Noise in my Head

06. 09. – 18.10.2008

Opening 
Friday, September 05th, 7 – 9 pm
 

Antje Wachs gallery is pleased to present the new project Noise in my Head by the Swiss artist Clarina Bezzola. This will be the second solo show in our Gallery.  

Since the beginning of her artistic career Bezzola has been investigating psychological and social patterns of behavior which we acquire to hide any individual aspects, aspects that might not find approval in the light of the public eye. Such self-protecting comportment, which Bezzola calls psychological shields of protection, are methods we adopt to hide our weaknesses in hope to fulfill social expectations. Initially, Bezzola’s investigation concentrated on the physical and therefore more tangible aspects of protection, but then she advanced into the more psychological realms to finally arrive at the conclusion, that it is our very thoughts, which are the strongest armor. We analyze every situation to get a feeling of strength and security, only to end up finding ourselves estranged from your body and our environment. We’ve become nothing more than a shell carrying our abstract and life alienating concepts.  

To illustrate this estranged situation, Bezzola has created an installation, greeting the viewer upon entering the gallery. 35 skin colored heads, cast of rubber, are suspended bodiless in the front
space of the gallery. Their generic features and therefore lack of individual characteristics are meant to underline our discrepancy between mind and body and radiate a cold and lifeless atmosphere. Upon closer examination however the lifeless vacuum gets filled when the viewer hears individual voices, in fact extremely intimate monologues, escaping from each head. These are the voices in her head, Bezzola explains, 35 of the artists closest people, who influence her thinking. For the purpose of this installation, Bezzola asked each of these individuals to sit in a room for one hour, alone, and to verbalize every thought that came to their minds; a monologue which was then recorded. It was less the specific content Bezzola was after, then the atmosphere each individual radiates with their voice, way of forming sentences and manner of speech. While wandering through the installation one will find the atmosphere simultaneously alienating
and intimate. The physicality of the heads recedes and gives space to a more abstract landscape of thoughts.    

In the center of the gallery space Clarina shows a 3 1/2 meter sized gouache painting, illustrating an apocalyptic scene in which a crowd of heads, lying in a wide desert landscape, completely lost in their thinking process, are surprised by a giant oversized thumb, crashing down upon them. This earth shattering intrusion catches these dreamers so intensely by surprise that the heads crack open and release all thoughts caught in that moment. 

The project space features a video piece, called Judgement Day. For this piece Clarina Bezzola spent a day walking around New York, the city where she has been living in the past 18 years, wearing two oversized fingers covering her hands reducing her dexterity to mere pointing. With these judgement gloves, the artist demonstrates her own addiction to constantly judge and create hierarchies, one of the main contributors to our sad state of isolation.

As a last chapter, presented in the last room of the gallery, Bezzola shows photographs illustrating yet another scene of alienation. This time the artist her- self is completely lost in conversation with her inner voices, even while visiting most idyllic or cultural sights. Unable to experience this special moment, she spends all her time intensely debating with an expressionless rubber head tied over her face.