The HDR Doctoral exhibition artwork titled ‘Collapse Structure – Against All Logic’, presents a 5.2 x 7.7meter constructed L shape gallery wall façade, featuring 3 Large Window / architectural panels of glass, 6 video monitors, several text publications and 2 neon word sculptures. The structure represents a model replica of a micro gallery or a contemporary museum art space. The development of the physical structure of my final research degree work has culminated through the extensive practice-based research undertaken in the last 10 years of my practice. From the deconstruction of the painting, sculpture, installation and the art space itself, the Institutional Frame as a support structure of an exhibition can determine what is and isn’t possible depending on the rules, and limitations set in place by the authorities that govern a given space. 

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On the Historical & Material  / Medium Frame

The gallery or Museum wall has traditionally functioned as the physical and visual frame of our engagements with artworks. Although this frame has been rejected and abandoned countless times by artists preferring to find contexts free from a reliance and the confinement of the white cube paradigm, In my practice this disputed and critical framework has been an important part of the complex medium we call installation and has functioned as a site and subject for experimentation, formal innovation and critical questioning.  From the optical vertical axis of the wall to the horizontal axis of the art object parallel to the art space floor, the historical consideration of painting and sculpture as two distinct and separate disciplines is no longer fixed. The historic removal of the plinth aligned the sculpture's vertical axis to the height of the viewer's body positioned on the floor. Performance and time based mediums in installation created even more fluid states of movement between art mediums until in the post-medium condition they have become interchangeable with one another. 

These formalist acts in the history of modernism which attempted to break the hierarchies of established mediums attempted to create more democratic (equal) relationships between the artist, the art object and the viewer. In the site of the installation artists must consider the artworks' relationship to the physical structure of the art space and there negotiates with the structures that are fixed and immovable and those which can be altered. Features such as floors, walls, corridors and even ceilings and exterior spaces have all become valid materials to use and deconstruct in the artist's exhibition work. As discussed in the “On Research Tabless Work” section of this paper, structures of display not only reference the history of Avant-guard transitions from modernism to post-modernism to the (post)-contemporary, but equally reflect the social and economic systems of structure and display. 

‘The Wall’ / Walls have become an integral feature in the contemporary exhibition. They feature in many kinds of aesthetic displays and perform many types of functions both formal, conceptual and critical. In art fairs and certain types of chronological museum exhibitions and displays The Wall works to separate artists, artworks and categories from one another. In art fairs more so The Walls’ significance is to separate the identity of each gallery displaying their artists’ works. In contrast The Wall in the artist's conceptual works or in the process based curated exhibitions of the 60’s onwards to the 90’s and until now, The Wall has signified much more dynamic ideas and meanings.

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On the Contextual & Subjective Frame

Like my Master’s Degree Research work, 2016- 2017 ‘The continuous Hassle of Disbelief’, this work is set in the context of the University. At first I wanted to consider group / or collective action? Could I create a project that incorporated a critical approach to collaboration & participation? Why? Because the context of my current art practice is the university / art institution - I had been planning to create works using the site and resources specific to the university system, that addresses the students' situation as emerging (post)-contemporary artists and negotiates the physical structures of the allocated studios and exhibition spaces. In terms of using the site and structures of the university the work is only specific to the exhibition space. In my Doctoral work I am not trying to challenge the university as an institution as such but rather address the site of the exhibition space in terms of its physical and conceptual limitations on the production of an installation. I am using the objects and material of the atelier and art galleries and applying my work to the museum context. 

The installation is very self-referential in that respect. The visible elements feature in my research, the interviews and the dissertation case studies. Like white paint on a white wall. The exhibition spaces are consecrated sites of art production, therefore there is no need to re-contextualize the space as an art site, however as an art site it has its own context within the university. This fact is what I wish to highlight.

In the Exhibition Work I intend to address the exhibition space that is allocated to the Doctoral students in the Painting department, creating works that address the artistic conditions discussed in my thesis regarding the “Exhibition as Medium” as well as critique my own situation of using the space. I wish to question what is possible within the physical structure of the space and also address the conceptual problems that are faced with the site-specificity of producing a major work in the university. By installing a gallery within a gallery I question, Is a work site specific when it is planned and designed for a specific space or is there a difference between site-specific works that transport and transplant a project and subjects from a different context (without connection or consideration of the exhibition site) into the exhibition site? My Questions are important and so are the viewers. These questions are raised in relation to my production framework “Formula Logic of Place” in which images, materials, objects and documents at a given place constitute the creation of site-specific installation artworks. 

