A point in time
This installation sat opposite spaces between, a contrasting sea of black, with one little point of light. Almost like a star amidst the cosmos. A greenhouse made from paper and wood, with dried plants and a small LED bulb inside to illuminate and cast the shadows.
“Wilson chose to focus on the two long walls, covering one with black material, magic and monotony of which is interrupted by a tiny sparkling model of a building - greenhouse. Dwarfed by the large scale of the black ground it appears even smaller than it is, a jewel like. It carries a lesson: the scale is not in a direct proportion to an aesthetic value.
Illustrated below via a Jpeg, it has lost some of the sparkling magic of the real thing. Standing in front of it in the real space, the ambient daylight makes it more unreal, a brave dreamed up thing. That is one kind of Wilson's use of light, to tighten an inherited wisdom.
The decision to place a tiniest of links to the practical world on to a massive scale of black feels quite wilful and commanding and strongly poetic, while issuing a warning - just a speck of protected life in the huge black nothingness. Visual rendering of the biblical story David and Goliath.
The tiny golden "greenhouse" protects some plants - it seems. Wilson harvests the force of the visual hyperbole to issue a warning that the ever growing needs and wants of humanity are not sustainable. The Earth is finite. The natural laws untamable. The nature responds to humanity's aim for more and more of everything the earth offers by shutting down that particular line of life or mineral.
Wilson mentions that the aim of her "meditative installation" is "to encourage the viewer to reconnect with the natural world". However, I sense a stronger warning: the vast black empty wall carries only tiny copy of "reconnection through protection" - not enough to recover the rest of the nature -that is black and empty, inevitable result of economy of growth demanding more and more of natural resources. The Earth is finite. The tiny scale of the greenhouse reminds me of the two important but largely ignored thinkers: Victor Josef Papanek (1923 -1998, his Design for the real world, 1971) and Emil Friedrich Schumacher ( 1911-1977) who argued for the sustainable development in his 1973 book Small is Beautiful. Below is a response to claims of some socialist regimes, eg the then USSR and their satellites in Eastern Europe:
"Socialists should insist on using the nationalised industries not simply to out-capitalise the capitalists – an attempt in which they may or may not succeed – but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort. If they can do this, they have the future in their hands. If they cannot, they have nothing to offer that is worthy of the sweat of free-born men." (Part IV, Chapter 3 'Socialism')
Mankind does not listen to the few wise men or women. Sadly, it effortlessly prefers to listen to the persons like Putin, Hitler, Trump etc. Sometimes, art has a chance to wake up the reason that sleeps. (A gentle reminder of Francesco Jose de Goya y Lucientes , 1746 -1828, The sleep of Reason produces monsters, Los Caprichos, 1797)” - excerpt from Slavka Sverakova’s review
