Artwork of the month November

Saâdane Afif, Technical Specifications, Room 2, 2008

Saâdane Afif

* 1970 in Vendôme (FR)
lives and works in Berlin (DE)


Technical Specifications, Room 2, 2008


Spatial installation,
variable dimensions

The space-embracing installation Technical Specifications, created in an extended process and comprising several works, consists, on the one hand, of the three-part kinetic work Untitled (This is the Way You & I Measure the World, 2004). Rotating perspex sheets, tied together in a concave form and lined with mirror foil, iridescently reflect the surroundings. The room also features the piece Untitled (Blue Time, 2004) – a wooden polyhedron that, amplified by the appropriate equipment, emits the ticking of a clock from within. In its analogy to Albrecht Dürer's Melancolia I, the piece suggests aspects of temporality and the ambivalent power of melancholy. The installation also includes Untitled (More, More, 2003). An anchor symbol lights up in neon blue on the wall. This motif already features in early Christianity as a symbol of faith, figuratively embodying constancy, fidelity, but also adventure and heroism. Below, on the floor, are stacked black-and-white photocopies of the image of an arm tattooed with the same motif, accompanied by a story told by the tattooed person, in the form of a poem, about the skin-deep body modification.

Technical Specifications wraps the visitor in a fabric of light, sound, motion, reflective materiality, and lyrical text – a tightly woven web that sets out in search of traces of the absent in the present and the circulating media transformation of meaning.
Inherent in Afif's work process is the invitation to a wide range of authors to view one of his works in a poetic way. This layer of reflection is also added to the works of the Technical Specifications installation in the form of wall texts. But Afif takes the process of transforming meaning even further: starting out from the technical specifications of objects already made – labels indicating their work details representing their material absence – the artist created the present new works with the same materials, thus opening up new contexts of meaning by processually varying his own work.

Denise Rigaud

<b>Saâdane Afif, Technical Specifications, Room 2, 2008</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.