Mind Awake, Body Asleep
During opening day. © Carlos Bunga.
Secession +info
In this exhibition, Bunga examines the mysteries of the relationship between body and mind, which become especially manifest when we sleep. The two sides’ recurrent separation and the separate nocturnal existences they lead are a source of fascination for the artist, who makes his works in a process informed by rational decisions as well as intuitive choices. In rooms that he has conceived as passages between different states of mind, he probes the tension between consciousness and the subconscious, the vulnerability of the body rendered helpless by sleep, and the function of architecture, furniture, and clothes as protective shells.
Playing with the idea of the exhibition as a setting of different mental and emotional spaces similar to the fluid and hard-to-grasp experiences in dreams, each of the four rooms is set apart by its own mood and the visitors are invited to let themselves drift through the spaces, experiencing their different sensual qualities and feeling the diverse characteristics of materials, surfaces, and smells. The artist also responds to the distinctive spatial situation in the Secession’s downstairs galleries, which present as a succession of very different rooms with unique architectural characteristics. The ground plan of the first room, located beneath the lobby, has the geometric shape of a Greek cross. In the two wall recesses on the left and right that define the room, he has realized two architectural cardboard constructions that on a physical level engage with the space and simultaneously represent different states of mind. The niches are glazed, like shopwindows, alluding to the separation between viewer and art that one encounters in a framed work.
Exhibition views. Photo: Rana Hamadeh.
The trope of separation echoes in two objects that address themselves to the visitors’ imagination: arranged on the floor are enigmatic fragments, and it is only by recourse to the corresponding drawings on the wall that one can reconstruct the complete form – of a chair and a stool – before the mind’s eye. An environment features a metal bed, employing an image from the collective memory that carries vivid dystopian associations with imprisonment or illness. This work inspired the exhibition’s title, an allusion to the pandemic-related restrictions, which have led to a general retreat into domestic life. The resulting bodily inertia, Bunga says, has created an asymmetry between mental and physical activity: while the body is imprisoned, the mind sets free while sleeping. For the artist himself, the time of the pandemic has meant a renewed focus on painting, into which he now integrates plant parts like grasses and flowers—a new ingredient that reflects his yearning for nature:
“Our ideas of home and work have changed, as have the ways in which we live and labor. Nature is one of the strongest elements in the studio during this time.”*
Exhibition views. Photo: Rana Hamadeh.
In contrast with the architectural interventions in the first room, which are protected by glass panes, the pictures in the third room hang from the ceiling. Painted felt and silk fabrics form a labyrinthine structure through which the visitors are encouraged to chart their own paths. The resulting minute air turbulences set the pictures in motion, producing a constantly shifting three-dimensional image. Bunga’s trademark technique for mixing sizing and pigment results in agitated surfaces with very pronounced craquelure effects. The aesthetic of fissured and peeling paint also gestures back to his beginnings as an artist, when he took his pictures to buildings slated for demolition to expose them to the elements, embracing the ensuing alteration processes as a component of the work. The sensual experience of painting grows yet stronger in the last room, where he has poured glue and colors to create a walkable floor painting—the visitors find themselves literally inside the picture.
*In the Studio. Carlos Bunga, in: Collectors Agenda, 2021
MENTAL LANDSCAPE PROCESS
Video: Karl Kilian. Camera: Bernd Herger & Karl Kilian. Music: Karl Kilian. Courtesy: Secession.
© Carlos Bunga.
Curator: Bettina Spörr
2021. Viena, Austria.
