Entropic | 2018
Halfway between an exhibition and an open studio, / ɛnˈtrɒpɪk / (entropic) focuses on some recurring themes of the artist's practice that moves between nature and culture, art and science, global and personal dimension. Scientific language is used to subvert the image of things and observe the continuous change of nature: natural processes and changes of state are in fact fundamental for Kaur to recall attention to the meaning of existence and the laws that regulate it.
The display lives on a double track between Italy and India, although its vision intends to embrace a wider understanding of the current environmental situation linked to climate change, capitalistic system and globalization. Venice and the phenomenon of high water are the starting point for a series of works that trace a parallel between physical reactions and actuality. The lagoon city, as in the times of John Singer Sargent, remains a place that escapes the time and the changes imposed by modernity, isolated and technologically ingenious, characterized by its beautiful buildings that float ethereally and improbably between sky and sea. It is the city of theaters and illusions, whose sense of unreality is emphasized by the way streets and buildings play with perception, in a succession of trompe l'oeil[1]
The exhibition's title, as the first video in the exhibition, borrows a definition of statistical mechanics, describes a system in change towards the maximum internal disorder. The slow melting of the ice immortalized here refers to the Arctic, to the rise of the oceans, through a cold and inexorable representation, which deliberately does not show where the water is. A minimal experiment, which works like an hourglass that highlights how the temporal aspect is inherent in these reflections.
A sense of urgency is widespread in space through a constant and insistent sound accompanied by calls to water. This, in all its forms, returns and invades the exhibition path, as in slow and inexorable progress. Ideally continuing the parallel with Sargent, it is the fog, which envelops and obstructs the view, to surprise in the frescoed hall of Casa Mannozzi.
"Curtains of mist" (2018), is an immersive installation, which relates Venice and Punjab, mass tourism and smog caused by intensive agriculture led by the green revolution in the 1960s and 70s, macro phenomena symptoms of the crisis of the global economic system[2]. The video that is hidden among the black curtains, highlights the strong and constant presence of the water, its silent and continuous movement.
Supported by an emergency walkway, "Sustaining Collapse" 2018, similarly, deploys the lagoon's visions and the deep black of the pollution that dominates the Indian region in time and space. Through a graphic style, which refers to Indian miniatures and their ability to bring together different times and places, the book places the stories of these delicate environmental systems on the same level, threatened by uncontrolled exploitation.
The multimedia installation "It's happening, while rotating and revolving..." (2018), realized during her first part of her sojourn in Italy at Fondazione Pistoletto – Cittadellarte (Biella), is the point around which the exhibition unrolls and rewinds in a succession of references and variations. The work solicits our perception that remains poised between the harmonic dance of the images taken under the microscope of natural elements and the sound of the acoustic signal that warns of the increase of the tide. In a progressive crescendo, the natural cosmogony that tirelessly and inexorably moves before our eyes is cadenced by a sound that does not seem to belong to it, an alarm that refers to terrible consequences.
[1] Cfr. W. Adelson, J. S. Sargent, R. Ormond, Sargent's Venice, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 25
[2] The words reported in the installation are taken from Siddharth Singh, The Great Smog of India, Penguin Random House India, 2018. An excerpt from the text is readable at this link: https://scroll.in/article/901392/how-the-green-revolution-contributed-to-indias-air-pollution-crisis
note by the curator: Serena Trinchero
The project took place in:
Museo Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy
in collaboration with Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, India,
Supported by,
Museo Casa Masaccio Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea