DUSSELDORF, Germany — An odd and inherently dramatic exhibition space, Kunst im Tunnel is located in a sloping underground hollow between two traffic tunnels off a riverside promenade. For her site-specific commission for the Düsseldorf Quadriennale (through August 10), Pauline M’Barek, a young multimedia artist born in nearby Cologne, uses the location’s architecture to great effect. A Möbius strip-like path made of tape has been drawn onto the concrete space, tracing its tapered contours in a loping figure eight and guiding viewers into the gallery’s all-but-pitch-black corners. Around the path are black-and-white videos projected onto the walls and a selection of plaster objects. With the space lit primarily through the video projections and spotlights on the sculptures, the room takes on a gray scale tone.
Despite the aesthetic severity of the works on view, touch and intimacy are recurring themes. An intense physicality pervades the pieces. The 90 spiny curiosities that make up the sculpture Artefacts, arranged on a backlit shelf as if on view in a natural history museum are, upon closer look, roughly finished but eerily sensual plaster casts of cupped hands, with the relief of the plaster poured into the palms. The video Void also deals with hands, material, and negative space, depicting a pair of disembodied hands throwing a clay pot. The simple procedure develops into a stark performance when depicted in such austere lighting; the intermittent, sometimes jarring sounds of the clay slapping against the pottery wheel and fingers running along its perimeters fill the gallery space. Using human form and modest materials, M’barek has created a space that, despite its otherworldliness, centers the viewer in her own body.
A version of this article appears in the July/August 2014 issue of Modern Painters magazine.
