Spaced Out
Marcia Huyer

Spaced Out is an installation that challenges the gallery space and the viewer’s perception of that space. The main gallery of Harcourt House is being confronted by inflated Tyvek sculptures. Blueprints for the inflated sculptures stem from architectural or bodily details such as the elbow in duct work, the shape of an exhalation, or the social configurations of people. These familiar departure points are thoroughly expanded and distorted, presenting the object with its unique concerns and functions. In this case to redefine space, challenge expectations, and encourage the imagination of the viewer.

The inflated sculptures are often accompanied by smaller structures, which compliment and contradict the inflated forms.  With Spaced Out, I have chosen to use plinths as the dialoguing structure. Within the installation, the plinths and the inflated sculptures will instigate questions of the plinths function and relation to the object it holds. Are the plinths grounding or uplifting the inflated sculptures?

The whiteness of the installation broadens the narrative of Spaced Out. The inflated forms seem to be expanding from the walls of the gallery and existing through the building’s ventilation system. Or is the building existing through them? Where does the piece begin and continue?

The forms in the gallery simultaneously are contained in the space and control viewers to move this way or that way. The viewer is physically reminded of their body’s perimeters and formalities through the installation’s scale and involvement with the existing architecture. While in Spaced Out, a brief moment of utopian sensibility is aroused; an environment that is flexible, ongoing, and multi-responsive.

-Marcia Huyer

Exhibition date: April 20 - May 20, 2006

Review by Gilbert Bouchard

gallery   Taking Liberties   Rogers