Karen Kraven

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
01.24–03.02.2013
Room 2

With As Above, So Below, Karen Kraven also involves the viewers’ imaginary, by requiring them to recount, even invent, the story that will link the elements which they observe or experience. An immense and very grainy black and white photograph, covers the back wall of the small exhibition room in the manner of a mural. Covered by a grid made out of magnetic rocks, the image shows the condemned entrance of a room which, according to the legend, is where Al Capone carried out his illegal activities during the prohibition. The bib number of a jockey, Earle Sande, who raced in 1930 on the horse Gallant Fox—likened to a meteorite—also leads back to the gangster, who was an avid horseracing and gambling enthusiast. A more enigmatic photograph, framed and wall mounted, shows a white spherical form that stands out in a dark environment, while a ball, of the same size as the immortalized glimmer, is embedded in another gallery wall. The holes drilled into its spherical surface betray its bowling ball nature, suspended between two rooms, between two times, in the image of the installation itself which, by way of the mural placed at one of its ends, extends into another world, from another time and space. A copy of an old Playgirl magazine and a sculptural structure are also present on the site.

Because it is sealed, the provocative opening arouses curiosity and attracts viewers’ attention like a magnet. What is left on the crime scene? What really happened behind these fences? To what extent are the magazine and the other scattered accessories related to the anecdote the artist is trying to make us think about? Like a stage set awaiting the actors who are to play out the scene that is supposed to unfold there, the installation seems to stand still in time. Its old fashioned feel makes it a perfect setting for projecting the imagination: this picture from another time makes it even easier to make up a story. Moreover, it is worth noting that Karen Kraven has always been interested in cinema, particularly in film sets and the tricks that are used on them. This was made evident in the installation This is a Place to Wait out The Rain, presented in 2011 at the Leonard and Bina Ellen gallery, as part of the graduate MFA student exhibition Ignition. The work revealed the process whereby the illusion of rain is created in films, i.e. by sliding drops along an exterior facing window. Though this is rarely the way raindrops form on a window pane during a storm, film enthusiasts always fall for it. In a somewhat disconcerting way, this goes to prove that we sometimes pay more credence to our picture of reality than to the reality itself.

Voir www.karenkraven.com