Surasi Kusolwong

On each table are placed different types of objects and materials dedicated to various aspects of Kusolwong’s work: everyday use, simple, domestic and sometimes kitsch objects, such as little plaster animals covered with shell pieces, or wooden carved animals and also typical objects of different cultures collected or made by the artist himself. In the installation these items will be mingled to materials and objects referring to the culture of the Arte Povera: cut mirrors and shapes linked to Alighiero Boetti’s symbols and manuscripts.
Thus, playing in Kusolwong’s installation, the visitors go into the rhythm of the relationships participating to the complex and sometimes contradictory construction of contemporary society communication: a dialogue whose questions and answers very often create bouncing, complicating or accelerating, provoking again other questions and other answers… as in the Ping-Pong game, question and answer, on one side and on the other. In the installation there are also: a cube shaped aluminum sculpture linked  to a smoke machine; a volcano-sculpture made of a salt mountain with a lamp at the center; a group of a tent-sculptures made of marble, iron sheets, wood and mirror pieces; a sculpture made of all the pages of the book Living in the End Times by Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst of Marxist background who concerns about the contemporary economic and social crisis; a soft sculpture made of sponges cut into rectangular blocks with a sign saying “Take your time to have a seat and think”; a series of hanging lamps realized by Kusolwong, among which one is laid down with a hand painted text by the Japanese sculptor naturalized American Isami Noguchi who died in 1988.
A playful artwork and of great visual impact, yet profoundly serious in order to make us open once again our eyes on the miserable state in which our planet is today and on the way of living of millions of human beings.