jack art review

The Flower Called Nowhere

Zin Taylor's The Flower Called Nowhere is a sparse installation, verging on the invisible as one walks through the artspace gallery or passes by the windows. Sometimes, when a show refrains from shouting, "here I am baby come take a good look" one can anticipate an intriguing encounter. But as softly as I approached, bending my ear to hear the ambient tape loop emitting from the origami flowers, or squinting to read words written in belladonna ink I worried that this might be an encounter with someone who hasn't quite finished with some far reaching thought, and it might be best for both of us to move on. A wall lined with diagrams and sketches didn't help create any conversation. I think I smiled and nodded. A video loop of a man leaping from a table to a jump cut of him falling from the ceiling was riveting for a short duration of my strained attention. A photo of a glass with a straw bent around and suspending an ice cube seemed a cute parlor trick. Ah, time travel in the space of a drink. I think I'll go have one. Yes, Art has proven its willingness to accommodate concepts. It has accepted the limits of the aesthetics of presentation in favour of a reflexive referencing of the sublime. Taylor's work in some sense may refer to this acceptance relating the work of a culture or in this case a subculture with time travel and with its substantiation in limited time. The question becomes whether a work can at the same time represent itself and be what it represents without becoming meaningless. And does a 'meaningless' work (to the viewer) create meaning, or does it collapse into the paranoid which Tylor presents to those outside? Inaccessibility does not constitute a culture, nor does incomprehension align with time travel. Though I might just be outside the loop.