Heavy Metals / Silk Cut

In her sculp­tures Alice Chan­ner (*1977, Ox­ford, UK, lives and works in Lon­don) ex­plores the re­la­tion­ship between ma­ter­i­als, bod­ies, ma­chines and in­dus­tri­al or tech­no­lo­gic­al pro-cesses. With rel­ish, she com­bines her highly in­dus­tri­al­ised ob­jects with human ges­tures or with nat­ur­al traces such as phys­ic­al or geo­lo­gic­al re­mains.

The ex­hib­i­tion Heavy Metals / Silk Cut spans across the two build­ings of the Kun­st­mu­seum and the Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell. It fea­tures new works, in­clud­ing an ar­chi­tec­tur­al in­ter­ven­tion, com­ple­men­ted by an over­view of sculp­tures, draw­ings and in­stall­a­tions from the last dec­ade.

In her ex­plor­a­tions of ma­ter­i­als and pro­cesses, Alice Chan­ner casts and bends metals or folds fab­rics, draws with ci­gar­ette ash and mani­fests the hid­den di­men­sions of the world of mat­ter. She of­fers a per­spect­ive on what lies bey­ond the cat­egor­ies and as­sump­tions that shape our per­cep­tion of ob­jects and our re­la­tion­ship to them. Chan­ner­’s works con­sist of geo­lo­gic­al and nat­ur­al ma­ter­i­als or rep­res­ent­a­tions of nat­ur­al ele­ments, such as shells, fin­gers or stones. The artist trans­forms these in pro­found, syn­thet­ic pro­cesses, often in pro­fes­sion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­it­ies that have noth­ing to do with the pro­duc­tion of art, such as factor­ies for paint coat­ing or the chem­ic­al in­dustry. She had, for ex­ample, the shells of spider crabs and brown crabs va­cu­um-met­al­lised, al­low­ing the au­then­t­ic phys­ic­al­ity of these ob­jects to col­lide with the res­ult of identic­al, rhythmic and mech­an­ic­al work­ing steps. In­dus­tri­al meth­ods of pro­duc­tion, such as the pre­ci­sion en­gin­eer­ing of CNC milling to shape alu­mini­um into the de­sired form or cou­ture tech­niques to fold im­ages of geo­lo­gic­al lay­ers in heavy crêpe de Chine, are con­stitutive of form. Chan­ner re­lent­lessly jux­ta­poses the or­gan­ic and the ar­ti­fi­cial, the bio­lo­gic­al and the in­dus­tri­al, weav­ing the traces of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses into the lan­guage of her sculp­tures. She not only con­fronts her artist­ic sig­na­ture with the cold aes­thet­ics of mech­an­ic­al shap­ing, but also points to the fra­gil­ity of the eco­logy with these se­duct­ive yet fra­gile exo­skel­et­ons.

The disk-shaped sculp­ture en­titled Star­ship (Super Heavy) (2022) is made of Port­land stone quar­ried on the Jur­as­sic Coast in Dor­set, Eng­land. Their por­ous sur­faces bear the traces of fossils of an­cient sea creatures. Shiny alu­mini­um has been cast in some of the in­dent­a­tions left by the spear­head-shaped im­prints of tower snails, while red crepe satin has been ac­cor­di­on fol­ded into one of three round re­cesses and am­mon­ites made of alu­mini­um placed in two oth­ers. Like rel­ics of liv­ing be­ings that have sur­vived geo­lo­gic­al time, these con­trast­ing frag­ments join to­geth­er to form a uni­fied whole. The work mixes dif­fer­ent ma­ter­i­als, both nat­ur­al and human-made. Or­gan­isms can be seen here that have bon­ded with lime­stone over mil­lions of years, but at the same time the artist also cre­ates a link to the syn­thet­ic and in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses that have gone into mak­ing the red fab­ric.

