South likes: Nina Canell at Camden Arts Centre, London

South likes: Nina Canell at Camden Arts Centre, London
Near Here
Camden Arts Centre, London, UK
17 January – 30 March, 2014

A string of nails held together by magnets delicately hanging from the wall evokes the mesmerising formal balance in Nina Canell’s work. Water-filled tanks and oversized cables, which one can see only from specific perspectives thanks to mirrors and well devised illusions, works as a dynamic commentary to the temporal nature of experiencing a three-dimensional object. A piece of carpet with chewed gums recalls the too-familiar pavements that we walk on everyday. And yet the context of their placement in the gallery space reminds us of our natural tendency to often overlook all the small elements creating our surroundings. An imprint of a 1,000,000-volt discharge placed on the floor raises questions on the nature of fragility: can intimacy be created by approaching a moment in time with technologic formulae? The artist, involving temporary phenomena in the core structure of the works presented in Near Here, creates a series of tangible fragments of time; her works act as a map of the unseen and the unnoticed, posing the timeless question of what makes an ephemeral event important.

Marina Maniadaki

http://www.camdenartscentre.org/whats-on/view/ex-nc