Dane Mitchell - Radiant Matter

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DANE MITCHELL

Publisher Berliner Künstlerprogramm / DAAD & Artspace,

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Editor Dane Mitchell

Copy Editor Sriwhana Spong

Design Tana Mitchell (www.tanamitchell.com)

Photography Krzysztof Zielinski (daadgalerie) / Bryan James (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery )

Bill Nichol (Dunedin Public Art Gallery ) / Sam Hartnett (Artspace)

Printed in Germany at Ruksaldruck Berlin

Edition 1000

©2011 Dane Mitchell, Berliner Künstlerprogramm / DAAD, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, Artspace, the authors. All rights reserved, including the

reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ISBN 978-3-89357-123-9

Berliner Künstlerprogramm / DAAD Markgrafenstrasse 37, D-10117 Berlin www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de

www.daadgalerie.de

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1FOREWORD

Ariane Beyn

9R ADIANT MAT TER I / GOVET T-brEwsTEr arT GallEry

with text by Aaron Kreisler

31DE RERUM NATUR A

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz

37R ADIANT MAT TER I I / DUNEDIN PUblIC arT GallEry


57Tr a JECTOrIEs OF IMMaTErIalIT y

Chris Sharp

65R ADIANT MAT TER I I I / arTsPaCE


85TablE OF ElEMENTs

Dane Mitchell

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Room (2009), was the prototype of the current version now presented as part of the Radiant

Matter series, and the beginning of Mitchell’s working relationship with Michel Roudnitska. In Minor Optics, the perfume was presented bottled in hand-blown glass vessels similar to test tubes from a laboratory, but with a manifest sculptural elegance. Only towards the end of the exhibition was the actual scent dispersed through means of a vaporiser in a one-off performance. With his research into the art and craft of perfume creation, Mitchell attempts to analyse the difficult-to-describe and “resistant to sense making”3 world of smells, thus providing information about what was previously unnamable or invisible — in Mitchell’s own words, “Perfume can be described as a cognitive object, a thought-object that takes

shape in the brain”4. As an exercise in which the audience could actively participate, Mitchell invited Roudnitska to give a public workshop in which the correspondence of the olfactory sense with other senses, and their relationship to memory and cognition, was explored in several revealing experiments using natural and synthetic essences. In Minor Optics, Mitchell focused on the spaces in which art is stored and presented, and their conventional effects — very much in the spirit of a critique of institutional customs and pathologies. At the same time, in light of the exhibition’s title and with Deleuze and Guatarri’s concept of ‘minor literature’ in mind, the project introduced a tendency to deterritorialisation that blurs boundaries and expands the limits of perception. It is these qualities of matter and the transitional states of material that are further explored in the sequel to Minor Optics, radiant Matter I-III, and in the present publication; notably in two excellent essays by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and Chris Sharp, and in Aaron Kreisler’s insightful physical account of the three exhibitions.

THIS PuBlICATION BRINGS TOGETHER THE THREE CONSECuTIVE EXHIBI-TIONS R ADIANT MAT TER I , I I AND I I I By DANE MITCHEll, WHICH TOOK PlACE IN NEW ZEAlAND IN 2011 AT THE GOVETT-BREWSTER ART GAllERy IN T AR ANAKI, THE DuNEDIN PuBlIC AR T GAllERy AND AuCKl AND’S AR TSPACE, RESPECTIVEly. The titling of the three exhibitions suggests they could be followed by a local audience like movie sequels, provided they are a mobile crowd, since 1000 kilometres and the Cook Strait lie between Auckland and Dunedin. In a movie sequel the characters and settings can change or reappear, but usually certain ideas laid out in the first one are expanded throughout the following films. The text in the present publication on each of the three differing exhibitions by Aaron Kreisler provides clear evidence of Radiant

Matter’s narrative threads and lingering questions. One such thread would be Mitchell’s investigation into marginal phenomena and transitional states — “an artist on the threshold”1 — that largely escape customary (visual) perception or habitual ways of thinking. using the methods of scientific logic and experimental demonstrability, Mitchell leaves clues to these marginal areas and invents forms for making them visible. If the ascending numerical titles of the three exhibitions are meant to refer to a sequel, then Dane Mitchell’s solo-show Minor

Optics at the daadgalerie in 2009 was a sort of pilot; the experimental ground on which certain ideas were played out to an audience for the first time. The daadgalerie’s meticulous appearance and classical architecture might have challenged Mitchell to take a closer look at the micro-areas and transitional states of matter in the exhibition space, in order to excavate properties usually concealed by the white cube’s much-contested neutrality. Minor Optics contained two newly developed works, both of which, in different ways, referred reflexively to the gallery space. The first, composed of three pieces group-titled Minor Optics (2009), used electrostatically charged metal plates to accumulate dust particles, visible against the glossy lustre of the plates, over the course of the exhibition. In this way the progress of time and the presence of visitors, as well as the quality of light — just as “light transports

dust and is the mechanism of its dispersal”2 — the movement of air and the temperature of the space are factors potentially documented and visualised on these highly polished surfaces that constantly lure dust. In the study of the environment of art and the art space, dust represents all things — organic and inorganic — that materialise, since nothing is free of dust’s ubiquity.The second part of the artist’s investigation into the realm of the ‘dematerialised’ in Minor

Optics was the creation of a scent using the traditional process of perfume composition. Working with the French perfumer Michel Roudnitska, Mitchell developed a synthetic scent that corresponds closely to the smell of an empty exhibition space. The smell of an Empty

1 Chris sharp, “Trajectories of Immateriality”, from this same publication, p. 58.

2 Dane Mitchell, “Table of Elements”, Minor Optics, ( berliner Künstlerprogramm/DaaD, berlin, 2009), pp. 3+6.

3 From correspondence with the artist.

4 Dane Mitchell, “Table of Elements”, Minor Optics, ( berliner Künstlerprogramm/DaaD, berlin, 2009), pp. 3+6.

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THErE Is a bUNKEr-lIKE QUalIT y TO THE GallEry THaT DaNE MITCHEll

Has bEEN allOCaTED FOr RADIANT MATTER I, aT THE GOVETT-brEwsTEr

arT GallEry. The first thing you take in when you move through the glass lobby doors

is a central staircase that divides the space into two clearly defined exhibition bays. The

grand staircase not only creates a distinctive architectural footprint, it also sets up an

overwhelming desire to transition through this space and ascend into another realm.

rather than avoiding the obvious quirks of this site, Mitchell builds these factors into the

delivery of his work. In fact, it is the very awkwardness of this architectural situation which

provides him with the scope to test out a range of display options.

From the outset it is clear that Mitchell is interested in subtly referencing the transient

and multilayered aspects of this built environment, by arranging each artwork at its own

distinct level. However, unity is maintained through the artist’s tight control of the aesthetic,

material and psychological imprint of the exhibition. For example, glass becomes an

important physical and allegorical trope in this presentation: it houses, supports and

enacts the art experience. with your Memory of Rain Encased (2011 ), two sheets of glass

are held together and aloft by a set of G-clamps, which both create a makeshift display

table and a coffer for a synthesised smell of rain. The inherent deceit in this artwork is that

what it holds or shows off is visually absent: as spectators we have to believe that what is

not visually perceivable does actually exist.

Under these auspices the role of the artist becomes fascinating, as audiences come to

depend on his word (and by extension that of the gallery); in this context Mitchell may be

considered an intermediary presence. This is most potently articulated in the perfume

works, as Mitchell stages a host of situations for encountering these substances. The

most striking example in the your Memory of Rain series ( 2010/2011 ), presents a sleek

silver tube on a glass pedestal, which insulates the scent from exposure to UV light.