The sculp­ture sug­gests vari­ous as­so­ci­ations. The title al­ludes to the major SpaceX rock­et pro­ject, ini­ti­ated by Elon Musk with the goal of en­abling the col­on­isa­tion of an­oth­er plan­et, and hence calls to mind the po­ten­tial of life bey­ond Earth, which would trans­form our concept of cor­por­eal­ity in terms of both time and space as well as mat­ter. The ma­ter­i­al of lime­stone in turn points to geo­lo­gic­al time, tak­ing us back to the past life of fossils, traces of which can still be found in nu­mer­ous build­ings in Cent­ral Lon­don. The crepe satin al­ludes them­at­ic­ally to the pro­duc­tion pro­cesses in­volved in mak­ing syn­thet­ic products as well as to the fash­ion in­dustry. The com­plex­ity of human in­ter­ven­tion in the bio­lo­gic­al, geo­lo­gic­al and at­mo­spher­ic pro­cesses on Earth has thus been ver­it­ably in­scribed in the ma­ter­i­al­isa­tion of the sculp­ture Star­ship (Super Heavy).

Many of the artist’s works focus on geo­lo­gic­al and nat­ur­al ma­ter­i­als or the rep­res­ent­a­tion of nat­ur­al ele­ments such as sea­shells or stones. She trans­forms these com­pon­ents using elab­or­ate syn­thet­ic pro­cesses, in most cases in pro­fes­sion­al or in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion plants. Crus­ta­cean Satel­lites (2018) con­sists of va­cu­um-met­al­lised and lacquered spider and brown crabs. Al­though the in­di­vidu­al pieces are the res­ult of identic­al, rhythmic and mech­an­ic­al in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion steps, the traces left by human hands are non­ethe­less vis­ible. 

Alice Chan­ner­’s works al­ways in­cor­por­ate the pres­ence of their maker. This is not ne­ces­sar­ily the artist her­self, how­ever, but may in­stead be the fact­ory em­ploy­ees in­volved in the fab­ric­a­tion pro­cess. In this work, the artist con­trasts emo­tion with ma­chine pro­duc­tion, jux­ta­pos­ing at eye level the pre­cious exo­skel­et­ons with the sus­pen­sion devices used at the pro­duc­tion plant. We are in­vited to dis­cov­er in this way cer­tain spots in the highly in­dus­tri­al­ised ob­jects where the nat­ur­al struc­tures have been left un­touched, as though they might be ac­ci­dent­al, human ges­tures, or per­haps phys­ic­al or geo­lo­gic­al re­mains.

The artist works with a sur­pris­ing vari­ety of ma­ter­i­als, tex­tures and tech­niques. Her works con­trast strongly in terms of their lustre and soft­ness or hard­ness, their tex­ture and col­our, their nat­ur­al­ness or ar­ti­fi­ci­al­ity. Pro­duced es­pe­cially for Chan­ner­’s solo ex­hib­i­tion in Ap­pen­zell, Rock­pool (2023) is a ho­ri­zont­al sculp­ture that sprawls across two rooms at the Kun­st­mu­seum, sep­ar­ated by a wall and a pas­sage­way. 

Rock­pool is a pro­voc­at­ively arti-ficial sculp­ture. Its title re­calls wa­tery tidal pools by the sea, but this pool is dried up and filled with salt. The artist ref­er­ences here the ex­trac­tion of rock salt from the Swiss moun­tains that sur­round us, gen­er­at­ing a product just like a fact­ory does, but she also evokes dried-up bod­ies of water and oceans. The pur­ity of the salt stands in con­trast to the shape of the sculp­ture, which is based on a satel­lite image of an oil spill. In the Brit­ish Pet­ro­leum Deep­wa­ter Ho­ri­zon oil spill in 2010, 134 mil­lion gal­lons of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mex­ico, con­tam­in­at­ing 1 300 miles of coast­line. In­stead of filling the work with a black oil-like sub­stance, how­ever, Chan­ner fur­nishes it with bright white salt. By unit­ing two ap­par­ently un­re­lated in­vents in one sculp­ture the artist chal­lenges our per­cep­tion. 

The sculp­ture on view in the ex­hib­i­tion was pre­ceded by an out­door ver­sion. Rock­pool (2022) was part of the pro­ject High Desert Test Sites 2022: The Search­ers (Group), Mo­jave Desert, South­ern Cali­for­nia, USA, 16 April–29 May 2022.

