Looking into the window of 133 Whitechapel High Street I am confronted by a large object, taller than me, that is partially cloaked in velvet. Its shape reminds me of a puppet theatre or sedan chair, with all the subsequent associations the former object has of theatricality and the latter with archaic systems of class and aristocracy, and all emphasised by the royal maroon of the velvet. On closer inspection I see that the object is solid and is concrete, or certainly looks like it, though that means it’d be phenomenally heavy, and is not alone: There is an accompanying wall-like object of the same concrete-ish material within the window space, the distance between them is respectful, say about eight paces; like that of a supplicant before an authority. It is substantially smaller; it would just about reach my waist, but it would also act as a barrier were we able to approach the large object.
Image © David Garcia
But it is impossible to get closer to either object; they are both behind the window, and this sense of the unverifiable is reinforced throughout the installation: The large sculpture is behind a cloak, behind glass, beyond the wall that is its familiar, and we are allowed to see a doorway that we are not allowed to access. Ingress is impossible. I admire the two figures that make up Genovés’ installation for the Window Space, (a new temporary gallery space, a month old, on Whitechapel High Street,) at a distance, looking from one to another. The to and fro of pairing was further emphasised at the opening event as Genovés had invited Sarah Jones to make an audio piece for the Bank Gallery next door. Consisting of subtle sounds that muttered, scraped and moaned in a gentle game of call and response, it was a fitting compliment to Genovs’ slightly absurd objects. The sense of aptness is strong in the installation. The little object sits satisfyingly snug in the space, perpendicular to the window. The large object’s apex is parallel to a the venting that runs along the top of the space. There is an assuredness to what I could see, there is just enough there.
These are not objects there to dazzle the eye; this is not a window display to arrest the passing shopper, but nor can we ignore them. There is a brooding authority to the large sculpture that now reminds me of the frightening figure of The Groke from Tove Jansson’s stories, and though this is perhaps a dangerous or frivolous way to interpret the work; to add a story, to anthropomorphise what is encountered, this is how we think we can understand the world, through narrative, and I imagine a conversation between myself and the shape / Groke / sedan chair object;
‘You want answers?’ it says,
‘I want the truth,’ I say,
And then I stop the dialogue because that is precisely what isn’t going to happen, and I don’t want answers. Though I have looked for an appropriate narrative in the 36 dramatic situations outlined by Polti; maybe it is there in the first scenario “Supplication”, for which we need a persecutor, a suppliant and “a power in authority, whose decision is doubtful.” That would be me I guess, or us; the audience, about to make our decision, or am I the persecutor and the cloaked object the authority? Perhaps better is the 24th situation “Rivalry of Superior and Inferior” particular as an exemplar is “of a magician and an ordinary man”; that’s the lush velvet again, making me think of performances, of magicians. Of course in the magic trick, and in a narrative, we are heading toward The Reveal, when we’ll know the truth. (Truth as unconcealment, as it was for Heidegger.) But we’ll never get there and I don’t want the truth. I won’t get to find out the secret, I don’t get to lift the veil. I just get to look, I want to keep looking.
by Michael Lawton
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