In spite of the latent signs that this is a highly regulated operation, in particular the

art gallery’s ability to create a hermetically sealed environment, the location of this

artwork near the foyer entrance allows an intermittent ‘ambient’ factor into this artwork.

at a deeper level it could be argued that Mitchell is interested in creating a series of

clinical studies, which rely on social interactions to both initiate and determine a set

of unknowable results. Mitchell’s appreciation of his audience’s role as both active

participant and passive recipient is played out with cunning guile in your Memory of Rain Released (2011 ). Having generated a series of alluring propositions, through the

‘encased’ perfume works, Mitchell provides unfetted access to this aroma in a hollowed

out cavity that has been cut into a gallery wall. The tempted viewer can both satisfy

their curiosity by getting up close and personal with the artwork, while also becoming

the object of spectacle for other gallery visitors. The final artwork in this side of the

gallery is in many respects the groundwork for all the components that exist around

it. landing the Sea (2010/2011 ) is comprised of a large beaker-like glass vessel and

a framed photograph of the artist standing on the local foreshore with a container

collecting sea spray. This oversized test tube, which has been hung vertically on

the gallery wall, holds a physical trace of the local environment where the artist had

spent a sustained period generating the ideas and materials for the exhibition. The

photograph enacts and documents the event: the artist is captured performing the

operation and he is clearly presented at an identifiable location. The indexical role of

the photograph is as proof of the action by Mitchell in this community, and also the

lineage of this gallery in contemporary art history.

walking across the gallery’s false floor, a painted hardboard shell over the old tile and

concrete base, it is hard not think about the relationship between the temporary and

permanent aspects of this space. Various Solid States (2010/2011 ) may take its cue

from the provisional nature of this fit-out, but what makes it compelling is the strange

combination of elements; a domestic de-humidifier, plaster, measuring instruments,

bubble wrap and an assortment of formless plaster casts. To a certain degree this

artwork demystifies the creative act, as gallery staff follow a set of prescribed instruc-

tions; to generate from the water collected in the de-humidifier a series of bubble

wrap casts over the duration of the exhibition. In other respects Various Solid States

blurs the relationship between the artist’s studio activities and the gallery’s role as

host, custodian and storehouse. In the context of this site, particularly its role in the

development of performance and post-object art, this artwork does not speak out of

turn or seem out of place.1 In a similar way, Two Sides Coalesce (2010/2011 ) utilises the

physical and conceptual accoutrements of the gallery as an armature for generating a

provocative and speculative artwork. Once again a de-humidifier takes centre stage,

but in this instance its activities are counterbalanced by a humidifier. by enclosing both

within a glass cube — which is suspended just off the floor and connected to a gantry at

the apex of the building — Mitchell is able to create a sublime experience from simple

off-the-shelf consumer items. The symbiotic relationship between these machines

brings a strikingly human quality to this installation, which belies the cool aesthetic and

conceptual dimensions of this exhibition. while Radiant Matter I provides plenty of scope

for discussion about the relationship between art, science, accepted wisdom and the

unknown, it is actually at a corporeal level that it is really affecting. — AARON KREISlER

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1 It is worth noting that the exhibition Points of Contact: Jim Allen, len lye, Hélio Oiticica (11 December 2010 – 27 February

2011 ) preceded Mitchell’s exhibition. Points of Contact is important in this context because it saw the recreation of

a series of performances and the reconstruction of two seminal late sixties installations by allen (where Radiant Matter I would later be located). len lye’s ‘active’ archive, held at the Govett-brewster art Gallery, is also worth considering

in this discussion, particularly the ongoing creation of his kinetic works by the len lye Foundation, as a preeminent

artist in absentia.

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IN A RECENT INTERVIEW WITH CuR A TOR MERCEDES VICENTE, DANE MITCHEll DISCuSSES THE ANTHOTyPE — A 19TH CENTuRy TECHNIquE OF MAKING PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS uSING PHOTOSENSITIVE MATERIAl FROM Pl ANTS. Produced through making an emulsion from crushed flower petals, it is a process the artist aligns with perfumery, which, he explores throughout radiant Matter as a molecular-sculptural material. Thus, at the very moment when it seems that photography is offered up as the artist’s laboratory for exploration, he returns to the volumetric qualities of traditional sculptural language to account for his interest in evocative scents, spirits, and speculative procedures. Mitchell’s use of responsive and alchemical procedures, ranging in scope from science to sorcery, is as potent and provocative as the dispersal of his vapour molecules and their subsequent effect. As is evidenced by the radiant Matter exhibitions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Artspace, Mitchell’s parallax interdisciplinary procedures offer uncanny possibilities and multiple interpretations. Taking a cue from the artist’s imaginative poetic adaptations, this essay will cite wildly diverse points of reference to allow for potentially divergent but essential comparisons with the ancient philosopher lucretius and with the contemporary artist Hans Haacke.Gathering physical evidence, in particular microscopic matter, has long been a part of Dane Mitchell’s time-based activity and has been most evident in works such as Cosmic Dust

Collection (Extraterrestrial smithereens) (2010) where satellite-dish-like vessels were installed on a rooftop during the Busan Biennale entitled living in Evolution to collect interplanetary dust particles, and MoMa Dust (2007) in which dust collected from the museum is propagated in culture. Herein Mitchell demonstrates that making something out of nothing (something immediately unapparent) is not only possible, but can yield substantial results. Taken to its logical conclusion, the transfiguration of a cognitive concept into a corporeal presence turns Mitchell’s visual art practice into a philosophical hypothesis about meaning — transforming the work into a phenomenological investigation.Dane Mitchell’s work invokes many traditions and realms. Though he seeks out the most extremely divergent practitioners — common and anachronistic; contemporary and ancient; academic and everyday — his work is offered up for a rarified community of art viewers. Not that the specialised audience of the international art world alone will appreciate or understand Mitchell’s work, but it will ‘speak’ to them (or to us) in a way that it readily speaks, or rather ‘whispers’ to any other audience or ‘world’.With his use of spells, speculative procedures and vapours, Mitchell seems to craft the most radical of his interventions in physical space. To phrase it in terms reserved for a

specialised art public: Mitchell’s sculptural practice ends up using other media as a kind of host to cross-breed the history of photography with, say, a history of painting. To phrase it aptly, anomalously, and perhaps indulgently — it is a sketchbook of reflective encapsulations reminding us that a page, which appears blank to some, can be a rendering in invisible ink to others, or a detailed study to those who illuminate it in black light.In one such work from radiant Matter II, entitled Diabolical Object (2011), an enormous piece of obsidian (black volcanic glass) has been polished on one side to create a mirror reflection of adjacent work in the exhibition. Obsidian was the most common material used by painters in a device commonly called a Claude glass — its name invoking Claude lorrain and used by both Matisse and Manet — a convex, dark mirror used to reflect a view and make tonal values. Early in our correspondence about this piece, Mitchell acknowledged a further interest in the way this black material has been used for divination and necromancy to “counterfeit

the world”.In another hybrid of sculpture and photography, entitled Epitaph (2011), an antique museum vitrine has been retrofitted with a mirrored bottom to double the glass box interior while also acting as a vessel for the dissemination of a perfume that is released through exposure to light. In conversation, Mitchell once described the perfume emanating from the cabinet as a musk-heavy scent “from the past…or…from the edge of experience. It suggests a

ghostly presence now gone and in its ‘drydown’ the perfume becomes very dry, very dusty”. About another work, your Memory of rain Encased ( released) (2011) from radiant Matter

I, Mitchell remarked that it might resemble the more recognisable “smell of rain…not a

country rain, but a city rain, of wet concrete and metal”, which might explain the title but not the manner of presentation — a hole in the wall that invites viewers to stick their noses into where the perfume gets dispersed daily. Installed in the gallery alongside a sealed glass vessel containing salt and black sand collected from the sea spray on New Zealand’s west coast, and nearby a plinth-supported glass object coated in silver nitrate, the installation feels at first glance like a gathering of unprecedented hypotheses.In his time, lucretius’ revered Epicurian poem, On the Nature of Things (54 BC) laid out some wildly unlikely proposals, such as the thought that worms were spontaneously generated from wet soil. Among subsequent generations, lucretius’ opus was admired by Montaigne, Newton, and Shakespeare, and its core scientific vision remains convincing even today: that we are made of the same matter as the stars, the oceans and all things. lucretius argued that the operations of the world can be accounted for in terms of natural phenomena — the regular yet purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space. It is a premise that forever assaulted intellectuals swayed by the tenets of organised religion.