Production Note / Production Brief - (...in the context of the exhibition / to make a site-specific installation in which the museum space itself is a subject of the project) 

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On the Structural Framework

To reiterate... the display represents the iconic form of an Artspace in transition of being built/installed or being deconstructed and de-installed. This is the Collapse Structure (a generic proposition). Institutional art spaces present a range of aesthetics and cultural issues connected to the economic, social and political issues that still operate behind the white walls and glass doors of the contemporary art space. But, The wall inserted along the back side of the installation is a façade wall, like those used in exhibitions to produce new temporary spaces, or to indicate that the museum wall is in fact a construction, a fake or a staged environment replicating the idea of a contemporary gallery or museum. The wall is constructed out of plaster board and aluminum framing, usual materials for the construction of artist-built gallery walls and pristine studio spaces. The wall consists of two distinct sides. The inner exhibition facing side and the outer museum wall facing side. The inside wall which faces the open museum and a smooth L shaped plaster board gallery wall that frames its own context. On the shorter left hand side of the L shaped wall a monitor is mounted, a monitor is also mounted at the far right side of the longer main wall. On the outer side facing the museum wall, the surface is in complete contrast to the formal museum wall and the inside white cube gallery/institutional wall. On the outside the plaster board is raw and unpainted, revealing the construction brand names and the beige paper taping which holds the plaster boards together. Each board is pressed against the aluminum and wood construction framing, giving the backside the appearance of a stage set or construction site - still under construction (still in production). The diagonal structural supports stretch out until they reach the museum floor intersecting the space as they perform the function of holding the structural wall in place. Some of the plasterboard has been broken or chipped to suggest decay or gestures of vandalism against the structure. In pencil there are some marks and scribbles and some vague and ambiguous messages and names written with speed. Installed on the back side of the wall on the left short frame of the L shape structure there is another monitor featuring video material from my Video Interview Series for Survival Aesthetics.   

The 2 Joining ends of the L shaped wall structure are pressed and locked in place between the museum wall and the stone entrance wall. Reaching all the way to the ceiling the aluminum steel frame is set in place. This very large frame holds together and supports the 5.2 x 7.7m Frame wall which stretches across the whole front of the gallery façade, and closes the museum white cube wall. This wall intersects the space and creates a barrier between the white wall and the museum space. (See design plans) Between the framed structure, The large glass Gallery window panels have fallen down from the vertical axis of the wall → rotated on their 90° edges and now lay flat as transparent glass platforms dispersed in the space. This collapse echoes the Greenbergian / Kraussian delineation of the flatness of painting in the historic modern self-reflexive discourse of the medium, the transition of the surface of painting to the space of installation, and the eventual post medium-condition of the “Exhibition as Medium”. 

The rotation and collapse of the glass wall to the glass platform creates a focal point of attention between the floor and reflections of the museum ceilings. The glass window walls which once stood as optical looking glasses and physical barriers are now functioning with sculptural relations to the viewer's body → but remain as optical barriers and lenses that frame editions of the artists research texts used and referenced in the artists Doctoral Thesis. 

Here the glass panels install both aesthetics and symbolic critique related to the themes and topics of Survival Aesthetics in this dissertation. The glass wall has its basis in the foundations of modernist architecture derived from Ludwig Mies Vander Rohe and became the motif of the modern art museum and the pavilions of minimalism. Glass can represent visual and physical transitional layers between the inside and outside spaces of the museum, but they can also refer to social barriers of exclusivity and inclusivity. Large glass windows are not only synonymous with the modernist architecture of contemporary art museums and galleries. We also see these transparent walls installed strategically in the consumer aesthetics of high-end brand stores. The giant windows give the customer or the viewer access to the inside world of the company and its products but only as an illusion of access. For these glass walls also separate and exclude the viewer who is unable to engage with this space economically. Likewise these glass prismatic fortifications guard the institutions of art separating the general public and even at times the unknown artist from the initiated circles of the “intelligencia” and “academia” of the artworld. As discussed in Section 2.6 on Agatha Gothe-Snapes MAM Project 023: Windows are like conduits between spaces. In her project Gothe-Snape interpreted the “window” as an edge of two sites between the “art” inside an art museum and the “life” outside. Or a ‘window’ of opportunity in a Kairotic moment. 

