a deciphering system is rendered untrustworthy. Arnaudet, D. 2007. 'Open Studio': Art Press. No. 339. P. 87 (translated from the French original)
|