February 7, 2013
Amalia Pica’s show at Modern Art Oxford invites the visitor to play. Standing close to a white microphone made of soap that dangles from the ceiling makes the body feel dangerously close to breaking out in song. This moment seems to have inspired the show’s title, namely For Shower Singers.
The bright kaleidoscopic style of ‘Some of that Color’ has nothing but play about it with bunting guiding the eye to an empty chair near a podium where a spotlight signifies someone is about to take to the stage. The podium is made of cardboard and lies alongside a red carpet laid in a zig zag.
The shiny ‘Red Carpet’ piece goes nowhere but takes a devious journey. The surface of each piece communicates everything. In ‘Untitled’ the visitor’s feet pull away with every step from tiles made of beer mats inspired by Dutch bars. The plinth in the entrance to the exhibition is empty. The artistic content is held in the surface of this block of cement, where oxidised staining has been caused by the sculpture that has been perched on top. This sculpture is now invisible, the viewer is uncertain as to how the plinth has been adorned. The empty space on top of the cement plinth is now the item that engages with the gallery space.The language Amalia Pica uses is her own. The artist has still screen shots of herself using semaphore, the maritime code of letters, projected onto a white wall. As Pica poses dutifully with the flags to make the signs of maritime codes she stands in a dessert. Every form of communication in the show is being used in a dysfunctional context to devise a new story.
Outside in the yard of the gallery two people are separated by distance and body language connected only by coloured bunting. They are strangers looking for a language to create a bond and the piece is titled ‘Strangers on Common Land’. The work is shot on a common in Kent. The colour of the flags that link the pair flows back into the mind reminding the visitor of the multicoloured dripping water colours caught on a sheet of paper mounted above the bunting in ‘Some of that Color’. In looking for a bond they draw on art and seek perhaps some engaging bright kaleidoscopic play. The distinct units of the show mesh together to make a whole due to the uniformity of the celebration of colour be this in a surface, a material, or a reflection: which feels a lot like life.