Making Space has been a programme of four very different, beautiful shows. Curated by Jonathan Watkins, this years’ series has featured four preeminent artists who focus on materials and colour, and how they interact within 3-dimensional space. It’s been an amazing twelve months, and a wonderful privilege to have such acclaimed and exploratory works in our daily working environment.
I watched yesterday morning as Rana’s team carefully dismantled No 1272 Chainlink, a most elegant and hypnotic piece in which the studio has been proud custodian of over the last three months. It has afforded me a chance to reflect on the confidence of this show and the poetic synergy that sits within Rana’s work.
The sculpture consists of ten suspended chainlink sheets, delicately hung from the ceiling and creating a series of overlapping rows. The chainlink is in two complementary and distinctive colours, carefully chosen powder coated hues of blue and red, which when viewed together create visual distortions that interreact and lead the eye to distinguish both colours, but equally a purple when viewed facing the piece straight on.
Rana’s attention to detail and precision enabled the chainlink to be adjusted meticulously by her team and proportionally respond to the Apt space. Furthermore, and importantly Rana also sought for the piece to be read against the neutrality of a white background. Rana had never previously seen No 1272 Chainlink installed within a space that had access to extensive natural light, and even though the piece has been on display during the depths of grey and laboured London winter, there have been fantastic moments where winter sunshine has interacted with the chainlink to bring a golden glow and a depth of shadow to our space.
Complementing the installation were three of Rana’s intricate graphical pieces, again with a grided ‘chainlink’ reference. These generously scaled works are significantly more complex than a first viewing allows, with the yellows, reds, blues and greens interacting to create grids that pulse and resonate.
For all four of the shows over the last twelve months, our intention was to have a dialogue between the work and Apt’s large windows that announce the studio to the outside world and our immediate neighbours. Every show has addressed the public nature of the space in different ways. With Rana’s pieces and particularly the chainlink, the relationship to those passing by has been a delight to watch. At times the piece is barely there within the whiteness and scale of the space, simply ten narrow suspended lines that could almost be one of Fred Sandbanks yarn pieces however, as you walk further on, the piece changes and it opens up in a generous gesture to the viewer.
The work has stopped many a by passer by as they assumed the studios white emptiness was without anything of substance, who then a few steps further on have in the corner of their eye been alerted to the physical and spatial presence of Rana’s minimal but complex structure. Having walked on, they retreat, turn, and have often put their hands on the windows to take a closer look at what has captured their attention.
Referencing again Fred Sandback, who wrote with a beautiful simplicity, I particularly enjoy the following quotation when referencing his work;
‘A singular, minimal formal vocabulary with unwavering consistency and ingenuity with mass and weight to outline planes and volumes in space, that inherently address their physical surroundings, the "pedestrian space," of everyday life.’
This could so easily be talking about Rana’s show for Making Space, and the elegant beauty of her chainlink works. This morning with the show now closed and the Apt space empty we are missing her work already.
It’s been a wonderful 12 months, we now look to the future and it simply remains for me to say on behalf of all at Apt and all our clients, guests, friends and visitors to the studio in the last year who have enjoyed these very special shows to say a final thank you to Jonathan, Richard, Ben and Nikki , Rose and Rana.
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