Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves

2020
Sapele Mahogany and fluids

The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper
(Atlas, in transit laid to rest)

2022
Wood, plastic string, metal and glass

The Kitchen partners with Berggruen Arts & Culture to present  two works by artist, writer, and poet Rhea Dillon (b.1996, London)  that act as sculptural interventions within Palazzo Diedo. Here, The  Kitchen expands its relationship with Dillon, having presented her film  (Working Title) Browning 2025 (2021) in The Kitchen’s online Video  Viewing Room in 2022.  

In Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves (2020), Dillon questions  the Black woman’s access to amorphicity, via a consideration of  Jesus’ shapeshifting and crucifixion, to connect Christianity and  colonisation. Colonised cultures were “sanitised” through Christianity,  wherein water offered spiritual sanitisation, echoed in the postmodern  preoccupation with hyper-sanitary spaces. Janus slowly drips water,  equivalent to the slippage of global class and colonial structures,  much like a “leaking fortified enclave”. Dillon inquires: who will be  tasked with cleaning up this mess: the artist, the institution — or will  we all be responsible?  

The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper (Atlas, in transit laid to  rest) (2022) assembles three sourced objects continuing Dillon’s  rewriting of the Greek god Atlas as a Black woman; resurrecting the  reproductive labour required of Black women to sustain neoliberal  capitalism. Vessels are significant for Dillon in their moving of bodies  during the slave trade, the Windrush migration, and as carriers of  souls after life passes.

with Polaroid Foundation

To the opening of Palazzo Diedo, the Polaroid Foundation invited the 11 artists participating in the inaugural Janus exhibition to create an original work using the Polaroid 20x24. The world's largest instant camera stands almost two meters tall, weighs more than 120 kg, and produces 20×24 inch (50×60 cm) photos of remarkable resolution. Introduced as a showpiece in 1976, it soon found favor as an artists' camera. Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Julian Schnabel, Lukas Samaras, Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Frank, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Rauschenberg, Sally Mann, William Wegman and dozens of other artists and photographers created a wide and diverse body.

In 2022, Polaroid BV restored one of the five existing machines to be used exclusively for creating artistic works and developed a completely new film. To support artists in using the camera, the foundation enlisted the expertise of John Reuter, the camera's legendary operator.
The exhibition at Palazzo Diedo marks both the official launch of the Polaroid Foundation and the re-birth of the Polaroid 20×24.

a film by KOO JEONG A

OUSSS by KOO JEONG A is a 3D film project developed between 2014 and 2022 in collaboration with producer Anna Lena Vaney. It premiered during Paris+ art fair in 2022. The work centres around the glow-in-the-dark skatepark OTRO, which was developed by the artist between 2007 and 2012 on Vassivière Island in Beaumont-du-Lac, France. With its unique bowl-like curvatures that are connected by three tunnels, this 2300-square foot phosphorescent structure is inspired by the sinuous forms of a lake shore, allowing its users to skate across a human-made landscape, becoming a part of its natural surroundings. Since the realisation of this first skatepark, KOO JEONG A has gone on to create similar structures in various locations over the world.

As alluded to by the title of KOO JEONG A’s new film, the OTRO skatepark becomes a protagonist within the work, forming part of the artist’s ever-expanding term, ‘OUSSS’. Used by KOO JEONG A since the 1990s, ‘OUSSS’ can be both a root, affix, stem and suffix, but also a term in and of itself. It is suggestive of an enigmatic and morphing mo- vement, signalling matter and energy existing within the cracks of our universe.

Through ‘OUSSS’, KOO JEONG A continues their interest in conjuring alternative realities within the material of everyday life. These are the cracks that exist within our known reality, through which the artist traces tacit knowledges and experiences that would otherwise remain unknown and invisible.

The film takes us on a journey through various forms, with shots of curved hills, mountains, valleys and grasslands contrasted with the luminous otherworldliness of the OTRO skatepark. Dug deep into the ground, this structure becomes part of the landscape, fusing art with everyday life through KOO JEONG A’s playful approach. These topographical tensions extend to several digitally rendered elements within the film, as we start to identify resonant geometric contours in the fluid movement of smoke wisps, diagrammatic overlapping shapes, and three-dimensional typographic renderings of the word ‘OUSSS’, all of which float off the screen. By choosing to make the film in 3D, KOO JEONG A allows the viewer to experience the expanded perception that is embedded within the world of ‘OUSSS’. This is a world in which the clear-cut boundaries between physical and immaterial worlds dissolve, and our experience extends beyond that which we can objectively see, into what might be sensed in between.

Through watching the film, KOO JEONG A’s invites us into an experiment. With its filmic techniques and stereoscopic format, the work poses the question as to what it might feel like to experience ‘OUSSS’ in real time, such that our senses are simultaneously awakened and sent into a space of dreaming. The OTRO skatepark is the medium through which we enter this dream space; it is a structure that absorbs light energy during the day and radiates it outward during the night. Our experience of OUSSS is like that of the hypnagogic moments just before we fall asleep, when our concrete perception begins to unravel, and other sensorial and emotional possibilities start to arise.

Screening every Thursday