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If lucretius had been applying his thesis to Mitchell’s smell of an Empty space (2011)

posthumously, he might argue that the scent of a room is composed of the same matter as the room, but just in a different state. Might we rather consider that matter in general exists only in its contingent, momentary state and that there is no substance except that which we glean from the experience of a place, object, or condition? In other words, can we think of matter independently from our experience of it, and might our sentiment toward an object have a role in its actual existence?For example, if one did not know that Mitchell spoke the names of different ancestors into each of the glass forms presented in spoken Heredity Talismans (2011), would the ‘content’ exist in the same way? Is recognising a scent, or feeling the presence of a spectre from the past, an awareness or recognition we can create as much as locate? Should one return to the earlier statement ‘making something out of nothing’, or do we accept the concept that everything is always part of something else, as long as we have feelings for it, for lucretius and Mitchell both seem to suggest that ‘nothing’ does not exist.Consider the acts of translation Mitchell undertakes and asks his collaborators and visitors to decipher: to evoke a space through the casting of a spell; to allude to one’s family history through dirt from a gravesite; through the whispered names and laments of one’s ancestry; through the air emitted from bagpipes sounding funerary songs, trapped in glass. Here it seems Mitchell no longer endorses making something out of nothing, having taken lecretius’ insights to heart. Rather, he puts to a radical poetic test the idea that the same matter exists in different states. Is the wind of the bagpipe the same matter — or rather the same material effect — as the ancestors who are being remembered, just finer, more ethereal, and in a different state? Or do we have to consider the issue of representation, of a fundamental division between object, person, memory and its construction in poetic form?It might be useful to consider Hans Haacke’s use of uncommon materials, especially organic systems and processes, which go back to his early affiliation ( beginning in 1959) with the Zero Group and their use of states of elemental nature as materials for artistic production. After leaving the group for New york, Haacke developed an unprecedented critique of both natural and institutional exchange with the well-known work, Condensation Cube (1963-65). This sealed plexi-glass box was installed innocuously in the gallery with a small amount of water that condensed to the inside walls and dripped to the bottom when exposed to light and heat — an ongoing process determined by surrounding conditions, especially the presence of a public in the exhibition space. Haacke is clearly one of Mitchell’s points of reference, or dare one say, an artistic ancestor.Physically both artists’ sculptures are more than mere containers. Each seems to treat the

presentation context and the visitor’s knowledge and experience as one of a number of materials active in making work or in activating an artistic encounter. As with Haacke’s Condensation

Cube, all of the installations in Mitchell’s radiant Matter series involve a co-configuration of organic processes and human presence to motivate material exchange.Mitchell’s use of humidification and biological material in suspended but transitional states represents an uncanny choice of materials for the transportation of an artistic encounter to the ‘viewer’. Two sides Coalesce (2010-2011) — with its de-humidifier collecting vapour produced by the humidifier, and the humidifier vapourising the liquid collected by the de-humidfier — is a classic closed-circuit (of hydro-thermodynamic molecular exchange) like Condensation Cube, yet it differs from Haacke’s inaugural attempt as institutional critique. Mitchell does not directly call into question the closed system of museums, galleries, and art fairs — in fact his ‘spell’ works (for example, Conjuring Form (2008) presented at Art Basel) need and embrace those very institutions as gathering places for a particular public — a public informed by common knowledge and experience. The framing devices and contexts that are so particular in allowing Mitchell’s work to perform as it does (or may do), seem to suggest that not all viewers will be equipped to ‘get it’. Ideas are not just there to be picked from an abundant vine, but if one has never before experienced a work of conceptual art like this, a certain amount of willingness to engage will serve as an excellent tool.When Mitchell invokes the esoteric, as in his central work in radiant Matter II, Gateway to the

Etheric realm (2011), he goes far beyond a staging of the customary fine art media and subjects. Presented simply with a series of interlocking powder-coated aluminum stanchion- like forms and a sign announcing the presence of a spell, some may be tempted to claim that there is ‘nothing’ to see in these delineated spaces. Certainly this is one of many hyperbolic configurations crafted to advance a material understanding of all things perceivable — a phenomenological exchange.If matter is part of everything, or rather, if matter is nothing on its own, and everything is impacted by our sentiments toward it — if, in other words, belief and feeling, memory and lament, smell and touch do change the very make-up of the molecular world around us, then how can we consider a closed-circuit cause and effect system such as Haacke’s sufficient to explain the exchange that occurs on the level of the infinitely small, the atomic and molecular, even the sub-molecular level of pure thought or feeling? Isn’t Mitchell’s art a critique of an infinitely finer institution, a critique of the institution of matter itself? It is a celebration of matter’s infinite potential for transformation and an attempt to consider this transformation not through the concept of representation, but as an exchange of one solid state with another, maybe less solid and more ethereal, but real and material nonetheless.

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I N R ADIANT MA T TER II , D U N E D I N P U b l I C a r T G a l l E ry, M I TC H E l l’ s

INVEsTIGaTIONs HaVE bECOME OCCUPIED wITH lIMINal sPaCEs wHErE

OCCUlT aCTIVITIEs, MEMOry aND sHaDOw y ElEMENTs COalEsCE . The

exhibition is situated in a cavernous boxy space, which has an off-centre single access

point, high stud and polished wooden floors. acutely aware that these distinct architectural

features could physically and aesthetically overpower the art experience, Mitchell has

obviously spent time on the execution of the installation so that each artwork has its

own spatial integrity and yet the show still retains a unified presence. a ‘casual’ formality

provides an important visual and conceptual pathway between artworks; this is particularly

significant because an emphasis has been placed on reducing light levels and creating

a sombre atmosphere, so there is a strangely ambient — gothic quality to the exhibition.

Discretely lit and occupying a small section of wall close to the exhibition entrance, Ancestral Dirt (2011 ) is a rather apt if not subtle introduction to this exhibition. This work consists

of six glass vials which are hung vertically at precise intervals and distances from the

gallery wall. Held in place by clamps these fragile vessels are filled with soil samples that

the artist has gathered from selected sites in Otago, New zealand. In the initial research

around this project Mitchell discovered that his family connections with this part of the

country went much deeper than he had previously realised. In this respect Ancestral Dirt hovers in an interesting nebulous zone; it is somewhere between self-portraiture and

landscape, genealogical and archaeological field study.

If Ancestral Dirt memorialises both a familial and collective sense of place and time

passing, then Epitaph (2011 ) condenses these elements down to their bare essence.

working with the perfumer Michel roudnitska, Mitchell produces a scent whose base

notes allude to a bodily (ghostly) presence, with a lingering hint of dust. The potency of

this synthesised perfume is both amplified and clarified by its placement in a seemingly

empty late Victorian vitrine. by utilising this remnant from a by-gone era and the gallery’s

decorative holdings, Mitchell adds an important allegorical dimension to this work, while

bringing the ‘dusty’ museological context to the surface.1 Through his placement of this

cabinet and subtle intervention — cutting a 20cm hole three quarters of the way up the

glass, so that gallery goers have to lean into the apparatus and turn away from the rest of

the exhibition — Mitchell compels an active engagement with this sculpture.

