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Alexander Forbes' Berlin Art Brief Posts Tagged ‘Shoney Rivnay’
May 7, 2012, 10:22 am
Larger than Love: a Collaborative Exercise in Dichotomy
9/21/2014 Shoney Rivnay | Berlin Art Brief | ARTINFO.com
Though an official collateral event to the 7 Berlin Biennale, “Larger than Love,” could not be farther from Artur Zmijewski’s exhibition. Even for Berlin at large, the installation seems fit for only a very few gallery spaces or institutions. The project is a collaboration between artists Shony Rivnay and Lindsay Compton and curator Tim Goossens, as brought together by branding consultant Thomas Rom. Entering the Halle am Wasser, the Hamburger Bahnhof’s “Art Campus,” which lies behind the museum, transports one into a strange surreality: part futuristic, part illuminated dungeon, part high production value art, it’s an exercise in balance such that no one part overpowers the other.
Formally, the piece consists of a large installation, which Rivnay modeled after a cloud and on which he wrote the Hebrew phrase for, “Love me,” obsessively for five months straight. However, this initial component transformed greatly upon Rom’s introduction of Goossens into the mix. “Tim [Goossens] brought in Lindsay, because he thought that we needed a fresh perspective. He loved the installation, but he felt that if we’re doing it for the biennial, then let’s do something that they haven’t seen before,” says Rom. That something was Compton’s magnificent sound installation that floods the space with an aural dark chaos by the combination of Rivnay’s voice, moans from a porn flick, scratching, and deep bass. The sound truly adds a weight to a piece that is, on it’s own, sufficient, but perhaps a little too nice. Goossens also introduced a hole in the back of the cloud such that it rises and falls with a travel of two or so meters every seven minutes, trying in perfectly to the uncanny nature of the audio track.
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