Buri­al (2016) con­sists of var­ied to-scale ver­sions of a lump of con­crete Chan­ner found near her stu­dio in East Lon­don, a dis­trict where con­struc­tion and de­moli­tion work is the order of the day. She had the lump 3D scanned and elong­ated using a com­puter pro­gram. The ridges on the res­ult­ing ob­jects are the marks left by a ro­bot­ic arm used to mill the shapes from a foam block. These forms seem oddly or­gan­ic, their sur­faces re­min­is­cent of rock form­a­tions that have been eroded by the move­ment of water over thou­sands of years. And yet the sculp­tures are the product of tech­no­lo­gic­al and in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses. They are made of cast alu­mini­um bronze and Corten steel. As sug­ges­ted by the title and by the shape of the rocks, which are sim­il­ar in size to the human body, they refer to the fi­nite nature of human life, call­ing to mind sar­co­phagi.

“Lin­ear Bi­valves (quin­tuple green) (2018) is a wall-based work com­pris­ing thirty ver­tic­al rec­ti­lin­ear bars to which mus­sel shells are clipped ho­ri­zont­ally at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals, like ordered leaves on a branch. The bars are in­stalled in two rows, in groups of three; in each group, the first two ‘branches’ are met­al­lised in sil­ver, the third in green. This gives the work a rhythmic vi­bra­tion as one reads across it, like a scan­ner read­ing a bar­code. There is an ab­surd hu­mour in Chan­ner­’s at­tempt to in­dus­tri­ally coat these or­gan­ic forms that still bear traces of their sea life. And there is some­thing sin­is­ter in the glitzy fin­ish and re­gi­men­ted present­a­tion of the piece that be­lies its fest­ive im­pres­sion.”

At the end of the build­ing we come upon an elong­ated ho­ri­zont­al sculp­ture: Birth­ing Pool (2019). The gal­lery floor is filled with black pel­lets made from re­cycled HDPE, a pet­ro­leum-de­rived poly­mer and a ubi­quit­ous raw ma­ter­i­al used in a wide vari­ety of products from plastic bags to chil­dren’s toys, as well as by the auto­mot­ive and cos­met­ics in­dus­tries. View­ers step right into the pel­let bath, where they can then sit down and blend in with the ma­ter­i­al. The pel­lets, which are meant to gradu­ally lit­ter the ad­join­ing room in the course of the ex­hib­i­tion, feel sur­pris­ingly pleas­ant to the touch with their cool­ing prop­er­ties, des­pite re­call­ing plastic waste.

Set amidst the pel­lets are elong­ated stain­less steel con­tain­ers dis­play­ing cloud-like shapes into which tex­tiles have been layered and fol­ded, form­ing loops and re­pe­ti­tions. The volume of the ver­tic­ally em­bed­ded fab­rics, which seem to gasp for air like the com­pressed bel­lows of an ac­cor­di­on, cre­ates a ho­ri­zont­al image. The work is at once play­ful and el­eg­ant, ho­ri­zont­al and ver­tic­al, soft and hard. The sculp­ture was mod­elled on the gi­gant­ic giant water lilies, which are char­ac­ter­ised by their plate-shaped float­ing leaves. In the 19th cen­tury, the dec­or­at­ive Nymphae­aceae, which are also toxic and can cause res­pir­at­ory para­lys­is, be­came pop­u­lar col­lect­or­s’ de­lights in botan­ic­al gar­dens. Chan­ners se­duct­ive use of col­our, sheen and sur­face tex­ture also cre­ates a linger­ing sense of un­ease as we sit down in the ocean of plastic pel­lets, know­ing that the mi­cro­plastic will be ex­creted into nature after the life­time of products made from HDPE.

Ma­ter­i­als and forms that are found un­der­ground, such as rocks, fossils, metal and lava, are brought up to the sur­face in these works. Chan­ner cre­ates a play­ful jux­ta­pos­i­tion of form and ma­ter­i­al in Gran­ite and Con­crete (both 2015), stim­u­lat­ing view­er­s’ as­so­ci­ations in a way that was once per­fec­ted by the Sur­real­ists and af­ter­wards ad­op­ted by the ad­vert­ising in­dustry. 

