Graham Gussin

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Dark Corner

Dark Corner - 2002

 

 

 

_MG_7612 copy
Dark Corner
DSC06746

2002

Black Paint on wall. Dimensions variable, unlimited edition

The date refers to the year the piece was conceived.

Dark Corner couldn’t be more straightforward. It is placed in a top corner of a room, painted (very matt) black with no-nonsense, not even that of the artist’s “touch”. It smartly alludes to the wall drawings of Sol Lewitt, with their step-by-step procedures, constituting a kind of democratic demystification of art making. Aesthetically speaking, we are in the realms of what is concrete.

Dark Corner is, however, a trompe l’oeil, a trick of the eye whereby a corner of a room appears to have been shorn away. The lines that converge towards a corner suddenly disappear into a blackness so absorbent that optical focus is impossible. Literally we cannot fix our eyes on the surfaces of the corner and so it becomes a black hole in an interior that is otherwise clearly read by us. It lurks like a cobweb, with a presence that is difficult to ignore, impinging insistently on our peripheral vision when we look away. When installed in a space dedicated to contemporary art, conventionally painted white, Dark Corner is particularly emphatic.

This piece epitomises a fundamental proposition of Gussin’s work overall. It represents everything that lies outside the world we think we know, a world restricted by the nature of our perception and intelligence. It suggests that we see nothing beyond this familiar space – of straight lines and right-angles, of above and below, of reflected light – not because there is nothing beyond it, but because whatever is out there is beyond us and our apprehension. The dark corner is a puncture in the bubble that sustains us, the controlled environment that enables us to function in our everyday ways, taking things for granted as we navigate through a world that works according to “natural” laws.

Gussin is preoccupied with the difference between proximity and absolute remoteness. This pertains as much to a psychological state as a problematising of the parameters of our universe. His subjects are sublime, ironically made more awe-inspiring by the unportentousness of his treatment and a complete resistance to the temptation to embody mystery in an art object. Dark Corner is not a painted vision. It is a symbol of something not divine, but of something epistemologically out of bounds. We can talk about it, but it can’t be described. It is the unknowable.
Jonathan Watkins

Terrain Vague
Doppleganger