Nina Canell's latest exhibition, "Future Mechanism Rag Plus Two Grams," at Simian in Copenhagen, unravels the complex interplay between industrial materials and the latent energy they encapsulate.
This exhibition features two ongoing bodies of work that explore the inherent potential in repurposed and discarded materials, focusing on their capacity to generate energy through friction and vibrational interactions.
Canell's approach dissects the traditional lifecycle of industrial materials, often confined within the parameters of planned obsolescence. Instead, she extends their narrative, investigating the period from raw material extraction to their eventual state as dust. Her sculptures challenge the perception of time and materiality, suggesting that these objects oscillate between evolutionary and extractive phases, continually engaging in energetic exchanges.
Central to Canell's exhibition are her vibrational sculptures, delicate assemblages of everyday materials—string, shoelaces, cords, and wires—recontextualized from their original manufactured purposes. These sculptures generate sound through frictional contact, with frequency generators acting as the pulse behind their auditory presence. This transformation of utilitarian objects into sound-producing entities exemplifies Canell's notion of "sculptures in the present tense," capturing the ephemeral nature of energy transfer.
The exhibition’s namesake piece, "Future Mechanism Rag Plus Two Grams," epitomizes this concept. Here, various materials produce a symphony of unexpected sounds, each contributing to a larger orchestration of movement and resonance. The sculptures become architectural, echoing the subterranean columns of the exhibition space and creating a dynamic dialogue between the water above and the bedrock below. This interplay underscores the transformative potential of these materials, transcending their initial industrial constraints and becoming part of a continuous, sonorous system.
Canell’s work also delves into the historical and material specificity of dust, framing it not as an endpoint but as an intermediary state in the transformation of matter. Dust, with its positive electrostatic charge, accumulates and adheres to surfaces, embodying the residual energy of industrial processes. This notion is explored through the lens of ostrich feathers, an ancient technology that has found modern applications in industries like automotive manufacturing due to their unparalleled ability to collect dust.
The modular video "Energy Budget," a collaboration between Canell and Robin Watkins, expands on this theme. The video presents a slow-motion scene of a car body passing through a chamber lined with ostrich feathers, evoking a hauntingly beautiful interaction between organic and industrial elements. This sequence highlights the temporal fluidity of Canell's work, where past, present, and future converge in a continuous cycle of material transformation.
In the decommissioned garage space of Simian, the exhibition draws a parallel between the nascent car body and the dust it will ultimately become, emphasizing the transient nature of all materials. Canell's sculptures and video installations reveal the latent energy within disused objects, suggesting that their true potential lies not in their original function, but in their capacity to evoke new sensory and temporal experiences. Through her meticulous exploration of materiality and time, Canell offers a profound reflection on the impermanence and continual evolution of the industrial world.