The two wall-moun­ted works de­pict a lava flow, an image the artist first stretched and cut up into pieces be­fore hav­ing it prin­ted on fab­ric. That image is su­per­im­posed by an­oth­er one show­ing a ribbed plastic tube used in build­ing ser­vices en­gin­eer­ing that some­what re­sembles a spin­al column. The flat prints are each paired with a con­crete, three-di­men­sion­al sphere rest­ing on the floor, cut in such a way that it ap­pears to be sink­ing into the ground. The two works ex­em­pli­fy the artist’s in­terest in ma­ter­i­als and phys­ic­al­ity in a pre­cari­ous state os­cil­lat­ing between nat­ur­al­ness and ma­nip­u­la­tion, or­gan­ic and ar­ti­fi­cial, hu­manoid and ma­chine, two- and three-di­men­sion­al­ity. 

The span­dex-covered alu­mini­um tubes in Gills (2012) glide up the wall, cling­ing to it closely be­fore ex­tend­ing out into the room and then snak­ing through the open space in an al­most awk­ward move­ment, only to then find their way back into a geo­met­ric form. The curved tubes in fact fol­low the sil­hou­ettes of Yves Saint Laurent’s sketches for his Le Smoking Suits, while the span­dex is prin­ted with a heav­ily dis­tor­ted image of Chan­ner­’s arm, warped even fur­ther by being wrapped around a pole. Gills is a study of an­thro­po­morph­ism in ob­jects, pos­ing the ques­tion of why fig­ur­a­tion should ne­ces­sar­ily imply a human form.

This work, like oth­ers by the artist, con­sists of a flat sur­face that she folds, curves, stretches and con­tracts in order to ex­plore sculp­tur­al as­pects of volume and scale. By ex­amin­ing the sur­faces, ma­ter­i­als and pro­cesses that make up our post-in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ment, she ques­tions what it means to be em­bod­ied in re­la­tion to these flat places, be they tech­no­lo­gic­al, in­dus­tri­al, vir­tu­al or com­mer­cial. 

The sur­face of Mega­flora (2021), a scanned and greatly en­larged bramble branch that stands like a column in the room, is riddled with ridges. It is a sand-cast alu­mini­um monu­ment to an or­gan­ism that forces its way through the cracks of urban ter­rain that is in fact hos­tile to plant growth. The trans­form­a­tion of the black­berry bush into a sculp­ture on whose sur­face the traces and ridges left by that pro­cess re­main vis­ible and tan­gible, is both power­ful and vi­ol­ent. The mo­nu­ment­al­ity of the piece is in­tim­id­at­ing, the mag­ni­fied thorns com­mand­ing a threat­en­ing pres­ence. And yet Mega­flora is also an ap­peal­ing work. It re­mains hol­low in­side, a sen­su­al in­vit­a­tion to look closer, as if we were see­ing some­thing we de­sire. In this work, Chan­ner con­trasts the com­plex­ity of the nat­ur­al world with the pro­cesses of in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. In terms of ma­ter­i­al, tex­ture, scale and weight, the trans­form­a­tion of the life form into a metal­lic ob­ject is not so much a ref­er­ence to a former ex­ist­ence as an on­to­lo­gic­al re­pos­i­tion­ing.

“While look­ing into car man­u­fac­tur­ing, Chan­ner dis­covered that clean­ing discs made from os­trich feath­ers are used to re­move dust from the sur­face of vehicles between ap­plic­a­tions of paint. When in­stalled in factor­ies, the feath­ers look like a bur­lesque car­wash, their soft, dec­ad­ent forms spin­ning over the tops and sides of vehicles. Chan­ner sent me the sales PDF for a com­pany in Ger­many that sup­plies these feath­ers to high-end car­makers. The doc­u­ment ex­plains how ‘the os­trich feath­ers are glued by hand with sil­ic­one-free ad­hes­ives by spe­cially trained fe­male em­ploy­ees’. At the end of the file is a pho­to­graph of women dan­cing at a car­ni­val, dressed in diamanté bikinis and large red feath­ers. In the con­text of car man­u­fac­tur­ing, the feath­ers have been im­bued with an erot­ic mys­tique: a myth­os of the dec­or­at­ive and soft-handed fem­in­ine against the cool, hard, male-coded ex­ter­i­ors of lux­ury cars. For the works Body Shop and Cold Metal Bod­ies (both 2023), feath­er discs are sus­pen­ded from the ceil­ing on a series of metal chains. Placed in the gal­lery, the discs are given space to breathe, the as­so­cia-tions in­stilled in them — erot­i­cism, in­dustry, lux­ury, the­at­ric­al­ity, ab­surdity, sleaze — coaxed into the at­mo­sphere of the room.”

