Dumb Type - Voyages








	Voyages


Voyages © Kazuo Fukunaga PHOTOS VIDEOS		On entering the ICC Gallery, there in the darkness, rather dim red laser beams scan about, as if sensing one's presence. Gradually, as the eyes adjust to the dark, one discerns a long catwalk "stage" or plinth raised slightly above floor level. Not so high as to discourage the viewer from stepping up, but an exactingly calibrated height. Mounted on the ceiling running parallel to this stage are several moving projectors. A supremely simple set-up, which makes the perfect counterpart to the refinement of the high-resolution images. dumb type, a group that has carved out a "between" zone that cuts across the subdivisions of contemporary art, always serves up surprises, an ever-changing roster of irregular participants around its core members. This particular installation is so very minimal that all interpretation is left completely to the viewer. So which of the following schema are intentional and which not . . . ? When images projected onto the stage overlap, unlike darkening of the subtractive primary pigment color mixing, the additive color principle of light makes them brighter, bringing to mind the problem of multiple elements occupying identical planar coordinates, that is, the problem of projecting n+1 dimensions onto n dimensions such as preoccupied the Cubists in painting. Or again, the collage technique of pasting together disparate components onto the same picture plane, a favorite technique developed by the Dadaists in challenge to the then-latest technology of photography and later figuring contextually in such work at the Bauhaus as Moholy-Nagy's Light-Space Modulator. Then there's Gyorgy Kepes's retheoretic of the same, or picking up from Kepes, Colin Rowe's writings on Transparency, which exerted such major influence on architecture after Modernism. And as if to incorporate all these things, the screen serving as an empty stage, whereupon the viewer bending over to get a closer look at the images projected there becomes, unwittingly "behind one's back," physically part of the installation. I only wish there were some way to see the images projected onto my own back. Herein are condensed of many different ideas dumb type has explored in their performances up to now. Since their founding in 1984, dumb type’s own Voyages have seen them overcome so many different scenes, just where will they head now ? However minimal this present exhibition, I couldnt help but think it a grand summing up of their activities so far. Fumihiro Nonomura in Studio Voice. vol. 323, 11/2002 Exhibitions: 2004 — Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (JP) 2007 — Body Media, curated by Richard Castelli, Shanghai Culture Space (CN) 2007 — Namura Art Meeting Festival, Creative Centre, Osaka (JP) 2007 — Vom Funken zum Pixel, curated by Richard Castelli, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (DE)