Klimt02 | Gallery presents in Barcelona Powderly a new exhibition by new Zealand artist Lisa Walker. Powderly is a name on a house I saw in Melbourne some weeks ago, very odd, I've never seen this word before and even more unusual to name a house this. I've been interested in unusual poetic titles lately, words that can mean many things, are quite strange the way they're written and spoken, and have something to do with my work.

"Powderly is a name on a house I saw in Melbourne in June, very odd, I've never seen this word before and even more unusual to name a house this. I've been interested in unusual poetic titles lately, words that can mean many things, are quite strange the way they're written and spoken, and have something to do with my work."  /  Lisa Walker

...

Experimenting / 

Experimenting means thinking. We think on the basis of other experiences, whether those that we have had or not.
We think what we can rather than what we want.

Lisa Walker's approach, her experimentation, makes a lot of sense in these processes of knowledge: it offers us a body of work that from the outset cannot be easily steered through our established channels. Seeing these pieces forces us to work on new syllogisms, analogies and positions.

Lisa leads us to add a new experience: arbitrariness, perplexity, curiosity, paradox, disorientation, the everyday... everything that makes us seek out more space in our brains to broaden our thinking that little bit more: experiencing experience.

Reducing /

From a material perspective, creating means reducing. As does shifting from what is possible (everything) to the form (one). Explaining, putting into words, making sense of an artist's work, inevitably means reducing still further. Explaining means reducing twofold. So sometimes it is better not to explain.

Since we are capable of doing exactly what we say must not be done (sound familiar?), we set about reducing: Lisa's jewels are contemporary amulets (and how about the adjective, sound familiar?). No, they are not talisman objects, they hold no supernatural powers (well, who knows the strength of the placebo effect of the human condition?), but they most certainly belong to the approach of Duchamp and the ready-made, to the all-powerful kingdom of the will. These amulets have meaning because they offer us a new paradigm in which to rethink use, in which to generate distance and in which to be able to ‘admire’ these objects in their ‘new place’.

And if there is one thing that we as workers in the world of art would single out as a decisive factor in what it means to be creative, it is the intelligence of the will and of the power of decision that an artist has (must have). The will to select, synthesise and reconstruct is, as we understand it, what real artistic potential is about. And Lisa has it.

Let us enjoy the experience... if we can.

Showing /

And now (and among other reasons), thanks to these pieces we can perform one of our favourite tasks: exhibiting, pointing out and being quiet.

Showing. This is the main task (irrepressible task) to which we gallery owners are devoted. And yes, we second the discourse proposed by Lisa, reading and sharing the words of Leonard Cohen that she has chosen to discuss her work: simply experimenting.

No big thing, perhaps? 

" I think you work out something. I wouldn’t call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don’t really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It’s just my experience. All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience.“  /   Leonard Cohen interview / interviewer Dorian Lynskey /  The Guardian February 2012


Text by klimt02 / © klimt02 bcn