small world

Mov­ing through Daniel von Sturmer’s ​‘small world’, there is a feel­ing of weight­less­ness, light­ness. Von Sturmer’s eight new video works are pre­sent­ed on LCD mon­i­tors or pro­ject­ed onto small translu­cent screens, posi­tioned on sharp, clean-cut forms of bril­liant white poly­styrene. Every aspect of the instal­la­tion and of the space is a light source, either pro­ject­ing or reflect­ing light. Each object of the instal­la­tion appears to float, as if aware of its own mass and mate­ri­al­i­ty; it dis­places its weight into air, becom­ing a flat, bright image of itself.

Echo­ing the white planes and rec­ti­lin­ear vol­ume of the gallery space, the plinths make up a sec­ond archi­tec­ture with­in the gallery, a struc­ture upon which the indi­vid­ual sce­nar­ios of the works are built, and one whose artic­u­lat­ed form refers to oth­er abstrac­tions, per­haps a sim­pli­fied con­cep­tion of the shape of a city or ear­ly Mod­ernist sculp­ture. The forms at once uni­fy and iso­late the videos. While the works share the con­tin­u­ous white sur­face, the extru­sions and returns inter­rupt the line of vision, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to see the entire­ty of each work from one position.

Pro­gress­ing from one sequence to the next, view­ing these works requires more action from the view­er than sim­ply look­ing. To watch each work, it is nec­es­sary to move, to walk, to become con­scious of the role of the entire body in the process of watch­ing. The posi­tion of each video allows cer­tain par­tial views of the oth­ers and there­by encour­ages a ​“float­ing” between them. Read­ing is, as always, from left to right but one looks back­ward, re-read­ing works already viewed, find­ing moments of rep­e­ti­tion or cor­re­spon­dence between indi­vid­ual episodes that entail a dis­tract­ed mode of reception.

The inter­nal pace of each indi­vid­ual sequence requires a new adjust­ment of focus. Each video records a ges­ture, and the length of the action deter­mines the dura­tion of the work. The ges­ture, in turn is reg­u­lat­ed by the mate­ri­als involved: the vis­cos­i­ty of paint, or the trans­paren­cy of shad­ows. Ulti­mate­ly though, the very mate­r­i­al con­ven­tions of paint­ing, draw­ing and sculp­ture have been test­ed and removed, filmed and re-pre­sent­ed as light upon a surface.