Wednesday 2 March 2011

Bite 71: Fernando Ortega - N. Clavipes Meets S. Erard, Movement 5, 2008

N. Clavipes Meets S. Erard, Movement 5, 2008, photographic print, 52 x 34 cm
The only strings on this silent harp are from a spider who, with the artists insistence, has made the instrument its home. With associations of the heavenly and the decaying combined, the 'harp' becomes a surrealist object dealing with temporality and contradiction. The series, in 6 'movements', acts as a kind of visual symphony, the arachnid creating its own seemingly chance orchestration, as it moves around the frame building a web of 'strings'.


Featured in the exhibition All of This and Nothing at Hammer Gallery, Los Angeles.