Introduction
Ceal Floyer’s light intensive and transparent works show "qualities that integrate purity and silence, elements that define a point of origin which Rosalind Krauss has called the perfect modernist gesture, the creation of a tabula rasa, a new foundation" (I. Blazwick, Kunsthalle Bern). But Floyer’s work is not about modernist purity or the autonomy of sensory experience. Its performative gestures address simple, quotidian things that have always existed in our world. Through omissions and visual as well as conceptual double meanings, Floyer underscores a spatial and temporal distance that separates the constant prompts to act made by everyday objects from our actions themselves. Thus Floyer intervenes in undisturbed experiences of daily life. The causal logic of events and the resulting norms that define our existence and give things their mundane qualities are reversed, opening up a unique moment of silence and reflection.
Ceal Floyer grew up in England and has lived in Berlin since 1997. The conceptual artist has developed new works for Y8, including Diptych (Klettband), which translates the spatial qualities of everyday objects into a two-dimensional surface rendered functionless.
As part of the exhibition, Ceal Floyer produced a new Y8 edition entitled unrequited. Turning again to everyday objects, Floyer uses a Velcro strap and a small box to address the poetic image of a distance condemned to be maintained into eternity. Its reflection of experiences of distance created by COVID-19 makes the edition timely in an unforeseen way.
An edition of unrequited, 2020 is available here.