Eran Schaerf
When Paul Valery observed that what happened in his head never corresponded exactly to what appeared on his writing paper, he was recognizing the existence of a space that we might called the space of translation. This is the area where the visual artist Eran Schaerf has chosen to work. My work is about transitions, he says, from one language to the other, from one medium to another, from one place to the other, from one function to the other. You cannot take transition as a main subject, only mentioning the one and not the other. The point is to work on something that has connections to many different things.(1)
Schaerf’s exhibition Recasting, that was on show in the MUHKA in Antwerp (1997) is an example of a work that sets up numerous connections – with language, clothing, fashion and architecture, for example.(…) Later this year Recasting will move on to Munich and Reims(2). It is highly unlikely that the three showings will be identical. Changeability is the only constant factor in his work. The pieces are not what you would call site-specific. In Schaerf’s artistic programme the notion of place is not tied to any particular spot. Nor are these sharply defined artworks(3). Schaerf uses and reuses objects, pictures and material in constantly changing appearences and constellations, according to a logic expressed chiefly in the almost geometrical precision of the presentation.
Take the wooden pallets in Recasting for example. These transportable locations, as Schaerf calls them, allude transports not only of goods but also of artworks. They serve also as platforms on which to display objects, while the cracks between the boards are seen as lines on a sheet of writing paper, suitable for lines of text. Now the pallets act as a boardwalk for the public (putting viewer and viewed on the same plane), now as building blocks for spatial structures (turning a stack of horizontal planes into vertical walls). And what is true of the pallets holds true for nearly everything that Schaerf has included in his installation: fabrics, threads, items of clothing, ustensils, photographs, poster display cases, texts, and so on. The point is seldom what it is, nearly always what one thing is in relation to something else.(…)
1-
All quotations from the artist are taken from an interview with the writer,
2- Kunstverein Munich (6/5 – 22/6/1997), Le
college/ FRAC Champagne-Ardennes (26/9 – 23/11/1997)
3-
We is o.k. (1994) for example,
consists for the most part of rolls of tarpaulin, reels of rope and cable
spools that can be “unwound” or “unfolded”, depending on the available space.
Unlimited Contemporary Art
Dominic Van Den Boogerd, Transformations in the work of Eran Schaerf in Archis 1997/5, p 74-78 (excerpt)