Page 29 - Nihil Alchemia CRUCIBLE Issue One MAY 2020 Flip Book

Video art is increasingly being incorporated
within multi-sensory installations and unique
viewing environments. Here work by Zheng
Bo, Pipilotti Rist, and Heather Phillipson are
examples of varying approaches that stretch
conventional video art presentations.

Zheng Bo presents Pteridophilia 1-4 — his
ongoing video series which explores a future
world of erotic connection between humans
and plants. Four large flat screens rest low
to the ground, facing rows of potted ferns
propped up on cement bricks.

Watching the videos necessitates weaving
through the space, and crouching or sitting.
As I view naked men on screen licking and
caressing plants, it is hard to find a view not
partially obscured by a frond, and the ferns
are brushing up against me. The parallels
make me acutely aware of every human
presence nearby.

British artist and poet Heather Phillipson
also conceives a futuristic garden, but this
time humans are merely compost and
food. Yet, Mesocosmic Indoor Overture is
strangely devoid of life. It is a mix of dead
timbers contrasted with a colourful neon
pop inspired aesthetic.

Messy, fibrous mulch lays scattered over the
gallery floor. On top are tree stumps and
odd bird houses with tails. The only life in In With All my Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever,
this garden is the brightly coloured images Yayoi Kusama heightens our senses through a

writhing on several vertically oriented disruption of surfaces. A spatial breakdown
screens. A familiar earthy, woody outdoor occurs as huge flowers loom above covered in
smell fills the air. It is not clear what is going her signature coloured dots. Kusama refers to the
on, but wall panels inform that images are effect she aims to induce as ‘self-obliteration’.
of the Skunk Cabbage — notorious for its With attention distracted away from ‘the self’, it
flowers which smell of rotting meat. feels freeing and her garden takes on an infinite
quality.