COILED ENIGMAS ‘ROUND INFINITE CONTRADICTIONS:
WILLIAM BROVELLI’S “BOUND OBJECTS” OF 2010
©2010
Dominique Nahas
William Brovelli’s artworks — part of the exchange within the Coil Contract that he sets up between the buyer of his production — consist of small anonymous-shaped objects bound in black gaffer’s tape, veiled objects whose identities are known only to the artist, and whose identities are to remain sealed forever. These objects have much to do with setting up an act of faith between artist and buyer and invoking the very issue of faith and belief in the mind of the spectator. These objects serve as effective triggers for the imagination and for the projection of fantasy on the part of the viewer. In these respects Brovelli’s covered objects have affinities with the mind-game played by Marcel Duchamp through his 1918 À Bruit Secret in which an object (supposedly) placed by the collector Walter Annenberg was secreted within the coils of twine held securely into place by two metal plates. In this case one must trust that there is a actually a rattling noise that could occur were one in the position of handling this object; one must choose to believe or not believe the historical account of the artist’s account and the veracity of the narrative itself. The same holds true of Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista, his ironic conceptual artwork conceived with the premise that the artist’s excrement was freshly preserved, produced and tinned in May 1961 in cans numbered 001 to 090. Since opening these cans would destroy the value of the art their contents remain much-disputed enigmas. In any case Manzoni cheekily priced each 30-gram can by weight based on the current value of gold at the time — an allusion to alchemy’s search for the power of transcendent transformation. Brovelli’s “bound objects” (of which there are only( )in existence) weigh( )apiece and measure( )in width,( )in depth and( )in height. Each object is priced at twenty dollars.
The buyer must agree to abide by the clauses in the Coil Contract that enforce the terms of ownership as well as the condition of responsibility that the owner of the work must abide by. The new owner of a purchased artwork (like the gaffer’s tape) is bound to the hidden object in question, bound by an agreement that he or she must submit himself or herself to. Brovelli insists that the art piece not be placed outside the system of exchange originally set up upon purchasing of the piece and the signing of the contract. Some of the provisions include: a) the work is not to be resold or lent to individuals or institutions b) the work is not to be traded or exchanged on the open market c) the work is not to have its image reproduced in any state for any purpose whatsoever d) upon the death of the buyer the artwork is to revert to the artist or his estate, at which point the artwork will be incinerated, all traces of its earthly incarnation and its (presumably) auratic powers erased e) the buyer, while having access to the object hidden by the tape, is forbidden to violate the sealed contents. All of these measures create a drama in which the art object dwells and a certain amount of tension is produced by the awareness that there is a hidden, unknown or masked content that in effect. Brovelli’s intentionalities allow for a condition that we might call a “coming into hiding” to occur that suffuses the artwork with a presence it would not otherwise have. This connection between seeing the totality of something hidden from view reflects a vision that is at home with a self-consciousness that initiates the dialectic of seeing/blindedness. Such a dynamic takes into account aspects of consciousness that are hidden to us, the problematics raised by asking questions that exploit the ambiguity of whole/part distinctions, unity/disunity oppositions and inside/outside topologies. Brovelli’s artworks, born into the world and shepherded through their coil contracts, bring to light the character and quality of hiddeness, asking us what is perceptible through concealment; such an approach to art –making raises the issue that whichever way we move on the continuum of experience and cognition something is always hidden. This account of hiddeness presented through Brovelli’s art asks us as viewers and buyers of his art to bear down on the distinctions between the inexperienced and the unknown (as two separate categories of the not-known). The artist is intent on making us aware of how a coming-into-hiding means allowing something to become partially or selectively known, not effaced entirely from memory or consciousness- something we might call necessary hiddeness. In some respects Brovelli is fascinated by paradox. After all the objects that the artist presents to us, hide, so to speak, in plain view. They are evident cover-ups. In some respects his art is threefold: fully visible, partly visible and not visible at all. We “see” Brovelli’s art in a potentially infinite number of incompatible ways. For Brovelli, implicitly acknowledging and accepting contradictories create difficulties of apprehension: hiding something unknowable involves revealing it (the “it” can be an “undecidable”).
The terminology that the artist uses is fascinating. The ins and outs of the semantics, for example, that circulate around the word “coil” and the material that the artist uses to wrap his objects, “gaffer’s” tape are linguistically charged through denotative and connotative functions. Brovelli’s ideational program through his coil contract and his process that involves the physical action of wrapping and banding similarly raises the intensity level of his objects. Anything arranged or wound in a joined sequence of concentric circles or spirals can be designated as a coil. And indeed the physical act of enveloping each object with tape is a way of coiling around the object, fetishizing it and increasing its aura through this repetitive process. In Shakespeare’sHamlet the physicality that binds us to this earth is referred to as our “mortal coils.” A coil is the name for a contraceptive used by many women: a birth preventative. In physics a coil is a device that allows the conversion of low wattage to high wattage, in effect raising the energetic level. The coils of a boa constrictor can put a strangle hold on you. So the contexts in which we use “coil” can imply positive as well as not-so-positive implications. Indeed Brovelli has continuously found measures, means and devices (process and pictorially) to emphasize ephemerality, transience and limitations in his art (and of his art as well). The issue of connectivity and connection between human beings as something that is of concern to him. Speaking of strange inter-connective allusions and twists: a gaffer is the name given to the head of a lighting department of a film crew, hence “gaffer’s tape. A substance such as black tape allows light engendered by a lighting department to be modified or neutralized, just as a “gaffe” (French slang for error, mistake or slip) is one of the means through which philosophical truth is unveiled. Somehow all of this reflects back to Brovelli’s unique and challenging mind-set that allows an art of active contemplation to unfold. F.W.J Schelling said it best when he called art “the resolution of an infinite contradiction in a finite object.” William Brovelli’s art exemplifies the haunting beauty and terrible truth of this observation.
Dominique Nahas is an art critic and independent curator based in Manhattan
Tags: Coil Contract, Dominique Nahas, essay, William Brovelli