But in “Collapse Structure” the Glass plane takes on more severe tones. Although it displays a conventional structural beauty, It is also a framing device. The L shape Gallery façade Wall and the Glass Panels combined are the opaque and transparent layers of art history and the art system overlaid like layers of reality. The layers we can see and the layers we can’t. The layers we have access to and the spaces we don’t. Through this lens, and from this angle, the spaces behind the Glass which reflects the structure of the Gallery façade Wall, surrounds and possibly disorientates the viewer. The viewer's body can enter the enclosed Gallery façade, however access to the Video Interviews on display along with several other documents and objects is only visual and audible.  

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On the Historical & Referential / Post-Modern Framework

The structure and form of this work is referential of many of the works mentioned in this thesis. These references exist as dialogue and “Entry-Points” in this paper as pre-critical references to this work itself. As mentioned in my methodology, the formal result of the work theoretically exists in the critical dialogue of the dissertation.  A history of gallery and museum interventions, architectural sculptures and constructions support this work. Starting specifically from Yves Klein's - The Void, Bruce Nauman’s - Corridors and Floating rooms,  Rirkrit Tiravanija’s -Apartments and his Fear Eats the Soul relational spaces, Utopia Station’s - Wall façades, Pavilions’ and meeting cubes, Liam Gillicks - Social Space works and Wood wall mazes, On Kawara’s - One Million Year performance gallery museum structures and cubes, My own interpretations of the Living Structures of Ken Isaacs in my 2012 works T.A.C & T.A.L, Koki Tanaka’s - Wall Structures in his Venice Biennale - Precarious Acts Installation, A Vulnerable Narrator at Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” Installation, Possibilities for being together. Their praxis, Art Mito, Okumura Yuki’s - Hisachika Takahashi Constructed Exhibition spaces, The collaborative constructions of Gordon Matta-Clarks exhibition by the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo – MOMAT, as well as a whole series of other works past and present that re-present and re-examine exhibition constructions of temporary spaces, walls, rooms and architecture in the context of gallery and museum spaces. 

In a special diagram drawing I made around 2015, I conceived the early representation of my Survival Aesthetics research and also the unconscious design of my installation Gallery / Wall Structure (Doctoral Degree work), “Collapse Structure”. In this illustration the walls of the dominant theoretical paradigm of modern art begin to fold down to make way for a new critical paradigm to replace the old one. Using marks and arrows I imagined this diagram animated and moving in an endless cycle. The 4 walls (the previous dominant models) fall and collapse only to make way for a new theory to replace the last. This drawing was more or less based on the post-structural philosophies of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari. Stemming from a post – modern / post – structuralist concept that, no meaning is fixed and systems of power collapse, fall and are then replaced with new systems of power. In one of my interviews with Tokyo University of the Arts Doctoral graduate Aquiles Hadjis, July 2019, this pattern of cyclic collapse and establishment is clearly articulated; 

“When the break of modernity happened, ‘post-structuralism’, whatever you want to call it, ‘Punk’, it is a different conversation... but basically, the DIY, self-sustained practices, a lot of people out of their own initiatives started creating environments for this kind of survival. They were very precarious but they could not be sustained in the same way as established bourgeoisie because they didn’t have the backing of the Institutions of society. The other Institutions of society, you know like the government, the financial institutions, etc. a lot of these people were not on board with all of this punk, post-structuralist, situationists stuff. A lot of the supported art was actually closer to design, to fashion and other things. The problem is when that developed further, when actual academia in the terms of Aesthetics looked to these trends, what happened especially in the late 1980’s, the 90’s a lot of these artist led spaces, artist led galleries, artist led critical magazines were like a revolution in a sense. They were saying to established institutions, you know what, we are going to reset the power structures, you have abused your power in this working environment, and I don't need you. But then after 10 or 15 years, in the end those people just became the new intelligencer, the new machans. The persons who had an artistic background were actually just gallerists, and then a person who had an artistic background became good writers and very powerful ones too. In turn they took over the positions in Big institutions left open by those who no longer fit with the new paradigm”.