Lot 11: ANGELA BULLOCH

B. 1966
EXTRA TIME 8:5

measurements
75 by 50 by 50cm.

alternate measurements
29 1/2 by 19 2/3 by 19 2/3 in.

1 DMX-module, 1 half Black Box module, waxed birchwood, printed aluminium panel, white glass, diffusion foil, assorted black cables, RGB-lighting system, DMX-Controller

Executed in 2006.

PROVENANCE

Donated by the artist, courtesy of Esther Schipper, Berlin

NOTE

One of the most innovative artists to have emerged during the 1990s, Angela Bulloch combines light, sound, audio, video, text and objects to formulate a constellation that critically explores systems and rules which govern behaviour and perception.

Extra Time 8:5, 2006 consists of a pixel box that is part of a larger series of works the artist began to develop in 2000, together with artist Holger Friese. Displayed either individually or collectively in multiple clusters, each pixel box comprises 3 fluorescent colour tubes that when combined are capable of generating a staggering 16,777,216 colours. Yet the randomness suggested behind the sequence of colours, belies a high degree of orchestration. A DMX modular system, connected to each pixel box, enables the artist to choreograph a transition of colours related to processed information. This could be derived from such disparate sources as the structure of a movie; the rhythmic structure of rock music; video footage taken by the artist, or in the case of Extra Time 8:5, a homeopathic dose of 'infotainment' culled from an early morning BBC broadcast of the same name. Frame by frame, the artist selects a specific quantity of pixels from each material via the use of computer software. As with all her work the artist creates a single object or device that generates an entire environment. The room in which this box is presented will be suffused with light, mutating through an entire spectrum of colours.

When confronted with the source material thus transformed, the estrangement one feels is often paired with a strange sense of familiarity. This might be located in formal aspects of the pixel box, which clearly resembles Judd's minimalist forms, or a piece of furniture that could be found in a club environment; it could equally be derived from the formalist use of pure colour in the work of artists from Mondrian to Ellsworth Kelly; the evocation of modernist utopias and their search for a universal language; or indeed the source material selected by the artist. This distillation of moments is clearly exemplified and compounded in Extra Time 8:5, which seems to oscillate between an optimistic yearning for the future and nostalgia for the past: the paradox of being transported back to the future.

Born in 1966 in Canada, the artist studied at Goldsmiths and was based in London for a number of years before moving to Berlin where she currently lives and works. She has shown extensively across Europe, has been nominated for the Turner Prize and was featured in the Tate Triennale in 2006. Fittingly it was in the form of the group exhibition - Seven Obsessions, 1990 - held at the Whitechapel Gallery, that the artist received her first UK institutional outing; at the time Bulloch was already exploring themes of participation which are at the core of her current-day work. The artist's contribution comprised a version of the work Blue Horizons - a drawing machine that throughout the duration of the exhibition plotted a wall drawing in blue ink, its action systematically triggered upon the presence of the viewer. As well as implicating the viewer in the making of the work, the artist is also interested in the significance of the social preconditions and parameters which prescribe participation. As the artist has stated: "the work outlines the fact that individual choices are more or less meaningless -- the work has already defined the parameters of choice." (the artist cited in David Bussel, "Who Controls What? Interview with Angela Bulloch" in Art From The UK, Munich 1998, p.31) AC