Reto Pulfer
BaliceHertling, Paris, France
Reto Pulfer, performance with Ofaz 1442 (2007-08)
Reto Pulfer’s first solo show at Balice Hertling is impressive, though it is hard to say why – there is something genuinely elusive at work here.
The four pieces in the show are not easy to describe: in part because they are unconventional; in part because they are rich in handmade irregularities. Nevertheless: Chlopf-Täfu-Liecht-Schacht (2008) consists of two microphone stands, one of which supports a telescope which ostensibly channels sunlight towards a wooden handle that protrudes from a second mic-stand, in a slightly sinister mating dance. Ofaz 1442 (2007-08) is a sofa whose cushions have been removed, leaving six reversible and interchangeable panels. On some of these are drawings of various kinds, photographs under glass, illegible scrawls. One of the panels is also a musical instrument.
ZR Potzwaus (2008)
The stretches of fabric zippered together in ZR Potzwaus (2008) correspond to syllables in a language of Pulfer’s own invention, the key to which is framed next to the wall-piece. The fabric elements are designed so as to be re-arranged, forming different configurations much the way letters are re-arranged to form words. Most succinct is Floorpiece # 4A and 4B (2008), a Plexiglas-covered photocopy diptych of the Abydos temple in Egypt.
To make matters more complicated, the works shown at Balice Hertling are interactive. Ofaz 1442 can be sat on, its panels can be flipped or re-arranged, and there are hundreds of combinations, before the complexity of the drawings and the often illegible scrawls are considered. It is also a musical instrument, which the artist utilized during a performance at the opening of the exhibition. Even static, however – looked at instead of utilized – each piece is spectacularly detailed: note, for instance, the coloured chalk on ZR Potzwaus, or the distortions in the photocopy in Floorpiece # 4A and 4B, which make circular globs ‘above’ the temple, almost like stars. And yet, despite this obvious abundance of signifiers, it is hard to feel any sense of what these works mean. This seems to be because of their wealth of meaning, not in spite of it.
Nevertheless, there is a structure to Pulfer’s evasiveness. Like so many artists before him, he is a fan of Bataille’s brief pornographic masterpiece Story of the Eye (1928). Yet Pulfer is also enamored of Barthes’ 1963 essay, ‘The Metaphor of the Eye’, in which Barthes argues that Story of the Eye is about the structure of language, specifically the distinction between metaphor and metonymy. Metaphors, he claims, are structured vertically, so that a second, superior meaning stands above the literal one and determines its meaning from above. Metonymy, on the other hand, takes place on a flat, frictionless plain: one meaning turns into another, without hierarchy, without authority, and without end. For Barthes, in Story of the Eye the eye is not a metaphor for the sun, or the sun a metaphor for the egg: instead there is only the metonymic chain: eye—sun—testicle—egg—etc. Therefore there is no conclusive or overarching significance to the novella – except, of course, for that lack of finality itself: that leveling, or liquification.
The same is true of Pulfer’s exhibition. Do the made-up words in ZR Potzwaus dictate the fabric forms which then represent them? Or does the arrangement of forms create new words, which then describe them? The game seems to operate in both directions: there is no transcendent meaning, only permanent transformation. That is why Pulfer’s works are so hard to pin down. They only look like closed systems; what they propose is a limitless symbolic drift.
David Lewis
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