Art Show: Paul Chan

Paul Chan uses moving shadows projected onto Gallery walls and floors. Different objects move through the video surface at differnt speeds, and there is anything from abstract shapes and forms, to cars, trees, people, weapons, lines, dots, and flags

These clever immaterial installations cause many different associations in the spectator. Some samples: Genocide in Africa, Conquistadors versus Indians in 16th century Latin America, ghost ships, planes dropping bombs on cities, villagers watching bombs being dropped at them, bodies jumping down The Twin Towers, AK47 machine guns passing by as if they were feathers in the wind and so on.

However, your associations never get confirmed, it remains fuzzy and ambiguous. And that is the trick. It makes you wander what is out there, has been in the past, and will be in future - or rather is flying around you, painfully visible, or eerily unoticed.

Amongst all this dark visual poetry (the shadows are black after all) there was one thing that made me laughing out loud: I had the pleasure to observe three people either abruptly avoiding to trip onto the shadow projections, or being seriously warned by their anticipating partners "to be careful" as if they would destroy a fragile piece of art. Obviously, the formal and controlled space of a public gallery has ingrained the behaviour in many people to not touch art by all means, and if in doubt, to better not take a close inspection since the guard might strike a pre-emptive alarm. Watching folks when trying not to trip into an immaterial shadow on mere floor tiles, is quite a comical sight, believe me...At the other end, other visitors walked right through the picture, in established wave-into-the-camera-style:-)

Until 1 July at The Serpentine