Gateway to the Etheric Realm (2011 ), occupies a central place physically and metaphorically

in the exhibition. This is a large sculptural work that has been carefully constructed and

composed by Mitchell from an assortment of seemingly eclectic substances; dragons

blood, herbs, owl feathers, blessed water and salt — the remnants from a witch’s spell

cast in this space.2 These substrates, which momentarily open-up a fourth dimension,

are barely contained by a set of multiple enclosures, or conversely these barriers come

to embody the unknown and imperceptible sphere they are designed to protect. In this

context Etheric Realm Spell Materials ( 2011 ) becomes an important companion piece; it

holds samples of the etheric spell in a series of glass vials. stored behind glass in a large

white frame that is placed on slivers of obsidian and leans against the gallery wall, this

work literally encases the witch’s results for further analysis or later use.

as the title suggests, Diabolical Object (2011 ) has more than a passing connection with these

spell works. Positioned in close proximity to the etheric realm series, this large shard of

obsidian rock has been placed directly on the floor, cut and polished face-side up, so that it

casts an eerie reflection across the space — clearly delineating it as both a visual and concep-

tual point of reference. black volcanic glass has a long and complex history, having been

used by numerous cultures and particular groups, from the dark to the visual arts, as a

means into another dimension.3 Obsidian’s lineage as a black mirror, to usher in the ‘unknown’

and deflect back the ‘real’, is an important thread that runs through the exhibition.

Mitchell’s simple alteration in Diabolical Object, revealing the reflection within the rough

rock, is reiterated with the placement of mirrors in the bases of the museum cabinets.

This is most beautifully articulated in Bagpipe Talismans (Funeral lament in Glass) ( 2011 )

and Spoken Heredity Talismans (2011 ) where hand-blown pieces of glass appear to be

entombed in a state of suspended animation. with Bagpipe Talismans, six engorged

glass vessels are lined up in a sizeable rectangular antique vitrine. These are the fragile

remains of the artist commissioning a bagpiper to play a funeral dirge while his instrument

is connected to a glassblower’s pipe. There is a subtle interplay between all elements of

this work, from the capturing of such an elusive and emotive audio transmission to the

transference of these sound waves into such an elegant collection of delicate objects. It is

the inherent instability of these swollen glass forms that makes them so captivating — as

if they are defying their own physical structure and even the laws of gravity, as they float in

a mirror world. sitting alongside this work is an identical vitrine replete with mirrored base

and a consignment of near similar glass curiosities. In Spoken Heredity Talismans, seven

solid curvilinear objects take centre stage, their shape defined by Mitchell recounting

the names of his ancestors into the glassblower’s blow tube. Channelling his familial

roots into a molten glass cavity the artist not only connects with his past, he also creates

something profoundly poetic — literally rendering speech bubbles. In Mitchell’s hands the

most ephemeral states and conditions are momentarily captured, given form and displayed

so audiences can wonder, desire and ruminate over the vestiges. — AARON KREISlER

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1 Mitchell sought to use the gallery’s exhibition furniture for its aesthetic and historical significance; the Dunedin Public

art Gallery is New zealand’s oldest municipal art gallery.

2 The artist spent a sustained period as part of the Visiting artist Programme seeking out the services of a local witch

to cast a spell in the gallery space. Over recent years Mitchell has worked with a number of people who operate in

areas of the occult, the results of which have been included in: Singapore Biennale (2011 ), singapore; Conjuring Form (2008 ), art statements, art39basel, basel, switzerland; Casa Sem Dono (2008), Casa Triangulo, sao Paulo, brazil;

A Guest, A Host ( 2008 ), Galerie west, The Hague, The Netherlands; Invocation (2008), Gertrude Contemporary,

Melbourne, australia; Mystic Truths (2007 ), auckland art Gallery, auckland, New zealand.

3 For further reading on obsidian, see arnaud Maillet, The Claude Glass: use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art, ( zone books, 2004).

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TOWARD THE BEGINNING OF T.E .l AWRENCE’S Cl A SSIC MEMOIR OF THE AR AB REVOl T, THE sEVEN PIllars OF wIsDOM ( 1926), THERE IS AN uNFORGETTABlE ANECDOTE REGARDING SCENTS. lawrence recounts how he and his guides encountered a ruin from the Roman period in Northern Syria, which according to local lore, had been built by a prince for his queen with clay kneaded with various precious oils. The English adventurer writes, “My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me

from crumbling room to room, saying, ‘This is jessamine [sic], this violet, this rose’”.1 And then he goes on to lyricise:

“but at last Dahoum [one of the guides] drew me: ‘Come and smell the very sweetest scent

of all,’ and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face,

and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert,

throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates

and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the

man-made walls of our broken palace. about them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring

in baby-speech. ‘This,’ they told me, ‘is the best: it has no taste.’ My arabs were turning

their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no

share or part”. 2

One of the more striking things about this little fragment, beyond its eligibility for the One

Thousand and One Nights, is the process and reversal that takes place within it. Coming in from the desert, they pass from scented room to scented room, appraising each impregnated fragrance, until they come back to the desert, the “sweetest scent of all” because it “has no

taste”, is not tinctured with the magical meddling of humankind (a touching anti-humanism worthy of Jonathan Swift or Jorge luis Borges). In other words, it is by theoretically traversing a passage of perfumed odours that the absence of odour (“taste”) becomes perceptible.The work of Dane Mitchell pulls off a similar exploit and what is more, in similarly if not magical, then debatable, and I would even go so far as to say elegant terms. He goes to great lengths to confront his viewers with that which might not otherwise cross their minds, alluding to occult phenomena, noumena of immateriality, and the most minute margins, nay blind spots of unfathomed perception. It is tempting to refer to him as an artist on the threshold, in that

his work not only continually investigates and puts pressure upon conventional definitions of art, but also how and where it takes place, to what extent it needs to be visible in order to take place, and finally how such questions might be formalised at the beginning of the 21st century. From earlier works where he invited a witch to create portals to other worlds in an exhibition space, to more recent pieces involving perfumes and their makers, in which he seeks to replicate such fantastically banal scents as that of an empty room, the work often exists beyond any measurable boundaries in a conceptual and literal ether. The three part cycle of exhibitions entitled radiant Matter is no exception to Mitchell’s elabo-rately ethereal rule. Over the course of 2010/11, the artist worked with a heterogeneous group of artisans and highly specialised professionals, including one of the world’s top perfume makers, a witch, glass blowers, and industrial fabricators to explore the above mentioned issues in an eloquent series of highly precise exhibitions of a rigorous aesthetic economy. radiant Matter I

revolved largely around the presentation of a scent entitled your Memory of rain (2010/2011); the more eclectic radiant Matter II addressed occult issues involving ancestral invocations and absence in a variety of modes, while radiant Matter III focused primarily upon Mitchell’s former exploration of representing an empty room through the presentation of The smell

of an Empty space (2011) in three different declensions of vaporised, solid, and liquid. But before discussing some of the work in these exhibitions, and what historically contextualises it — which is what this text intends to do — the question needs to be asked: just what is ‘radiant matter’? And how does it relate to, well, the matter at hand?Radiant Matter was initially postulated by the 19th century English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday who, in 1819 hypothesised a fourth state of matter in addition to solid, liquid and gaseous, as that of ‘radiant’. Sixty years later, another English chemist and physicist William Crookes delivered a paper entitled On radiant Matter, in which he argued for the existence of a state of matter which was neither gas nor liquid, and which was officially identified as plasma in 1928 by the American chemist and physicist Irving langmuir. Similar to gas, plasma has no definite shape or definite volume unless enclosed in a container, but unlike gas, it can conduct electricity and form filaments, beams and double layers. Plasma can be most commonly seen in the stars, neon signs and those funky, pseudo-sophisticated glass spheres from the 80’s whose writhing interiors of electromagnetic energy would temporarily glom onto a fondling finger or hand as if feeding on it, and which were otherwise known as plasma lamps.Thus, as far as Mitchell is concerned, one suspects not only a definite kinship with the fluid instability of radiant matter (plasma), but more importantly, its erstwhile status as pure, poetically charmed hypothesis, as fanciful conjecture — a kind of will-o’-the-wisp, which may or may not exist. Such hypothetical territory in turn opens up a few cans of art historical

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worms, which, it just so happens, can be found on the same shelf — sometimes even in the same can — in the vicinity of which Mitchell’s practice can largely, though not exclusively be located. The contents of these cans is hard to describe, not necessarily because they, to all intents and purposes, seem to contain nothing, but rather because what they contain — and they contain quantities and qualities of great vastness, as vast as, some might argue, the desert — is difficult to prove. Furthermore, those same contents seem more closely aligned with the hypothetical than the empirically verifiable, and as such, continually run the risk of fraudulence (possibly the most dogged legacy of the historical avant-garde). Mitchell himself is certainly no stranger to this risk: his winning entry to New Zealand’s 2009 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, Collateral (2009), which consisted of presenting the castoff packaging of the other competing artist’s works on a plinth, not only stretched the general public’s belief in contemporary art to its gleeful breaking point, but also earned him more than a few of the more predictable epithets associated with such purported charlatanism (e.g., the splendidly tautological “rubbish!”). But where such works are clearly engaged in rendering visible the invisible structures that govern art, the majority of what was featured in radiant Matter has come to inhabit a more hypothetical space, one jointly occupied by the narrative neo-conceptualism of Mitchell’s peers, like Jason Dodge and Kirsten Pieroth, and which was originally hypothesised by Duchamp, consummately theatricalised by yves Klein, and radically literalised by Robert Barry. Perhaps the most operative historical reference to this whole discussion is Duchamp’s inimitable infra-mince. Immortalised in Duchamp’s notes, infra-mince is actually not so much theorised therein as it is characterised by way of a series of pithy and scientifically absurd reflections on what could be described as fleeting and residual phenomena that happen at, or just beyond the very threshold of perception. A handful of Duchamp’s examples seem particularly relevant to Mitchell’s practice. For example: “les buées — sur surfaces polies

(verre, cuivre )” 3 (Mists — on polished surfaces (glass, brass)) — here it is impossible not to recall Gabriel Orozco’s photograph, breath on Piano (1993) — an image of that which the title describes and which could be considered a phenomenological relative, by way of ancestral filiation, to what Mitchell does; Duchamp’s own 50 cc of Paris air (1919) — a work which consists of small glass ampoule supposedly containing 50 cubic centimetres of Parisian air, and which bears a striking relevance to Mitchell’s current output in more ways than one. While Duchamp’s observation that, “Odeurs plus inframinces que les couleurs” 4 (odours are more infra-mince than colours ), of course also merits special mention here. Indeed, one suspects that the former chess player would not have hesitated for an instant to linguistically apply the infra-mince stamp of approval to much of the young artist’s production (a funeral

lament contained in glass ampoules? Infra-mince; a glass vial which contains sea-spray? Infra-mince; the smell of an empty space? Infra-mince), effectively exalting Mitchell to the status of a master artisan, a polyvalent crafter of the infra-mince. For all the blithe humour and playfulness to be found in Duchamp’s description of the infra-mince, it should not be forgotten that it is indissociable from his well known disenchantment with the retinal regime of art. The infra-mince forms a key theoretical part of his valorisation of the cognitive or conceptual over the sensuous, or rather retinal experience, and can be interpreted as such. What is particularly interesting about this, so to speak, ‘body of work’ is the extent to which it implicitly articulates certain latent avant-garde anxieties and preempts their prominence among any experience of art throughout the rest of the 20th and still, the 21st century. Namely, the ever present suspicion that a work of art is concealing something, that it’s not all there, indeed, that some crucial, occult element can only be gleaned by a very select coterie of superhuman initiates. Either that, or it is what the French bluntly call, ‘fouteage de gueule’ (roughly translatable as, a spit in the face). In fact, these two sides of the street cannot in themselves be disassociated from Duchamp’s legacy, which, incidentally inheres with miraculous tenacity in any kind of art in which virtuosity plays no apparent part. From the most diluted mongrel of 10th generation readymade to the most rarefied example of monochrome painting, art always seems to be tiptoeing along that razor’s edge. It could even be claimed that if there is an essence to art, this is it: its capacity to partially conceal itself in plain sight, to always maintain some component of itself secret, no matter how uniformly transparent it might be — as if the visible art object were but a decoy, a subterfuge — and the real thing, the arcane platonic ideals for which it was a mere avatar, were quite simply elsewhere, in the ether.It is perhaps no small coincidence that much of Mitchell’s work just happens to consist of quite literally essences, both verifiable and unverifiable. To wit, the admittedly more pointed interrogation of subjectivity in your Memory of rain, a perfume that purports to emanate the smell of rain in the city; Epitaph (2011), an essence meant to be evocative of a ghostly presence, of the sense of some other invisible presence in the room; and the forthcoming smell of It all, an as of yet (at the time of writing this text) uncreated perfume meant to evoke, well, the hyperbolic ‘smell of it all’. An important distinction should here be made between the immaterial hyperbole of Mitchell, which tends much toward understatement, and that of yves Klein — an essential stop on this immaterial trajectory — which is of a decidedly more stentorian order. I am thinking of his zones of Immaterial Pictorial sensibility (1952-1962), which were comprised of the sale of said immaterial zones, and optionally accompanied by the ceremonious burning of the cheque (receipt), which had been exchanged for gold, half of which was thrown into the Seine in an elaborate ritual which in itself was a kind of

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theatrical performance. Such antics clearly err toward the side of fraudulence, and are best characterised by yve-Alain Bois when he writes:

“For what Klein was touching upon […] is one of the essential conditions of modern art, at

least since Courbet and Manet (since the crisis of representation that presided over their

work ). It is the awareness that the risk of fraudulence, the risk of being laughed at and

being called an emperor with no clothes, has become a necessary risk, but also that every

work of art must confront this risk — it must even solicit it, challenge it — if it is to be at all

authentic. More than any other artist from the immediate postwar years, Klein experienced

this condition as if haunted by it”. 5

I think it could even be argued that what is particularly interesting about Klein is that in many ways he went on to implicitly make this risk the very subject matter of his work. Indeed, it is as if that risk were so fully incorporated into what he did that his own will to continually confront his own potential fraudulence effectively negated that risk — rendered it null and void (a strategy perfected by Andy Warhol, and later exploited by the likes of Jeff Koons and more recently, the American painter Josh Smith). But this is clearly not the case with Mitchell — something else altogether is at stake here. Despite the marked formal differences, I see a much closer link to the early work of Robert Barry. Not so much in the Inert Gases series (1969), in which the artist released gases such as helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon, into the atmosphere and recorded the act in a photo — which goes without saying, is a direct ancestor to Mitchell’s essences — but rather in other works such as Closed Gallery Piece (1969) and Marcuse Piece (1970), in which Barry, leaving the gallery space empty, simply wrote on the wall, “some places

to which we can come, and for a while, ‘be free to think about what we are going to do.’ (Marcuse)”. Or, simple language pieces such as all the things I know but of which I am not at the moment

thinking, 1:36 P.M.; June 15, 1969 (1969). For where such works ask what can in fact be thought, what can be conceived, demarcating unexplored spaces of conception — Mitchell’s works in turn ask what can be perceived, how, and to what extent they need to be perceived in order to exist? Such questions and investigations necessarily require, if not a demanding level of perceptual engagement on the part of the viewer, then an unusual form of engagement (for example, the nose).