Ex­cerpt from The Stich Un­pick­er by Ros­anna McLaugh­lin. The essay was com­mis­sioned for the
mono­graph­ic ex­hib­i­tion pub­lic­a­tion Alice Chan­ner, ed. by Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell, Septem­ber 2023.

“Re­fer­ring to pol­ish­ing pro­cesses in the auto­mobile in­dustry that use os­trich feath­ers for their high-pre­ci­sion clean­ing, it is sen­su­ous, se­duct­ive, and play­ful. Sus­pen­ded ho­ri­zont­ally from hefty ver­tic­al chains, cir­cu­lar discs of os­trich plumes tickle the view­er­’s fancy, evok­ing the im­petu­ous flounce of tail feath­ers. Chan­ner­’s piece con­jures up car­toon-like im­ages of the large birds flirt­ing with lux­ury auto­mo­biles, but not without a dark­er un­der­tone of the en­counter between the an­im­al and the mech­an­ic­al (which rarely ends well for the former).”

Ex­cerpt from Ci­gar­ettes, Grime and Glam­our in the work of Alice Chan­ner by Zoë Gray. The essay was com­mis­sioned for the mono­graph­ic ex­hib­i­tion pub­lic­a­tion Alice Chan­ner, ed. by Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell, Septem­ber 2023.

Pan­golin (2023) is a site-spe­cif­ic ar­chi­tec­tur­al in­ter­ven­tion in­volving the win­dows of the Kun­st­mu­seum Ap­pen­zell. The work got its name from the artist’s en­counter with a pan­golin at the Nat­ur­al His­tory Mu­seum in St.Gal­len, but it also re­sponds to the scaly façade of the Kun­st­mu­seum. The im­ages com­pris­ing the work stem from pho­to­graphed rocks in the Crack­ing­ton Form­a­tion — a crum­bling, geo­lo­gic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant sec­tion of the Brit­ish coast. The pho­tos were di­git­ally ma­nip­u­lated and dis­tor­ted, and then ap­plied to silk through a pro­cess nor­mally used to print cloth­ing. The res­ult­ing prints in in­tense or­ange hues and dra­mat­ic browns and blacks were then fol­ded. The pleats over­lay the geo­lo­gic­al body, with the ef­fect of down­play­ing the massive scale of the rock. These pleated rock form­a­tions were in turn pho­to­graphed and prin­ted on fab­ric blinds that in the end be­came part of the ar­chi­tec­ture. One might say that the win­dow blinds dress the mu­seum in a di­git­ally pleated robe, with the metal body of the art mu­seum ima­gined as a fash­ion­ably dressed pan­golin amidst a land­scape of an­cient moun­tains.

In­tro­du­cing the second part of the ex­hib­i­tion Silk Cut at the Kun­sthalle, the mo­nu­ment­al silk work Soft Sed­i­ment De­form­a­tion (Iron Bod­ies) (2023) relates to the out­door land­scape vis­ible through the large gal­lery win­dow and to Pan­golin on the façade of the Kun­st­mu­seum. Alice Chan­ner has de­ployed here a spe­cial pleat­ing tech­nique used mainly in the fash­ion in­dustry to ma­nip­u­late tex­tiles with heat and pres­sure in order to cre­ate per­man­ent folds. The pleated fab­ric be­haves al­most like an ac­cor­di­on, wrap­ping it­self around the body and giv­ing it a dis­tinct­ive form. In Chan­ner­’s works, the two-di­men­sion­al fab­ric sup­port is trans­formed into a kind of scaly rep­tili­an skin and is turned into a three-di­men­sion­al sculp­ture. The fab­ric­a­tion pro­cess com­bines both manu­al and ma­chine pro­duc­tion: The folds are cre­ated by hand, while the heat press fixes them in place. Be­fore pleat­ing the silk, the artist has an image prin­ted on it and di­git­ally ali­en­ates its form, col­ours and struc­ture by means of dis­place­ment and su­per­im­pos­i­tion. This changes the ori­gin­al look of the fol­ded sur­faces, which in­creas­ingly take on the ap­pear­ance of fossils, a motif that can be found in vari­ous works in the ex­hib­i­tion.

In Am­mon­ite and Am­mon­ite (both 2019), placed on the gal­lery floor, two large alu­mini­um “bones” curl around a coil of black cor­rug­ated tubes nor­mally used as con­duits for elec­tric­al wir­ing, which are held to­geth­er here by steel bands. In­side the tubes, which like count­less other in­dus­tri­al products are made of HDPE pel­lets, are small am­mon­ite fossils. The sur­faces of the tubes are marked by fur­rows echo­ing the ridges and edges shap­ing the struc­ture of the alu­mini­um bod­ies left by the robot arm. In the in­dus­tri­al pro­cess, traces left on ob­ject sur­faces by the CNC milling ma­chine are usu­ally sanded away be­fore cast­ing, but Chan­ner de­lib­er­ately in­cor­por­ates them into the lan­guage of her sculp­tures. The com­bin­a­tion of
design, ma­ter­i­als and pro­cess traces gives rise to as­so­ci­ations that link wide-ran­ging tem­por­al di­men­sions, reach­ing from pre­his­tor­ic life forms to in­dus­tri­ally pro­duced goods.

Mechanor­e­cept­or, Icicles (red, red) (triple spring, triple strip) (2018) ex­plores the re­la­tion­ships between ma­ter­i­als, in­dus­tri­al and tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­cesses, and the body. Rect­an­gu­lar sup­port frames hang from the ceil­ing on red cords that dangle all the way down to the floor, where they end in loops. Chan­ner de­veloped this struc­tures with the help of a metal­work­ing com­pany, so that the man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess it­self be­comes an agent in the final work. Alu­mini­um fin­gers moul­ded from a cast of the artist’s right index fin­ger are at­tached to 210 cus­tom-made clamps. The fin­ger was first scanned and then di­git­ally elong­ated and re­ma­ter­i­al­ised using a 3D print­er. In a seri­al pro­cess on the pro­duc­tion line, the tips of the fin­gers were dipped in bright red thermo-plastic and coated with a se­duct­ive gloss that lends them a dis­con­cert­ingly ar­ti­fi­cial air. The in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents of the sculp­ture come to­geth­er like props to form a stage set on which every-thing seems to be in mo­tion, mak­ing us wit­nesses to the mo­ment of cre­ation of this glam­or­ous product. By sta­ging her own fin­ger, Chan­ner ne­ces­sar­ily refers to the concept of mod­ern artist­ic au­thor­ship, which views the artist as the au­then­t­ic cre­at­or of a work, and con­fronts that no­tion with in­dus­tri­al — and cre­at­ive — design pro-cesses as part of mech­an­ic­al and tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­duc­tion.

The paper works in her series Life Without Air (2022/23) are made of ashes from Silk Cut ci­gar­ettes, which the artist mixes with water in an ash­tray. The draw­ings call to mind or­gan­ic forms such as plant or an­im­al skel­et­ons. Poly­ethyl­ene mi­cro­spheres, which can be used to meas­ure the move­ment of flu­ids through a sys­tem, wheth­er mech­an­ic­al or or­gan­ic, settle onto the paper, where they shine like tiny jew­ellery beads.

The ex­hib­i­tion at the Kun­sthalle is en­titled Silk Cut, after the ci­gar­ette brand. The name is used here in al­lu­sion to a 1980s ad­vert­ising cam-paign by the Saat­chi & Saat­chi agency (whose co-founder Charles Saat­chi later be­came a Lon­don gal­ler­ist who had a sig­ni­fic­ant in­flu­ence on Brit­ish art in the 1990s). When Chan­ner was around seven years old, she saw a large-format ad­vert­ising poster in Lon­don that de­pic­ted a piece of lux­uri­ous dark purple satin fab­ric that had been sliced through by a knife blade. The cam­paign was sexy with a tinge of vi­ol­ence, with a high visu­al im­pact that made it a form­at­ive aes­thet­ic en­counter for Chan­ner. It pre-empted the ban on de­pict­ing ci­gar­ettes in to­bacco ad­vert­ising by not only avoid­ing show­ing the product it was pro­mot­ing but also es­chew­ing the brand name and in­stead visu­al­ising it as ma­ter­i­al and ac­tion. While the title of the ad­vert­ise­ment, “Silk Cut Mod­ern”, soun­ded like the name of an art gal­lery, ob­vi­ous echoes of Lucio Fontana’s sliced canvases as well as Sur­real­ist as­so­ci­ations tied in sub­vers­ively with the aes­thet­ics of art.

