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4/9/2003

Ceal Floyer

Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York

British artist Ceal Floyer demonstrates her precocity for the delicate relationship between the cause and effect of representation with a new film projection entitled Peel. Peel creates an experience of a gallery wall slowly and silently peeling away. The effect is a subtle shift of the color gray to an identical shade of gray, a monochrome.

The media components of the artwork remain unconcealed as part of the exhibition. It is important to the artist that the methods and technologies seem relatively familiar to her audience. For this project, Floyer utilized an option from the menu of Adobe Premiere, a program often used for common consumer and professional video editing. The option 'peel' in this program functions as a method used for the transition of one image to another. For this exhibition, the artist employed this device as the object of the visual experience. This wilful (mis)use of special effects leaves Peel functioning as the title for the artwork as well as a description of the way it was produced. The slippage between the activity occurring in the gallery and the production of the artwork creates a paradox, bringing attention to new questions, concepts and experiences.

Consistent with Ceal Floyer's working method, Peel suggests the notion of a readymade. In an earlier wall based work, Projection, '997, currently installed in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, an image of a nail is projected onto a wall. In this way, Floyer alludes to the dematerialization of an art object. The viewer is left with unsuccessful attempts at attaching meaning to the familiar image. Additionally, the wall projection functions in blurring the material notion of painting and video, making they seem to exist as one. Peel takes this working method one step further. This work relates to the space in which it exists at the same time as it physically uses the space. The white empty walls of the gallery suggest a space that is expected to display objects. Instead, it is disrupted by a video construction that simulates a diminishing wall, in reality, peeling nothing. The 'architechtronic' scenario causes the viewer to reconsider the situation. The context of the program option 'peel' no longer makes sense. Instead of functioning purely as a practical device as a means of making the work it becomes part of the physical world, a assuming a pictorial role in its own right.

Once again Floyer exemplifies her belief in the banal to establish a simple and obvious reality. The quiet projection, with its hints at absurdity, creates a unique atmosphere for its audience with potential for continuous reflection.

Peel will be exhibited in Ceal Floyer's upcoming solo exhibition at Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany, opening November '00'. The artist received The Paul Hamlyn Award, London, UK in '00'. Since her last solo show at Casey Kaplan in '999, Floyer's solo exhibitions include:
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark; Index, Stockholm, Sweden; Lisson Gallery, London; Pinksummer, Genoa; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK; and UC Berkeley Art Museum, CA. The artist recently participated in the group exhibitions at Magasin ', Stockholm, Sweden; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, P.S.' Contemporary Art Center, LIC, NY. Ceal Floyer currently lives and works in Berlin.

Casey Kaplan
416 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10014
T/ 212 645 7335
F/ 212 645 7835

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