These considerations lead me to qualify Mitchell as an ethical artist, as someone directly engaged in the ethics of perceiving, of paying attention, and asking from his viewer a heightened, at times super-sensory level of attention (and what is curious about this is that while such an ethical mode markedly distances him from the self-consciously fraudulent antics of Klein, it in turn invests Duchamp’s infra-mince with an unexpectedly ethical quality, thus creating yet another bond between them). And for this required attention, he gives in return the possibility of perceiving things one might have never thought to perceive in the first place (e.g., the smell of an empty space), which in turn necessarily, inevitably, yields a greater awareness of the everyday world.It is important to mention that this ethical attitude is not limited to the content of the work, but extends to its form as well. I must say that I was initially not quite sure what to make of the extreme elegance with which Mitchell fashions and presents his works, but it has become clear to me that it couldn’t be another way. While the subject matter and content of Mitchell’s work is dominated by questions of micro-perception and the immateriality that inevitably attends such questions, the work itself is very much of a material and sculptural order. At the beginning of the 21st century, Mitchell has no illusions regarding the bygone historical radicality of immateriality; his investigations are meticulously embodied, foregrounding their own material form with as much care as the extensive scientific research that underpins them. For in order to convince the viewer of the care, precision and engagement with which looking needs to take place, he himself as a plastician, must invest as much if not more care, precision and engagement into the works presentation. This no doubt helps mitigate any possible suspicions of being ‘taken for a ride’. I should state that if I make such an ethical claim, it comes not from art, but from literature, and a very specific literary tradition which includes Flaubert as much as it includes Nabokov, and which generally privileges vivid description and accuracy over every other consideration. When I first encountered your Memory of rain , I couldn’t help but think of Robbe-Grillet (an essential figure among said tradition), and a particular phrase from his book of essays, Towards a New Novel (1963). At one point, while taking the poet Francis Ponge to task for his inability to simply describe and anthropocentrically anthropomorphise everything that comes within his poetic ken with reckless abandon, Robbe-Grillet writes, “He knows quite

well, probably, that his texts will offer no help to archeologists of the future who seek to

understand what might have been, among our lost civilization, a cigarette or a candle.” 6 Thanks, however to Dane Mitchell, the same archeologists ( living on the moon?) might be able to know what rain once smelt like in the city on planet earth. That said, it goes without saying that art and literature are two very different things and cannot

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I I I/

arTsPaCE

be expected to carry out the same services as one another. In neither case, however, is it a question of mere documentary. Then what exactly is it a question of? I am inclined to think it is of rendering a certain quality of texture. A texture of experience created by something so simple (or fantastical, depending on how you look at it) as guiding an individual through a ruin of scented rooms so that he might experience something that was already right in front of his face.

1 T.E. lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom [online text], Project Gutenberg australia text converted by wes Jones

<http://www.wesjones.com/seven%20pillars/sevenpillars%2000.xml>, accessed august 3, 2011.

2 Ibid.

3 Marcel Duchamp, Notes, Ed. Paul Matisse, (translation Chris sharp ), ( Flammarion, Paris, 1999), p. 33.

4 Ibid., p. 34.

5 yve-alain bois, “Klein’s relevance for Today”, OCTOBER 119, winter 2007, (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts),

p. 83.

6 alain robbe-Grillet, Pour un Nouveau Roman, (translation Chris sharp ), (les Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1961), p. 62.

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ON E NTErING THE l arGE MaIN rOOM aT aUCKl aND’s arTsPaCE , FOr

T H E T H I r D P r E s E N TaT I O N I N T H E R ADIANT MA T TER s E r I E s , w H aT I s

INsTaNTly sTrIKING Is THE l aCK OF ObJECTs. For this last exhibition, Mitchell

has taken the bold step of stripping the gallery bare. an important ‘unseen’ aspect of this

exhibition is the physical and psychological cleansing of the space; the artist instituted a

regime of tidying and repairing the three exhibition rooms, so that no extraneous elements

(dirty matter ) would colour the visitor’s experience. To a certain extent, it could be argued

that Mitchell is sterilising artspace, both for the incoming director — Caterina riva arrived

to take up the role during this exhibition — and also for himself, for the further refinement

of a minimal set of artworks.

The promotional image for the exhibition is of a venturi vaporiser: an exquisite hand-blown

mechanism that transforms a substance from a liquid to gaseous state, by smashing its

molecules against a glass wall. what is fascinating about the use of this intricate device

for raising awareness of Radiant Matter III, is that it is actually hidden from view within

the exhibition. so, it is an object of beauty worthy of observation in one context and yet

in another, one can only assume through its absence, it is too dominant or descriptive of

its function. Placed in a mirrored box, which resides on the floor of the main exhibition

space, the venturi pumps out at five minute intervals the latest of Mitchell’s perfumes,

designed in consultation with Michel rounditska.1 Plugged into the only visible electrical

source, and placed in the furthest corner from the gallery’s entrance, the mirror box is a

surprisingly diminutive object for the area it has been allocated in the exhibition. However,

as a sculptural proposition, Smell of an Empty Room (Vaporised) ( 2011 ) literally and

metaphorically fills the space, bombarding the olfactory senses before the source of this

unusual smell is perceived visually. The scent has a distinctly acrid fruity cast that verges

on a sickly sweet pungency; it has a strangely youthful presence, particularly when it is

considered alongside the repellent bodily perfume produced for Radiant Matter II. as the

artist notes, “ The perfume [ Smell of an Empty Room (2011 )] contains ozone, synthetically reproduced, it is a powerful, spacious, clean, ‘fresh air’ note that is sharp and headachy. The ozone neatly creates an illusion of empty space, like ‘cartoon air’”.2

Mitchell’s attention to detail is what elevates this exhibition beyond simply being an exercise

in delivering a set of desired outcomes. There is the distinct sense, as you move through

Radiant Matter III, that Mitchell has applied himself in a concerted way — conceiving,

registering and implementing each incarnation of this show. This is unmistakable in the

delivery of The Smell of an Empty Space Perfume Plume (Solid) ( 2011 ), a work comprised of

sixteen immaculately framed pieces of unfixed photographic paper that have been sprayed

with the ‘house’ perfume. The presentation of this line-up of repeating perfume tests

could be a perfunctory process, if it was not for a range of factors: the artist’s selection of

paper stock (which shifts to a psychedelic purple shade as it degrades ) and the obsessive

connotations of fixing this allusive substance ( which burns an orange spherical imprint

into each work ). located in a long corridor that is bathed in red light, where green and

blue spectrum light has been removed, the artist literally slows down the rate of change

in these light sensitive pictures and metaphorically alters the effects of time. recreating

a photographic dark room with the safelight on, this work also has cinematic properties;

there is a distinct sense of time-lapse as you move through the corridor-like gallery with

its repeated halo projection.3

The Smell of an Empty Space (liquid) ( 2011 ) is the final stop in the exhibition. It consists of

a series of delicately rendered glass vials that lock in the fluid perfume; they are placed on

a sizeable mirror sheet that is held in place by a group of G-clamps. There is a spellbinding

aspect to this incandescent chamber, time is needed to adjust to the intense clinical light

levels and the topsy-turvy spatial dimension created by the low-lying mirror table. Mitchell

does not simply flip this room in these terms, he also shifts its designation — it usually

operates as a dark projection space, and its place in the architectural hierarchy — although

the smallest room, the largest and in many respects most complex artwork resides here.

This uncanny quality is continued with the small glass vessels whose antenna-like ends

pick up the faintest movement in the building; their shimmering and vibrating condition

provides both a moment of beauty and anxiety. It is here at this most intimate moment

that Mitchell gets you; he is able, at one and the same time, to entrance and shift your

consciousness, through the most minimal of means. — AARON KREISlER

67

1 as the artist notes: “ The perfume for Artspace is a tweaked version of the first one Michel Roudnitska and I made together, which was titled The Smell of an Empty Room (2009). I began this by making a sort of word list that described an empty space both physically and maybe you could say, ideologically. Words like: clean, pure, archetypal. An empty space (terrestrially speaking) is an impossibility — it is a way of describing how a room is full of something we do not want to name, a convention for describing how a room is filled”. Correspondence with the artist, 14 July, 2011.

2 ibid.

