'Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Walking next to the pony is different from riding it.' Plans for the artist's first show at Sadie Coles HQ are still under wraps, but Slominski has indicated an interest in the postbox adjacent to the gallery on Regent Street, a 40-piece classical orchestra, and London's traffic signs.
Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Walking next to
the pony is different from riding it.*
Andreas Slominski is best known for his traps. Since 1986 he has been collecting
and copying models designed to ensnare a whole range of animals from voles to
birds, weasels to foxes. These elaborate structures, designed to entice animals,
work on the principle of temptation. To the human eye, they may possess a
sculptural beauty, but this is undercut by the sense of repulsion and brutality
incurred by their function. However, within the gallery, they retain the element
of temptation, as the audience, curiosity piqued, inevitably begins to wonder if
they are fully functioning, assuming that as humans they would be able to foil
these traps.
The traps announce Slominski as a trickster, and indeed the ludic element in
these works extends to other projects. In order to exhibit a stolen bicycle pump
at his show at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 1989, instead of just snatching the
pump from the bike, as many a petty thief before him, he sawed off the section
of the cross bar, taking that along with the pump. For the same show, he hired a
professional gardener to plant a dead tree stump amid the Lime trees on Unter
den Linden where the Guggenheim is located in Berlin. To those who had not
witnessed the planting, the appearance of the stump was inexplicable and for the
local authorities it was distressing enough to warrant the area being sectioned
off, like the scene of a crime. Common to all these works and others that have
come since, is a narrative. In many instances the object exhibited in the
gallery is the culmination of an elaborate sequence of events; Slominski has
often covered his tracks, chapters of the narrative!
have vanished, leaving only some very perplexing signs. Boris Groys highlights
the originality and fascination such a strategy holds:
'And so I have the impression that everything Andreas Slominski does is pointing
to something else. That's its real power. Basically the power to direct another
person's attention is absolute power. So the strategy is to manipulate me, to
manipulate my gaze, and at the same time to avoid being judged by me. He directs
my gaze exactly where he wants and at the same time away from himself. [...] He
wants me to look past him. But when I look past him or his work and see
something different, then I am entirely in his hands.'**
Plans for the artist's first show at Sadie Coles HQ are still under wraps, but
Slominski has indicated an interest in the postbox adjacent to the gallery on
Regent Street, a 40-piece classical orchestra, and London's traffic signs.
Andreas Slominski lives and works in Hamburg. He has shown throughout Europe and
the United States in both group and solo shows, including a site-specific
commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1999) and earlier this year at
the Fondazione Prada in Milan.
*Andreas Slominski in Dreams (eds Francesco Bonami and Hans Ulrich Obrist,
published on the occasion of 48th Venice Biennale, 1999 (Turin, Italy:
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l'Arte, 1999)
**Boris Groys in Bettina Funcke & Jens Hoffman, ''Slominski': A Conversation
with Boris Groys', Parkett 55, 1999, p 102
private view: 08 Oct 6-8pm
For press and further information please contact Sara Harrison by email or telephone 020 7434 2227
Sadie Coles
35 Heddon Street London W1B 4BP
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