Untitled (Material Insanity)

Untitled (Material Insanity) consists of a collection of balloons that fill the museum’s elevator — a space of transition, intimacy within a public institution, and constant circulation. Upon entering the elevator, visitors become active participants in the evolution of the work, displacing the balloons, causing them to deflate, or to migrate into other areas of the exhibition.

This contemporary and widely accessible material — the balloon — transforms into a kind of three-dimensional painting in space, shaped by the passage of time and the movement of visitors. In contrast to action painting, where the artist occupies the role of creative genius, this piece shifts authorship to the public and the elements themselves.

While Harold Rosenberg famously described abstract expressionism in the 1950s as an act — where the painting was inseparable from the life of the artist — here, the balloons bear witness instead to the life cycle of the exhibition itself.

(1) Meyer, James, Minimalism: Art and the Polemics of the Sixties, Yale University Press, 2001, p. 142