3 according to the theory of persistence of vision, the perceptual process of the brain retains visual information that is

received through the retina of the eye for a brief moment of time. These principles describe an illusion of motion created

in cinema when a series of film images are displayed in quick succession, rather than the perception of individual (still )

frames occurring at a series of intervals. In The Smell of an Empty Space Perfume Plume (Solid) (2011 ), Mitchell plays

with this notion by utilising the photographic process and cinematic experience. This is accentuated numerically in

the sixteen framed photographs — sixteen frames per second is the lowest frequency at which continuous motion

can be registered by a person, and it is also the optimum rate for creating time-lapse when shooting in 35mm film.

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DANE MITCHELL

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11 smell grasps at some extremities of the indefinable, which may emanate from an object, place or circumstance.

12 light translates fragrance, is the mechanism of its expansion and its core damaging agent.

13 Historically perfume has been linked to extravagance due to its ephemeral nature — money spent on perfume literally

disappears.

14 Cartoon air, always limpid.

15 The unseen holds a visual power — disappearance is a strong force both politically and aesthetically.

16 The law of conservation of mass states that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any

chemical and physical changes taking place within the system.

17 Perfume expands in the air, filling space with vapours and molecules moving in ways akin to light and the particulate

matter suspended in it.

18 Illuminating the unseen, perfume dwells on thresholds — of vision, of physicality, of affect, of time, of dimensionality.

19 smell is impoverished in its descriptors, but borrows from the other senses, e.g. we might describe smells using

the language of touch — hot, soft, rough, sharp; hearing — vibrant, piercing; sight — flat, round, clear, radiant; taste —

sweet, sickly.

20 “Penser en Odeurs”, (to think [literally] via smell). Edmond roudnitska.

21 smell affords little representation, yet it curves symbolic space.

22 aroma molecules loosen from their form according to their weight.

23 smell assumes a position most closely akin to the ‘sixth sense’ — the sense of intuitive awareness.

24 The vibration theory of smell, suggested by luca Turin, posits that odour receptors detect the frequency of vibrations in

odour molecules.

25 Glass operates at various moments as stratum, container, screen, membrane, surface, divider, support and entomber.

26 Knowing of it changes it.

27 a challenge for explication, smell is somewhat resistant to sense-making and analysis.

28 To call a space ‘empty’ is a convention for describing a space that is filled with something we do not wish to name.

29 by definition the smell of emptiness should be an olfactive vacuum — an absence of aromas — yet this is an impossibility.

30 Obsidian is a naturally occurring black volcanic glass formed when particular lava flows from a volcano and cools quickly.

31 smell establishes a fusional relationship with the world.

32 Pure air is a mixture of 78.03% nitrogen, 20.99% oxygen, 0.94% argon, 0.03% carbon dioxide, 0.01% hydrogen, 0.00123%

neon, 0.0004% helium, 0.00005% krypton, 0.000006% xenon.

33 Obsidian has been used for thousands of years as a mirror. Counterfeiting the world — black mirrors were seen to be

used against nature — making them dark and illusory traps.

34 spectrum and spectre.

35 Things that are gone leave a residue.

36 The first Claude glasses, small blackconvex mirrors used by artists to reflect a view and make tonal values and areas of

light and shade visible, were produced from obsidian.

37 Petrichor is the name given to the smell of rain. It comes from the Greek ‘petra’, meaning stone and ‘ichor’ meaning fluid

that flows in the veins of gods.

38 “Witches, always a subversive force, recuperate black mirrors, whose dim reflection lend themselves to all sorts of troubling phantasmagoria, for their éclat bewitches and blinds anyone that looks at them”. arnaud Maillet, The Claude Glass: use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art, (zone books, 2004), p.49.

39 Particulate matter consists of a mixture of solid and liquid particles suspended in air.

40 smell is revelatory not only of substances, but also of ambiences and climates.

41 a haunting might describe how that which appears to be not there is often seething presence.

42 Perception, categorisation, attention, memory, learning, mental imagery, language — all are traditional fields of cognitive

studies that are present in perfume making.

43 scent always dissipates, leaving in its wake a faint echo.

44 “Haunting is a constituent element of modern social life. It is neither pre-modern superstition nor individual psychosis; it is a generalizable social phenomenon of great import”. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination,

p.7.

45 To analyse means literally, to dissolve, and derives from the Greek ‘analusis’, a dissolving.

46 Perfume is a concentrated form of loss — just as it arrives, it transforms and vanishes.

9190

1 Perfume can be described as a cognitive object, a thought-object that takes shape in the brain.

2 a short list of agents: perfumer, witch, curator.

3 The word perfume derives from the latin ‘per fumum’, meaning through smoke.

4 Matter is a specialised form of energy.

5 Glass as shape-shifter — a liquid and solid simultaneously, or some alchemical in-between.

6 a scent is perceived through an effect it leaves in its wake.

7 Conjuring the unseen advances a form of cognitive doubt.

8 Making the invisible active, or ‘charging’ the invisible allows for an interplay between “mystic states” and “corporeal techniques” (Marcel Mauss) — delineating and giving shape / outline to something that cannot be seen, or perhaps not

quite perceived.

9 “Conjuring merges the analytical, the procedural, the imaginative and the effervescent”. avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, (University of Minnesota Press; 2nd edition, 2008).

10 an ‘olfactory form’ is a sort of gestalt — a complex perceptual structure undergoing a spatio-temporal development that

yields more than the sum of its parts.

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I N D E X

DANE MITCHELL

—

Born 1976, Auckland, New Zealand.

Currently lives and works in Auckland

and Berlin.

—

sElECTED sOlO E xHIbITIONs

—

2011

radiant Matter III

Artspace

Auckland, New Zealand

radiant Matter II

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Dunedin, New Zealand

radiant Matter I

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

New Plymouth, New Zealand

2010

The story of a window

(Collaboration with Matt Keegan)

Neon Parc

Melbourne, Australia

Minor Optics

Art Cologne

Cologne, Germany

2009

Minor Optics

daadgalerie

Berlin, Germany

Happy Hour

(collaboration with Matt Keegan)

The Office

Berlin, Germany

bending light

Starkwhite


2008

a Guest, a Host

Galerie West

The Hague, The Netherlands

Conjuring Form

Art Statements, Art 39 Basel

Basel, Switzerland

Invocation

Gertrude Contemporary


2007

The barricades

Starkwhite


Thresholds

Jonathan Smart Gallery

Christchurch, New Zealand

2006

a abrigo ou Um Temor do

Toque do Desconhecido

A Gentil Carioca

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Consequences of Inaction

Starkwhite


2005

Empires

Starkwhite


Present surface of Tell

The Physics Room


2004

análise

A Gentil Carioca

Rio de Janiero, Brazil

2003

From the Dust archive

Starkwhite


—

sElECTED GrOUP E xHIbITIONs

—

2011

singapore biennale 2011

Singapore

The 29th biennial of Graphic arts,

ljubljana 2011

ljubljana, Slovenia

simultaneously Modern:

3 Installations from the Collection

Auckland Art Gallery


The Matter of air

Gertrude Contemporary


a way Of Calling

linden Centre for Contemporary Arts


behind Closed Doors

Adam Art Gallery, Victoria university

Wellington, New Zealand

Margaret seaworthy Gothic

VCA Margaret lawrence Gallery


2010

busan biennale 2010

Busan, Korea

a Never Ending story (Curated by Chris Sharp)

