Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation? [#GVM004]

What, pray tell, is this?

It’s two bottles on a shelf or something.

Well, yeah, that’s obvious. But what kind of bottles...

look like beer bottles, maybe

but beer bottles aren’t silver

neither are they. that’s paint

not applied very carefully either, looks like it was sprayed

and the spray caught the wall too.

* * * * *

And so the conversation goes. Here’s some context:

That’s obviously graffiti to either side. It looks like the pink paint was just sprayed wherever it could go without covering the graffiti. I’d guess that the graffiti to the right was first, then the pink, and last the graffiti over the pink to the left (on the orthogonal wall).

Notice that the paint’s on the floor, too. And those bottles, and the plumber’s helper. Silver.

I am further guessing that nothing was moved or (carefully) positioned in this process. Certainly, the bottles weren’t sprayed silver off in a corner somewhere and then carefully placed into the scene. I’ll bet if we scratch the silver paint on them we’ll see pink below.

Same with the plumber’s helper; pink beneath the silver. Notice how the silver bleed’s around the edge and onto the floor. No masking tape there. So you think if we lift it up we’ll see the concrete floor unadorned with pink?

* * * * *

Believe it or not, there’s an aesthetic to this, a discipline. Taking it as you find it – no moving anything to get an unobstructed surface – and just painting it all pink, that’s a discipline. Painting it pink, whatever’s there, where it is, turns it all into a surface. Adding some silver here and there, but not being too careful about boundaries, articulates that surface, but doesn’t really pull objects from it.

Who’d ‘a thought?