Nikita Gale

RUINER III

RUINER III by Nikita Gale is part of an on-going numbered series of abstract sculptures in which various ancillary materials necessary for sound production and recording such as towels, foam, and audio cables, are riddled around piping resembling crowd control bollards, lighting trusses, and other like stage architecture. While these muscular works evoke the forms and dynamism of mid-century modernism, they can also be seen as a translation of Goethe’s idea that “architecture is frozen music”. 

RUINER III is exemplary of how the artist’s disembodied sets typically evoke a sense of longing through absence, and in so doing, draw out an extended mediation on how audiences project mental or emotional energy onto a person, object, or idea. Likewise, the lost subject in the centre of Gale’s dramas spur viewers to wonder why these actors have left the stage. On a primary level, these distancing techniques allow Gale to lay bare how scenography constructs a state of mind, or in the artist’s own words how “desire is data”. Instead of showcasing a performer or their performance directly, Gale characteristically prefers to imply the spectacle of these productions through their generally unrecognized, yet necessary infrastructure. In doing so, the artists attempt to highlight all of the labor and other forms of support that are often left in the margins of the culture industry. As a form of counterpoint, the series use of DIY aesthetics over the pop entertainment sector’s polish, winks not only to the idea that anyone has access to culture, but that the mainstream itself is a contrivance.