The Grey Area presents I Confess I am an Artist a solo exhibition of the work of Dutch Artist Karin van Pinxteren. This exhibition is showing from 8 October -30 October in Brighton.
The Grey Area, located in Brighton’s city centre, is an independent artist run gallery space, located in a basement apartment. This space supposedly offers an ‘non-sterile’ space for contemporary art projects. However, the current exhibition, I Confess I am an Artist, questions this spaces ability to put forth a meaningful exhibition that contributes to contemporary artistic practice.
As a spectator in this space, there was an unnecessary level of confusion in regards to the artwork and the display of the work. The meaning of specific works were not easily identifiable. It seemed as if there was an attempt to turn the exhibition itself into the work of art, thus removing the focus from the artworks being displayed to the gallery space. The space itself is located in the basement, and when entering the actual building on opening night the artist herself confronted each visitor with a kind of mock performance. This performance didn’t stand out as anything I would recognise as a performance until reading the small amount of information provided within the gallery space.
The artist seemed to be dealing with her own issues surrounding her artwork, and how she interacted with the incoming stream of visitors had little or no link to the purpose of the exhibition. This initial performance technically provided each spectator with an ‘exclusive artwork’ in the form of a stamp on your hand stating ‘Inhale with me’. This simple act had the potential to be an extremely viable work of performance art, in this setting it was simply boring and ill-placed.
What appears to be the main attraction of this exhibition is the video work entitled ‘Classified’. This piece presents the artist interacting with a child, supposedly communicating in a sophisticated way via flashing lights and paper tissues. The most overt problem with this piece is that the work itself does very little to divulge any information. Furthermore the accompanying short paragraph makes hasty assumptions not only about the meaning of the work but also about the audiences level of comprehension when addressing iconological symbols. As with the rest of the exhibition, this work doesn’t provide any interesting material or provoke any kind of response that is worth mentioning.
As myself and my friend left this exhibition the statement “What a waste of time” was not only thought, but also verbalised. Which certainly begs the question, why write a review? While this particular exhibition did very little to entice me, it definitely made me question the use of gallery space, as well as the ways in which contemporary artistic practice has the potential to be a viable medium for representation.
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