- Venue
- The Hospital Club
- Location
- London
Art with a budget, rather than art on a budget. Some art impresses by making you wonder how it is achieved, and by dazzling feats of technology. The Undivided Light has such a wow factor. Even if you don’t want to know what is behind the smoke and mirrors, art with a production team can produce modern miracles.
A floating woman is reflected underneath, proving she is levitated. Somehow the mechanism is hidden in her flowing hair. But it is the reality of her skin which really arrests. We can’t help checking her thorax just to see if she may be an actual breathing person. From all angles she is so real that she does not look as cold as wax. Actually, she does not really need to float in order to impress, just lying there she reminds of Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad, but somehow alive. She seems unconscious of her floating, not even dreaming about floating, not defying gravity psychologically, only physically. She wears some sort of nightie or pyjama thing, white cotton, as if from the past. She is imagined rather than imagining.
The Undivided Light installation makes occasional buzzing noises akin to insect zappers, as the light wavers and flits between rods. You can walk around it, almost within it, like being within a benign version of The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria. Paul Fryer consciously refers to other works and artists, remaking ideas in his own fashion.
I happened to visit the exhibition on two days. On the first visit the light was gentle, almost subtle. On the second visit the electrical activity was much more tempestuous, and it turns out that the programme works to varying algorithms, and changes its tone like the weather. Outside the exhibition there is fair warning that there are flashing, epilepsy inducing lights. I don’t have epilepsy but do get migraines due to visual disturbance and can’t even stay in the same room as a Bridget Riley. This lightning had me out of the gallery within two minutes, and even now, several hours later, I can still see the residual light image, which makes visiting partly a game of Russian Roulette with the light levels.
There is little information available online about The Undivided Light – it doesn’t appear to be on listings sites, and on both visits I had the place to myself. I am glad not to have inadvertently read how the wall-based pieces were made. They manage to remain solidly out of focus – some sort of reinvented Victorian technology. I prefer magicians to keep their illusions secret.