New york, uSA

Measuring Potential

Potsdamer Strasse 88

Berlin, Germany

2009

For Keeps



F for Fake

Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts


2008

Casa sem Dono

Gallery Casa Triangulo

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Tarrawara biennial 2008

Tarrawarra Museum

Victoria, Australia

The leisure suite

The leroy Neiman Gallery,

Columbia university

New york, uSA

Headlands

Institute of Contemporary Art

Sydney, Australia

2007

Mystic Truths



reboot: From the Jim barr and

Mary barr Collection

City Gallery Wellington




Christchurch Art Gallery




Dunedin Public Art Gallery


Toi Te Papa, art of the Nation

Te Papa /Museum of New Zealand


rules of Engagement

Westspace


2006

local Transit

Artists Space

New york, uSA

Trans Versa

Museo de Arte Contemporaneo

Santiago, Chile

Free New zealand art

Para/Site

Hong Kong, China

scape biennial of art in Public space

Christchurch Art Gallery


archiving Fever

Adam Art Gallery, Victoria university


2005

Vanishing Point: representing

the Invisible

Starkwhite


Free New zealand art

Artspace


2004

New zealand National representation

Sao Paulo Biennal

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Infiltrate

Sub Station

Singapore

—

awarDs & rEsIDENCIEs

—

2011

Dunedin Public art Gallery

Visiting artist Programme


2010

Govett brewster art Gallery

artist in residence

New Plymouth, New Zealand

2009

berliner Künstlerprogramm/DaaD

artist in residence

Berlin, Germany

2008

Gasworks artist in residence

london, uK

2006

rita angus artist in residence

Massey university


2002

Gertrude Contemporary artist

in residence


Dane Mitchell

MINOr OPTICs

26 October 2009 — 28 November 2009

daadgalerie, Berlin, Germany

—

lIsT OF wOrKs

p. 4

Minor Optics, Triboelectric breathing , 2009

Aluminum, lacquer, perspex, electronic unit / 1000mm x 800mm

p. 6, 7

Minor Optics, static Dust Collector, 2009

Aluminum, lacquer, perspex, vices, rubber, electronic unit / 2 x 1600mm x 3000mm

p. 5

smell of an Empty room (encased), 2009

Perfume, glass, table / 500mm x 50mm diameter (glass), 1270mm x 1430mm x 1120mm (table)

(not pictured)

smell of an Empty room (plume), 2009

Perfume, unfixed photographic paper, frame / 400mm x 500mm

—

Dane Mitchell

R ADIANT MAT TER I

5 March 2011 — 29 May 2011

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand

—

lIsT OF wOrKs

p. 16, 23

your Memory of rain Encased, 2011

Perfume, glass, G-clamps, rubber / 400mm x 1450mm x 1750mm

p. 14, 15, 17, 18, 22

your Memory of rain Encased (UV release), 2010

uV-Release micro-encapsulated perfume, glass, silver nitrate, silicon, springs / 1160mm x 1100mm x 400mm (includes glass plinth)

p. 18, 19, 20, 21, 23

your Memory of rain released, 2011

Perfume, cut hole / 120mm diameter

p. 22, 24, 25

landing the sea, 2010/2011

Glass, sea-spray, steel, silicon, digital c-type print / 1600mm x 200mm diameter (glass), 400mm x 450mm (frame)

p. 17, 28, 29

Two sides Coalesce, 2010/2011

Humidifier, de-humidifier, water, glass / 1110mm x 1200mm x 1200mm

p. 26, 27

Various solid states, 2010/2011

De-humidifier, water, plaster, aluminum, bubble wrap, sieve / 1000mm x 5000m x 5000m

—

Curated by Mercedes Vicente

Dane Mitchell radiant Matter I was part of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s Artist in Residence Programme supported by

Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki ( WITT ).

Dane Mitchell

R ADIANT MAT TER I I I

5 July 2011 — 20 August 2011

Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand

—

lIsT OF wOrKs

p. 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83

The smell of an Empty space ( Vaporised ), 2011

Perfume, venturi vaporiser, glass, air pump, fan, pine, mirror / 312mm x 478mm x 282mm

p. 75, 76, 77

The smell of an Empty space Perfume Plume (solid ), 2011

Perfume, unfixed photographic paper, frame / 16 x 482mm x 380mm

p. 70, 71, 72, 73

The smell of an Empty space (liquid), 2011

Perfume, glass, mirror, glass, G-clamps / 445mm x 2450mm x 1350mm

—

Artspace receives major funding from Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

Dane Mitchell

R ADIANT MAT TER I I

28 May 2011 — 28 August 2011

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand

—

lIsT OF wOrKs

p. 47, 54, 55

ancestral Dirt, 2011

Glass, dirt, clamps / 6 x 1828mm x 26mm diameter (glass )

p. 47, 50, 51

Epitaph, 2011

Perfume, mirror, cabinet / 1030mm x 1830mm x 860mm (cabinet)

p. 46, 47, 48, 49

Gateway to the Etheric realm, 2011

Powder-coated steel, spell, spell materials / 6000mm x 6000mm x 3250mm (approximately)

p. 52, 53

Etheric realm spell Materials, 2011

Frame, glass, rubber, salt, dragons blood, smoke, rosemary, water, dirt, feathers / 1450mm x 1275mm x 100mm

p. 42, 43, 47

Diabolical Object, 2011

Obsidian / 430mm x 430mm x 260mm (approximately)

p. 45, 46

spoken Heredity Talismans, 2011

Glass, breath, mirror / 7 x 220mm x 70mm diameter (glass ), 2270mm x 1060mm x 2110mm (cabinet)

p. 44, 45, 46

bagpipe Talismans (Funeral lament in Glass ), 2011

Glass, bagpipe air, mirror / 6 x 350mm x 200mm diameter (glass ), 2270mm x 1060mm x 2110mm (cabinet)

—

Curated by Aaron Kreisler

Dane Mitchell radiant Matter II was part of Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Visiting Artist Programme,

supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

101

arIaNE bEyN is an art historian and curator based in Berlin. Since 2008 she has been Director of the visual arts section of the DAAD’s artists-in-berlin residency program and of the daadgalerie. She has held a teaching position at the university of the Arts, Berlin from 2004 to 2006 and 2010 to 2011. In 2008 she was the Artistic Director of abc art berlin contemporary, Alter Postbahnhof, Berlin and in 2007 she was a visiting curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, uSA.

a arON KrEIslEr is the curator at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand. He has been the inaugural director/curator of Ramp Gallery, The Engine Room and co-founder of the lITMuS Research Initiative at Massey university, Wellington, New Zealand. A highly acclaimed art critic, awarded a qantas Media Award for best review and best reviewer of the year in 2006, he has written extensively on New Zealand artists. As an art writer and editor he has also played a key role in major publications on Wayne Barrar, David Clegg, Tom Kreisler and Heather Straka.

Cay sOPHIE r abINOwITz is a writer, curator and producer living in New york and Berlin. She is Editor of Fantom, photographic quarterly; partner and CEO of the fashion brand Giulietta and on the MFA faculty at Columbia university. During the past decade she has written on numerous international artists and exhibitions; she was Artistic Director of Art Basel, and Senior Editor of ParKETT.

CHrIs sHarP is a writer and independent curator based in Paris. He is Editor-at-large of Kaleidoscope magazine, a contributing editor of art review, and his writing has appeared in magazines including Frieze, afterall and Mousse. Curated exhibitions include Under

Destruction, co-curated with Gianni Jetzer, at The Swiss Institute New york, 2011; still Vast reserves, co-curated with Emily Cormack and Alexie Glass-Cantor, at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2010; a survey of Alexander Gutke at MOCAD, Detroit, 2009.

—

arTIsT’s aCKNOwlEDGEMENTs

Michel Roudnitska.

Cindy Ashley, Ariane Beyn, Natasha Conland, Janita Craw, Greg Dawes, Charlotte Drayton, Richard Francis, Grant Franklin,

Ricard Garcia-Valls, Murray Gibson, Andy Jacobs, Nigel Jones, Aaron Kreisler, Tana Mitchell, Cinta Panisello llatje, Erica quinn,

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Alan Rennie, Anne Ryan, Chris Sharp, Andrew and Jenny Smith, Sriwhana Spong, Paul Turner, Mercedes Vicente

& Everyone at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Artspace, and Berliner Künstlerprogramm / DAAD.

John McCormack & Dominic Feuchs at Starkwhite (www.starkwhite.co.nz )

102 103

104ISBN 978-3-89357-123-9

Documents

Dane Mitchell - Radiant Matter