“Dry Cask (Silk Cut) is a floor-based work com­pris­ing three cir­cu­lar con­tain­ers of slightly dif­fer­ent heights and dia­met­ers. One con­tains black pleated crepe silk satin, while the fab­ric in the other two is the vi­brant purple of the Silk Cut ad­vert [...]. The black fab­ric is presen­ted alone, the edges of its pleats read­ing as geo­lo­gic­al folds or the swirls of a fin­ger­print, re­flec­ted by the shiny edges of its con­tain­er. In each of the other two units is a sil­ver form: vapor-blas­ted alu­mini­um sand casts of am­mon­ite fossils (the small one matte, the lar­ger one chromed) that nestle like chubby silk­worms among the pleats.

The sculp­ture is loosely mod­elled on the cyl­indric­al dry-cask flasks used for stor­ing nuc­le­ar waste, which Chan­ner ima­gines cut open. [...] The work is part of an an­swer to her own earli­er call for forms that are un­cer­tain, other, alien. To nav­ig­ate the chal­lenges that we face (so­cial, eco­lo­gic­al, eco­nom­ic, philo­soph­ic­al), Chan­ner ar­gues that we need new kinds of ob­jects: ‘They must be con­fid­ently doubt­ful, awk­ward as well as el­eg­ant, h o r i z o n t a l as well as ver­tic­al, soft as well as hard. [...]’. And while the com­par­is­on to nuc­le­ar-waste stor­age grimly evokes the com­plex­ity of what is often hid­den be­hind the shiny sur­faces of in­dus­tri­al forms, Chan­ner de­cided here to ex­plore pleas­ure, giv­ing her­self per­mis­sion to use col­our and sur­face in highly se­duct­ive ways. 

This brings us full circle to the bill­board — whose purple lux­ury beckoned se­duct­ively to the artist as a child, curled like a silk­worm in the back of her par­ent­s’ car — selling tox­icity hid­den under glam­or­ous folds of fab­ric.”

Ex­cerpt from Ci­gar­ettes, Grime and Glam­our in the Work of Alice Chan­ner by Zoë Gray. The essay was com­mis­sioned for the mono­graph­ic ex­hib­i­tion pub­lic­a­tion Alice Chan­ner, ed. by Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell, Septem­ber 2023.

Sim­il­ar to what we have seen in Chan­ner­’s other works, we en­counter here a pro­ced­ure in­volving a huma-nised as­sembly line and an ali­en­ated man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess. Plan­et­ary Sys­tem (Kolzer DGK63”) (2019) fea­tures a steel ca­rou­sel that is nor­mally used to alu­mini­um-coat car head­lights but is here di­ver­ted for the pur­pose of met­al­lising the tact­ile shells of liv­ing creatures. When the ca­rou­sel, known in the in­dustry as a “plan­et­ary sys­tem”, is placed in a va­cu­um, the fix­tures to which the crab shells are at­tached ro­tate, al­low­ing a fine li­quid metal mist to ac­cu­mu­late on them. The fra­gile brown crab shells con­trast sharply with the rough, tu­bu­lar con­struc­tion, and yet both meld here into a single unit. The ef­fect is to call into ques­tion the ali­en­a­tion in­her­ent in in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion, while the pro­cess it­self is sub­jec­ti­fied and be­comes an in­teg­ral part of the ob­ject. At the same time, the work points to eco­lo­gic­al fra­gil­ity in re­la­tion to our pro­duc­tion-ori­ented con­sump­tion of en­vir­on­ment­al re­sources. The use of tech­no­logy may well lend the fra­gile exo­skel­et­ons a se­duct­ive look, but they are also acutely vul­ner­able due to their prox­im­ity to the ma­chine. The title Plan­et­ary Sys­tem (Kolzer DGK63”) is poly­phon­ic, sum­mon­ing as­so­ci­ations with space travel as well as vis­ions of the nat­ur­al life forms and or­gan­ic bod­ies that share our plan­et, and even pos­sible sci­ence fic­tion tales ex­press­ing our fas­cin­a­tion with the tech­no­lo­gic­al prom­ise of pro­gress.

