reviewS fergal stapleton
Fergal STaPleTON:
aNd a dOOr OPeNed
carl freedm an gallery, london
30 m ay – 28 july
You might as well call Fergal Stapleton’s dark plinth-mounted vitrines objects inside? Yet these are hidden as much as revealed in the weird
‘sculptures’, if only to give them some kind of working description, but also twilight they inhabit, seemingly another world, or another dimension. And
because in Stapleton’s hands the term becomes fluid and evanescent, they are anyway objects of such vague identity and value that the purpose
slipping between ‘object’ and ‘sculpture’ continuously as one examines of their display itself becomes another question. So they fizzle back into
these obscure monoliths. Present here are five almost-black-painted MDF view as sculptures, but ones in which the thin divide between materiality
plinths, all straight-sided apart from one divided into three narrowing steps. and visuality – the founding question for an art of objects rather than
On the top of each plinth is a Perspex case of the deepest, darkest red, images – is constantly pierced and traversed.
glossy and flawless except for a raised circular section, like a manhole cover, Stapleton manages a rare feat – the making of an object that speaks
and the periodic exiting and entering of black mains flex through tight- of how things distinguish themselves from images, which is in itself really
fitting holes in the case’s surface. a reflection on one’s own divided perception of materiality and sensation.
These flexes feed power to various lightbulbs within, which may And the baseness of materials used touches on what visual value, rather
indeed brightly illuminate the interior, but which viewed from outside barely than material value, might stand for: to one side, a suite of little paintings
provide enough light to make out the peculiar assortment of nondescript makes the point – slight renditions of loose change or a folded banknote,
bits and pieces sitting in the red gloom; in And a Door Opened.3 (all works barely emerging from an otherwise dark ground.
2007) for example, a pygmy bulb casts dim light on a formless lump of Stapleton is an overlooked talent – a contemporary of ‘young British
plaster which is revolving on a turntable that looks almost, but not quite, like art’, yet not of it. A onetime collaborator (with Rebecca Warren) rather
a record player. Nearby, indistinct, is a glass orb and a scrap of card that’s than an attention-seeking celebrity, whose work has never quite synched
described in the gallery notes as a beer mat. with the much less ambitious quasi-abstract sculpture that has emerged
On peering into the blood-clotted darkness of these cases, the sense in the last decade, Stapleton has followed his own path. But with And a
of presence and immediacy that one familiarly finds confronting objects in Door Opened, Stapleton’s articulate though never pompous reflection
a gallery disappears. And one realises suddenly that one of Stapleton’s key on the phenomenological and quotidian economy of art, and his patient
questions is the nature of display. For if these aren’t sculptures, it’s because investigation of sculpture’s means and ends, has alighted on a compelling
they are plinths that support cases for display – but displays of what? The poetry of material intelligence. J.J. Charlesworth
And a Door Opened.1.
(detail), 2007, black
perspex, electrical
fittings, concrete,
asphalt, motorised
turntable, red lightbulb,
cable, mdf, plyboard,
130 x 66 x 54 cm.
© the artist.
courtesy carl freedman
gallery, london
arTreview 150
NEW_October_REVIEWS.indd 4 4/9/07 12:26:08
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