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Dave Hullfish Bailey (USA, 1963) |
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Californian artist Dave Hullfish Bailey analyses given structures and their dismantling and reassembly, “performing the repurposing”. Inspired by Bateson’s principles of the ecology of the mind, his works investigate models of social organisation and their possible subversion.
His works, exhibited throughout Europe and at the Lyon Biennial in 2007, are being presented in Italy for the first time. He generally works with multiple media, using drawing, photography, objets trouvés and installations. The rather playful appearance of his installations conceals a profound sense of instability, virtually a metaphor of the precarious balance of civil society, which is founded on superstructures that can be completely overturned in crisis situations. |
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The work shown here, created specifically for Green Platform, originates from an interesting parallel that the artist established among three dimensions: the circular structure of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, also maintained in passages from the text written by this iconic representative of Land Art; the Slab City Library, a deteriorated district where California motorhome owners seeking peace and quiet built a simple hut as a place to exchange books, which Hullfish Bailey interprets as the representative model of the structuring and transmission of knowledge within a community; the installation environment, physical yet ectopic because it pertains to a design medium that lies outside social infrastructures. Interlacing these different levels, Hullfish Bailey places an installation – composed of sawhorses and planks of recycled wood, i.e. everything needed for a library reading room – in the exhibition space, surrounded by 15 photographs that “cite” the library walls from every angle. The planks, retrieved from previous CCCS exhibition set-ups, bear parts of sentences from Smithson’s text, which the artist has modified. The dismantling and reuse plan is thus a dual one: objectual and verbal, i.e. materials and text alike. And it is achieved by modifying the structure of aggregate data, which are revitalised and restreamlined.To experience this work, the observer ritually follows the circular path indicated by Smithson in his text, the path already taken by the artist to photograph the library and now renewed by us as we forge a profound relationship with the work and its spatial, temporal and cultural references. |
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Working approximation of a conventional form, re-determined by prevailing conditions (second version), 2009
16 photo prints with exterior views of the community-operated library at Slab City, California
26,5 x 26,5 cm each
installation produced by CCCS, Florence
Courtesy the artist.
Photo Credit: CCCS, Firenze; Valentina Muscedra
From the center of some language left at the edge of the end of the frontier
(kit for a conference table; first version), 2009
site-specific installation
installation produced by CCCS, Florence
Courtesy the artist.
Photo Credit: CCCS, Firenze; Valentina Muscedra |
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Working approximation of a conventional form, re-determined by prevailing conditions (second version), 2009
Exterior views of the community-operated library at Slab City, California
Courtesy the artist |
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From the center of some language left at the edge of the end of the frontier
(kit for a conference table; first version), 2009
Project for site-specific installation
Courtesy the artist
Prodotta dal / Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea
Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze |
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