Infinite possibilities

Saturday 16 June 2012

The three artists highlighted this summer at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) might all be at very different stages of their careers, but they share an affinity for materials and ideas that curator Graham Domke finds very exciting.

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The three artists sharing space at DCA are certainly not short of ideas, writes Sarah Urwin Jones

The title for the exhibition, Infinite Jest, is taken from the work of the late American author David Foster Wallace whose 1996 novel of that name is, according to Domke, "as much about the footnotes and appendices as the story itself".

With Hans Arp's oft-quoted description of Dadaism a touchstone – the idea of "infinite sense and finite means" – DCA's exhibition celebrates the disruption of linearity, something which can be found in the work of the three artists featured: American Rob Pruitt ("a real coup for DCA") who once laid out a line of cocaine in a gallery for visitors to help themselves, Brazilian Cinthia Marcelle, and English newcomer William Mackrell, for whom Domke predicts "great things"."It all came together quite organically," explains the curator."I've known Rob Pruitt for a few years, and loved his work for a decade. I've been waiting for an opportunity to work with him. "Cinthia has recently shown in places I love – Ikon in Birmingham and a residency at Gasworks, London – and has won the prestigious Future Generation Art Prize. "And William, who is yet to break big as an artist, simply blew me away with some work he did in the studio last year."That work, 1000 Candles, will literally light up the opening night and evolve as the exhibition progresses. A tight circle of 1000 tea lights, which will be lit just twice by the artist during the exhibition, the work was conceived when Mackrell bought a torch which purported to have "1000 candle power". "He wondered what that might look like," says Domke, who says the photographs from the original work, made in a studio and exhibited as part of Infinite Jest, are stunning. "It's like the surface of the moon," he says, "the quotidian transformed, which is what is exciting to me about piecing all these different works together."But it is Cinthia Marcelle's work which will first confront visitors to the exhibition. Using film to document the slight interventions she makes on the usual order of everyday life, the artist's Confronto (2005), a film in which a growing number of fire jugglers stop increasingly frustrated traffic on a zebra crossing in her hometown of Belo Horizonte, will literally stop visitors in their tracks. Her monumental work The Maker concludes the exhibition, a vast pile of crumpled-up paper taken from DCA's own offices, from the midst of which will come the sound of paper being crumpled. "It's as if the maker is inside, struggling for ideas," Domke explains.Ideas are certainly not something which these artists struggle for, not least Pruitt, who will show one of his trademark water bottle fountains – in this case an Evian Fountain, constructed from around 60 cases of the mineral water – two "denim" sculptures (choreographed cement-filled jeans) and a work called Pop-Pop's Choc Chip Cookies, which is based on a family recipe."It's a nice show to have for the summer months," admits Domke, who has been working on the exhibition for over a year. "They're all very good artists. There really is that sense of infinite sense and finite means - And if you don't like one piece, you might like the next one."Infinite Jest, DCA, 152 Nethergate, Dundee (01382 909900, www.dca.org.uk), June 23-August 26.

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Infinite possibilities

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