303 Gallery presents our first exhibition of new work by Ceal Floyer.
Ceal Floyer’s minimal installations use language as a material, intangible yet integral to her work. In the main gallery, Floyer has installed “Highlight”, 2006, implying a crescendo during a celebration or event. In fact, the entire exhibition space is empty except for one lonely blue balloon on the floor. There is a projection of a square reflection of light on the balloon creating a cartoon-like “highlight” on its mat surface. The natural illumination that one would instinctively imagine creating this reflection has been replaced with the projector's artificial phosphorescence. This creation of an environment in which expectation and reality do not converge leads the viewer into another kind of reflection - the unfulfilled anticipation inherent in day to day life.
In addition, the reverberation of "I Do, I Would", 2006, is heard in the space. For this sound installation, a snippet of a song by the Swedish pop group ABBA is played as it is originally recorded, and then thrown backwards and looped. The simple action changes the lyrics from "I do" to "I would" and into a perpetual and relentless vortex of shifting intentions. Also on view, “Apollinaris”, 2005, a single channel video installation of a film of the sparkly action that happens above the rim of a glass of mineral water, which shown in this bigger size resembles more of a fountain or some abstracted fireworks.
Last year, Ceal Floyer had a one person exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Canada, and in 2004 at the Kabinet fur Actuelle Kunst in Brernerhaven, Germany. Floyer has had solo exhibitions at the Statens Museum fur Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2002, at the Institute for Visual Arts, Milwaukee, and U.C. Berkeley Art Museum / MATRIX in 2001, and at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland in 1999. This June Floyer will present a new installation at Art 37 Basel, The International Art Show, in Art Unlimited and in September she will have an exhibition at The Swiss Institute, New York.