Ronchini Gallery is proud to present Breaking the Fourth Wall, a project by Berndnaut Smilde at Platform at The Armory Show 2018, 8-11 March. Now in its second edition and this year curated by Jen Mergel, Platform features large-scale artworks, installations and site-specific commissions across the fair.
Smilde stages his first ‘live’ images on a theatrical set as a site for the repeated generation of a cloud. These ephemeral clouds will appear automatically and at random times throughout the duration of the fair, dissipating as mysteriously as they were formed. Here, he invites us to anticipate, witness, perhaps even photograph each fleeting form that emerges and fades beyond the edges of the picture, into our present space. On this same set, Smilde previously produced countless clouds to capture a single moment by photograph. The project title, Breaking the Fourth Wall, takes its name from a theatre-expression used to describe directly addressing the audience and breaking the illusion of a play in productions. Here, it also refers to the cloud leaving the boundaries of the set.
Smilde’s work consists of installations, sculptures and photography. He explores the physical de-construction and re-construction of materials; light, space, atmosphere and experience in relation to his architectural environment, creating a new moment between the realms of reality and the temporal. His artistic point of view often centers on duality. His works question: inside and outside, temporality, size, the function of materials and architectural elements. His Nimbus series was recognised by TIME Magazine as one of the ‘Top Ten Inventions of 2012’ and his work is held in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
Ronchini Gallery is selling an edition of the photograph, Nimbus Powerstation (2017), and is only accepting payment on the work through Bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency.