The meticulously crafted artwork of American artist Corey McCorkle connects obliquely through architectural interventions and resuscitated objects of a specific cultural import. The contextual shifts the work engage in offer the viewer unique collisions of information – here possible in a variety of different mediums. Inciting meditation on conceptual curiosities in urban studies, architecture, industrial or graphic design, his objects and interventions describe the anatomy of revelatory experience through an investigation of transitory space. McCorkle suggests that aesthetics have an influence on moods and that they can foster inner transformation. Cosmically inclined, much of his work comfortably holds its place within the fields of interior, urban and orthopedic design. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern consists of a series of situations where craft is also given considerable concern. Take, for instance, his installation New Life Expo, 1997 consisting of carpet upholstered chairs. Part magic rug, part baroque roundel, these camouflaged objects also ask to be misused. The chairs that look like modernist angel’s wings are actually intended to be a device to hold the user in the lotus position. It is made with meticulous attention to craftsmanship and detail (perfection as nirvana?). Of it, McCorkle says, “It threatens to function,” but he does not expect the viewer to use the piece, nor does he pretend that our viewing it will provide us with a transcendent experience. But what it could do is make us think again about the possibility of pursuing one. The existing skylights of the Kunsthalle have been altered in two ways. The first concerns enhancing in one spot the valency of sunlight – the foyer being altered with rays of distilled sun through a volumetric intervention of blown plastic panels resting in the existing skylight armature. The skylight in the main exhibition hall, by contrast, has been completely blacked out. These volumetric black panels, reminiscent of so much 80s design (a dark episode), resituate the gothic vogue of much contemporary art in an already existing, and epic, gothic frame work. The monumental span of this piece in particular inverts the elegiac celebration of the diffuse light, of a cathedral for instance, with something sculptural, opaque and not unrelated to the astonishment, or menace, of the sublime. Each of the panels were blown with maximum amount of air that could be pushed into molten plastic. Two other works that reflect one another are Rising Sun and Dandelion Wine for a Tokyo Blonde. The first is looped DVD slide show consisting of hundreds of small images taken from Japanese magazines stocking advertisements for self-employed call girls. All of the images present demure, usually blandly dressed office girls with there hands covering only their eyes. This presentation and this gesture, at obvious odds with one another, pit vivid availability against anonymity in a salute to the sexually unsavory (but cultural condoned). The second is an object made from industrial plywood, and exists as something between a sprawling coffee table and a flying carpet. This “table” consists of thousands of pieces of faceted wood which have been assembled into a number of different patterns of hard geometry. The crystallized patterns are derived from the Edo-era Japanese art of Yosegi with which the artist spent a portion of last year learning outside of Tokyo.The Solar Wind is a work related to Bern specifically. The artists concern with the presentation of the transmission of light brought him to the discovery of a famous moment in the history of research at the University of Bern’s Science department which developed a foil supposed to collect the direct rays of the sun, collecting there isotopes unaffected by the Earth’s atmosphere. This information collected on this Sun-kissed paper was then used to measure the chemical make-up of the rays more accurately. The artist was immediately struck by the idea that this foil used to harvest the unalloyed solar wind has such romance built into such cold material and by the idea of the fabrication of this paper coinciding with the cosmically inclined of Warhol’s balloons. In an email to professor Geiss, who conceived the foil at the Bern University, McCorkle writes: “While I have been developing this exhibition I keep thinking of ways I might incorporate this historical element into an entirely new work. If enough material can be acquired, I would like to make large, square, helium filled pillows much like Warhol’s made in 1966 (perhaps around the same time you were working on the Bern foil). The balloons would begin the exhibition clinging to the ceiling and eventually during the exhibition fall to the floor and remain wherever they land.”
Corey McCorkle (°1969, La Crosse, USA, lives and works in New York). This is his first solo-exhibition in Switzerland. Recently McCorkle’s work has been shown at the Sculpture Centre and PS1/ MOMA, New York; The Suburban Chicago; The Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Speak For Gallery, Tokyo; objectif_exhibitions, Antwerp; Galeria Fortes Vilaça,, Sao Paolo; Maccarone Inc. Gallery New York; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Triple Candie, New York; Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles; MurrayGuy Gallery New York; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Arnolfini Museum, Bristol; The Drawing Center New York.