The scales fell (from my eyes)

About

 Appropriation is not so different from Appreciation. It leads from appreciating something, some object in a new, previously unseen way.  To appropriating it, so as to show others what you as the artist have seen. The title of the exhibition refers to the phrase “the scales fell from my eyes”. Seeing in a new light as if for the first time. 

On visiting the Arsenale  the artist was struck by the huge swathes of plywood sheeting, and how much had been left unhung, unadorned by conventional artworks. A huge monolithically proportioned form making its way through the building. As if it were some creature that we hadn’t  stumbled across before. Camouflaged, waiting.

The artist sees the piece as both responding to the space and being contained by it. The plywood is the piece. Unadorned, stark, naked or as it is sometimes, adorned as if by jewels. Or perhaps covered by many symbiotic creatures, each needing the other.

It was already installed, in place. But as a way to hang works, to show them, to boundary them. Not as the artist now invites you see it, as a piece of art. Their appropriation of the piece, the recognition and labelling of it as a monumental piece of art is the intervention.

The artwork starts from the entrance hall to the pavilion at Arsenale Corderie, wending through the building in huge slab sections. Intimidating, overpowering the visitor. Smaller adjuncts, perhaps the mythical creature's eggs, can be viewed as the viewer moves through the piece.   

Consider the form, the surface texture. Consider the form as it fills your field of vision, but also consider the texture – from its overall patterning to a microcosm view of a small section.