Massimo Bartolini
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Ikon
Massimo Bartolini
12 July - 26 Aug 2007
Venue: Ikon Eastside
http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk
Box Office: 0121-248-0708
Bartolini’s works alter and disturb our usual processes of perception, making us reflect on the relativity of what appears stable and unchangeable. His installations, which have included an elevated floor that distorts our sense of space as well as rooms suffused with perfume and the sound of leaking water, both provoking strong physical experiences.
Ikon Eastside will be transformed into a court for Jeu de Boule, a game with origins that lie in 19th Century France. Bartolini has expressed an interest in the strategic, war-like nature of the competition embodied by the man-made, highly engineered boules that jostle for position. At the same time the game has a powerfully Zen-like character. From the moment the boule leaves a player’s hand to its final resting place there is an unpredictable, unknowable gap, a fracture between tactics and trajectory.
In an adjoining room a revolving video projector will produce an image of jazz musician Thelonious Monk. Whirling around the room, the image will move constantly in and out of focus, its size and shape shifting continuously, so changing also the perception of the space. The hallucinatory experience of this literally moving image suggests a loss of consciousness, a dizzying fall.
