Chaos im Quadrat - Anna-Lena Tsutsui

In a life made of concrete and blinking advertisement, Anna-Lena Tsutsui identifies thetraces of a natural force, in which human action has degenerated into pure decoration.Through her work, she observes the residues of this force in a society that is ready totransform everything into products. In the form of videos or photographs, the imagesproposed by the artist are evidence of what we have made of this primordial energy,of its variations and its forms. Questioning the use of the artificial made from thenatural, Anna-Lena Tsutsui stimulates an awareness that leads, consciously or not, totaking a position. This is attained through a tended aesthetic spectrum, which giveslife to voluntarily enjoyable compositions. The direct form of the images allows the fullconcentration on the theme. Humor is pervasive in the Tsutsui’s work: The beautiful,the absurd and the comical become paradoxical instruments through which sheapproaches the seriousness of the topic that is sometimes close to the drama.The looped videos are perpetual motion machines in which the sense, cried outor whispered, is brought out by its repetition. The artist repeats the images withoutexcess or redundancy in order to let the things reveal themselves progressively. Thisis the case in The Sphere, a tripartite video work, which was realized in 2012 and 2013.The first part shows the rolling of a mass made of concrete in a storehouse. Yellowflowers have courageously grown through the holes created in the sphere. Governedby an anarchic force, the ball bruises the flowers as it travels around. The same sphereis the protagonist in the two other videos composing the piece: massive, bulky andblind, the object prevails over nature by encasing and destroying it. In a gravel quarry,the ball rolls vertiginously fast down a hill of grit. All the way down the rosy-coloredflowers are cut and visibly ejected. Playing the role of Sisyphus, Tsutsui uses the loopand lets the ball go down again and again, smashing the flowers: The lack of sense inthe gesture and its brutality abound forcefully.If in The Sphere it is nature that is imprisoned, crushed and finally even killed, thesituation is inverted in Panorama Boa Vista. The bunch of flying plastic bags in thisvideo almost seems to escape from an omnipresent and omnipotent nature: Theartifact has no reason in the immenseness of a free earth. The presence of this otherball, not massive, but light and fleeing, becomes an oxymoron: the contrast betweenthe object and the reality in which it is living is extreme. In the form of a multicoloredphantom, the artifact strays without pausing; it is taking flight. The wind pushes it to rollaway, to leave this world as if there was a world other than bushes, stones and sand.The video finally seems to retaliate upon the urban context for suffocating nature androles get reversed: For once the intruder is the plastic, the simple and chemical colors,the abundance of products. These plastic bags have no excuse in such a landscapeand are condemned to flee forever. Alienated in this way, the artificial becomes weak,grotesque and senseless. Nevertheless its flight is beautiful: Without leaving a trace, itshows us wide skies, white sand and lunar-like landscapes.Vom Fliegen is an organic, but unfamiliar form. The ceramic sculpture asserts itselfin the space due to its particular aspect. It surprises, because it is strange andcondenses two components of the work by Anna-Lena Tsutsui, the comical and thetragical. Transfixed, uneasy and disturbing, but also caricatural and amusing, becauseraffish, this orange being is an allegory of the living condition in the city. Disabled andsomehow interrupted, Vom Fliegen recalls Tsutsui’s piece The Balcony, realized in2011: The vigor of life is banned by an external presence that prohibits a full expansion.If this aspect has already been introduced by works such as Another Balcony 1 andAnother Balcony 2, Vom Fliegen develops the concept to a greater extent. Thesculpture has an organic, soft form. Its weight of 30 kg as well as its dimensions recalla physical configuration. Beyond its formal aspect, for which the piece is actuallydisjoined, the sculpture expresses a deeper uncertainty and instability. Its arduoussituation provokes an almost existential, human, malaise. As an unfinished act, it hangsin the space. Vom Fliegen underlines the tragicomic aspect of this human reality.If Vom Fliegen finally elucidates the human range, then Concrete Structure 1 developsthis point definitively. If, from a formal point of view, this piece differs from the otherpieces, it nonetheless represents the conceptual climax. The structure is made ofconcrete, a material that the artist criticizes, but to which she is attached by fascinationand an expressive need. Here it becomes the scenario in which figures walk around.Without the possibility to escape or to advance, these introduced characters evokea sort of procession without exit. Made of ceramics, the figurines are encased in animposing architecture, even though just initiated. In accordance with the allegoricalapproach of the pieces by Tsutsui, the characters are not explicitly anthropomorphic:They still do evoke a certain morphology, a posture that makes us perceive them ashumans. After all, it is natural to project oneself into the scene and to feel with thesecreatures that are caught in an absurd physical or mental enclosure. The link to theinstallation Baby Dolls becomes evident: As a mutilation of the natural – be it human,animal or vegetal – the bordering is always wrong.The human figure appears only rarely in Tsutsui’s work: its image and its presence areexcluded from the formal evidence of the pieces. However, man is always there, at theorigin of the deformation and as victim of its creations.Bianca Bozzeda, 20131011