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On the work of Zoro Feigl:
Zoro Feigl makes moving artworks: 'Sugarstorm' an open candyfloss machine with fans that eject pink sugar clouds into the air; 'Loop' a 12-metre coil of rope projected into space by two car tyres, that falls to the floor in the shape of a collapsed oval; 'Bounce' two towers of five silver plastic balls, bouncing on top of each other, held in place by a 'cage' of six steel wires stretched between floor and ceiling, powered by drills that trigger movement in the lowest balls via a crankshaft; 'Ripple' an installation of twelve radially installed ropes that create a sea of waves through long levers fitted with pneumatic air cylinders; 'Drifters' twenty antique compasses kept in constant disorientation by a rotating magnet. In his work, Zoro Feigl explores ways of visibly manifesting energy. You see floating, spinning, undulation, bouncing, spraying. All Feigl's works could essentially be described as fountains: in each piece, he shows the arc of the driving energy and its ultimate defeat by gravity. The precarious balance between the power that drives his installations and the pressure Feigl's subjects them to is at the core of his young oeuvre. In all his work, it is this element that fosters an astonishingly serious empathy with the machines that provide the power. I feel that the representation of physical laws in Feigl's artworks is so touching precisely because it allows us to experience - very directly - that we can have faith in the material world: it always behaves the same in similar circumstances. The boundary between chaos and recognisable patterns in undulating rope or bouncing balls stretches the limits of our perception and our capacity to comprehend; but we realise that a pattern only descends into randomness for us. In the material world, there is only infinite order. The sum of driving power, direction, elasticity and resistance always applies. The unsentimental empathy with mechanical processes is a rare and vital experience; it reveals the regularity of these processes as something intentional. As though Zoro's installations want to behave according to the laws of nature. I am not eager to assign sexual connotations to artwork but in this case it would be a denial not to. The significances and associations are too pregnant. The interlinking of the mechanical and the sexual is perhaps expressed at its strongest in the work of Paul McCarthy. Ultimately, all his work revolves around this kind of levelling. The force of McCarthy's work lies in the sense that the artist never revels in the debauchery he depicts. My impression is that his work springs from a white-hot rage at what humanity displays. McCarthy's work always offers up sexual acts that are lethargic and mechanical. His actors seem to have passively surrendered to forces which are often not in their control. A number of Feigl's works deal with the same connection but the gestures and rhythms of reproduction, the sinuous movements and spurting are, in his world, innocent and optimistic. That sexuality is a force of nature that flows through human veins independently is not quite linked to a dramatic notion of human powerlessness. The very fact that we are a part of these larger natural processes has a sense of optimism. The work of Matthew Barney can also be considered a unique treatise on human sexuality. In the ocean of tepid pornographic art, his work is a beacon that depicts the boundless complexity of reproduction with command and love. What is essential here is the sense of purity, graduality and ritual Barney employs to tune viewers in to the quality of the processes he recognises in the world. This attention for the process itself is also present in a highly exemplary way in Feigl's installations. Where lesser artists wish to share their personal feelings about the world with others, Feigl constantly attempts to create as clean and pure a staging of the process as he can. In his installations, everything is the fruit of a flawless intuition for the essential. It is perfect functionality that, with this, disappears entirely behind the image that appears once the machine starts to work. That Zoro has to be on hand, welding tools at the ready throughout the first week after an installation's completion only shows that he has made his art on a knife-edge. Artist and Director W139 |
