金氏彻平：卓之物
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, Beijing
June 28 – August 25, 2013
Teppei Kaneuji works with everyday objects like plastic buckets, cheap toys, stickers, etc. In the central room, random arrangements of everyday objects on tables were covered by a white layer of material which could have been flour, sugar or (probably) gypsum. It reminded me of powder sugar put on top of cakes. The impression was supported by sculptural works in another room: Here all objects were piled up vertically and covered in something that seemed to be reminiscent of a layer of sugar glazing (probably gypsum again). The third major series on show was a set of mirrors covered with the part of a sticker sheet which is left after the sticker (picture) is taken out. These three series were complemented by two videos showing the ‘work in progress’: liquid gypsum slowly flowing down the piled objects – soon-to-be sculptures.
Covering cheap objects of daily use with a layer of something took them out of their original context and fixed them somehow in their arrangement. If it was not for the layer of white material, the objects would seem accessible and easy to touch. The white glazing acted as an way of freezing time, almost like a photograph. Besides the connotation of cakes and sweets, I also thought of a volcano explosion like in Pompeii or an atom bomb explosion: Things were frozen in their positions as if by surprise, and covered by a layer of ever increasing dust.
The work evoked thoughts which were however not easy to categorize and the visitor’s mind stayed in this vague feeling of alertness without reaching any conclusion. The most interesting finding was probably the fact how a sculpture can come to exist, or better, how reality can come to a standstill. Teppei Kaneuji used the gypsum coating in a similar way a photographer uses lights to ‘paint’ on film or a painter solidifies the contours of a person by applying paint to canvas. Art depends on this sort of symbolic operations with physical media – it is almost like magical spells that change the speed time flows.
