Arcady Kotler
Arcady Kotler
"Overlook"

Reality is ambiguous to the core and is in no way static. It comprises ongoing, overlapping transitions from one state to another and one plane to another. As such, no appeal can be made to external sources in order to grasp reality. The only way to understand reality is through one's own experience and sensory apparatus. This series of work is a meditation on the nature of reality, how we encounter it and the thin, easily-permeable membranes which separate one plane or dimension of reality from another.

Several devices are used to signify the membrane: the wall, the pages of a book, the white surfaces of plaster and the juxtaposition of different conditions of representation. These skins cover and divide disparate modes of perception, location and being. Walls separate inside from outside and the meetings of separate forms define negative and positive space.

The pages of a book, a repository of knowledge, meet at geometric, right angles and accordion outward from the center in "The Beginning". In the middle of the composition is the image of an open mouth pronouncing a word. To the sides of the composition the sculpture evolves from three-dimensional form to plain empty surface. The image transforms from organic form to geometric form before disappearing into emptiness symbolizing the eternal cycle of questions: What was in the beginning? What is emptiness? What is reality?

"Passage (Door)" and "Silence(Zipper)" exist in both two and three-dimensional space, giving the impression of un-reality in reality. They hint at the search for a way out of banal existence or a way into a different dimension. Seemingly intractable, opaque surfaces turn out to be permeable.

"Revelation (Tear)" features a wall-mounted sculpture of an eye, a self-contained, independent object. It implies a reckoning or a painful moment of encounter with the harsh reality of life. No matter how much we try to preserve and protect our inner world, reality finds a way to intrude, disturb and violate it. In this piece, the teardrop is the result of this strong emotional shock.

In "Intersecting Senses", sensory organs evoke conduits for various types of information. They help one transition from the physical world to the spiritual while enabling the externalization of our internal worlds. Their inherent intimacy prohibits the wall-mounted, disembodied features from becoming estranged from their functions and identified as 'objects'. They metaphorically transform the physical space into the internal world of an organism which has the potential to speak with its mouth and listen with its ears.

Representational form literally emerges from the Minimalist serial unit of the block, becoming invested with symbolic meaning beyond the quotidian. An ear smoothly transitions from the white surface of the wall, narrating a conceptual transition from Minimalism to representational embodiment. The process of making the work and projecting a visual idea into an inchoate material is a metaphor for the ineluctable search for meaning through engagement with the phenomenal world.

While different sensory orders come together through the experience of the installed objects, multiple levels of social spaces superimpose one another and seemingly incongruous forms of recent practices converge. The space of the gallery acts not only as a physical container for secular experience but also as a locale for transformational experience to be described and perhaps, to occur.

Overlook Show 2006
Embodiment
Creation Show 2002-2003