In a forest of red, green and blue

2023

‘In a forest of red, green and blue’, Troika and Cécile B. Evans, Max Goelitz, 2023 Photo: Dirk Tacke

‘In a forest of red, green and blue’

Fine white dust accumulates on the floor in ephemeral patterns that mirror the traversal of air and feet through the room. Like sun-bleached bones laid bare on windswept desert sands, a horned statue protrudes from this temporary configuration of matter, conferring on the ensemble the quality of an optical illusion. Elsewhere, fragmentary chimeras offer intimations of a bird and a human torso emerging from the shifting planes of table salt. Imagined as its inhabitant, In a Forest of Red, Green and Blue (Aktaion) (2023) is composed of slices cast from 3D digital models of classical statues, reassembled in stacks missing certain transitional intervals. It is associated with the series Compression Loss, which borrows its name from loss of data density that occurs when digital files are copied repeatedly, and refers more broadly to the problem of reassembling a whole from component parts. The specter of Frankenstein haunts the digital domain, where the smooth screen gives way all too readily to glitches and jagged recombinant sculptural motifs. By contrast, the scalable geometry of Pile of salt (2023) offers a vision of seamless transition between digital and material forms. Where the electronic spirits of the forest prove unfit to save it from conflagration, capable merely of witnessing its destruction, the sculptural forms emerging from the salted earth pose the question of adaptation anew.

Dehlia Hannah

Dehlia Hannah, ‘Maladaptation to the Screen’,
in a forest of red, green and blue’,
Cécile B. Evans & Troika,
Max Goelitz Gallery, Munich, 11 May–17 June 2023