PHYSICAL PARADISE (1998)
Film installation with mirror walls and projection, 3-D animated film.
Variable dimension, film 3,40 min and light box 15 x 140 cm.
Physical Paradise expresses some sort of alternative concept of paradise. The construction of the spacecraft in Physical Paradise refers to the circular movement around a lake as seen in traditional descriptions of Paradise. In the installation the visitor first encounters light boxes with images showing how the space-shuttle Honolulu brings the characters who have been condemned to Hell, and takes them via a number of stations taken from paintings by Bosch – Paradise, Fall of the Rebel Angels, Ascent of the Blessed into the Celestial Paradise, Temptation of St Anthony – to a weightless Paradise where the appearance of the bode looses all meaning. The visitor then moves into the second part of the installation. It is a dark room and here you get the feeling of being on board the spacecraft. Paradise means garden, i.e. controlled nature, and therefore there is a system of channels inside the spacecraft in which images of nature are projected. The channel system is a metaphor used to characterize a change of conscience towards a kind of transcendence.
The work was showed first time in conjunction with a solo show at Physical Paradise, IASPIS, Stockholm, Sweden (1999).
Selected exhibitions:
Egofugal, 7th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, (2001) Egofugal, Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2001) James Cohan Gallery, New York, (2002), Bloom: mutation, toxicity and the sublime, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand (2003) Building Identities, film/video programme Tate Modern, London (2004)
Physical Sightseeing, Kunsthalle Wien / Ursula Blickle videoarchiv, Austria (2006)