Alice Chan­ner gradu­ated from Gold­smiths Col­lege, Lon­don (2006), with a Bach­el­or’s de­gree in Fine Art and from the Royal Col­lege of Art, Lon­don (2008), with a Mas­ter­’s de­gree in Sculp­ture. Her work has been ex­hib­ited at the Liv­er­pool Bi­en­nale, UK (2021); 55th Venice Bi­en­nale, IT (2013); and Glas­gow In­ter­na­tion­al, UK (2010). She has had in­sti­tu­tion­al solo present­a­tions at the Aspen Art Mu­seum, Col­or­ado, US (2015); Kest­ner Gesell­schaft, Han­over, DE (2014); Hep­worth Wake­field, York­shire, UK (2013); Kun­stver­ein Freiburg, DE (2013); and South Lon­don Gal­lery, UK (2012). She real­ised works in pub­lic space in Joshua Tree, CA, US (2022); the Uni­ver­sity of the West of Eng­land, UK (2021); and for Artan­gel, UK (2021). She has been rep­res­en­ted in nu­mer­ous group ex­hib­i­tions in­clud­ing Kun­sthalle Ham­burg, DE (2022/23); the Royal Academy of Arts, Lon­don, UK (2022); at Marta Her­ford, DE (2021); York­shire Sculp­ture Park, UK (2021); White­chapel Gal­lery, Lon­don, UK (2017/18); MO.CO. Pan­acée, Mont­pel­li­er, FR (2018); Mu­seum Kur­haus Kleve, DE (2016); Whit­worth Art Gal­lery, Manchester, UK (2016); Aïshti Found­a­tion, Beirut, LB (2015); Pub­lic Art Fund, New York, US (2015); Frider­i­cian­um, Kas­sel, DE (2014); Künst­ler­haus Graz, AT (2014); and Tate Bri­tain, Lon­don, UK (2012).

Pub­lic­a­tion 

On the oc­ca­sion of the ex­hib­i­tion, a com­pre­hens­ive, mono­graph­ic cata­logue (Eng­lish / Ger­man) de­signed by Math­i­as Clottu will be pub­lished by DIS­TANZ Ver­lag with es­says by Ros­anna McLaugh­lin and Zoë Gray, an ex­per­i­ment­al text by Daisy Hild­y­ard and an in­ter­view by Stefanie Gschwend with Alice Chan­ner.

CUR­AT­OR

Stefanie Gschwend, dir­ect­or Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell

EX­HIB­I­TION OR­GAN­ISA­TION

Claudia Reeb

EX­HIB­I­TION IN­STALL­A­TION

Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier, Nik­laus Ul­mann,
Ueli Alder, Raoul Doré, Asi Föck­er, Roswitha Gobbo, Carina Kirsch

ART EDU­CA­TION

Anna Beck-Wörner

AD­MIN­IS­TRA­TION & EVENTS

Ur­sula Schmid

EX­HIB­I­TION RE­CEP­TION & MU­SEUM AT­TEND­ANTS

Petra Bau­mann, Raphaela Böhi, Domi­n­ique Franke, Mar­grit Gmünder, Roswitha Gobbo, Carina Kirsch,
Mar­grit Küng, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er, Bar­bara Met­zger, Cristina Mosti, Lilli Schreiber 

ED­IT­ORS

Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell

EDIT­ING

Stefanie Gschwend

TEXT

Un­less oth­er­wise stated: Stefanie Gschwend

COUR­TESY

Un­less oth­er­wise stated: Cour­tesy the artist and Kon­rad Fisc­her Galer­ie

PROOFREAD­ING

Mi­chaela Alex-Eiben­stein­er

TRANS­LA­TION

Katja Nau­mann

GRAPH­IC DESIGN

Data-Orbit / Michel Egger, St.Gal­len

AC­KNOW­LEDGE­MENT

Alice Chan­ner, D O M E St.Gal­len, Berta Fisc­her, Irène Geis­s­er und / and Bernhard Man­del, Zoë Gray, Alex Gray, Ruedi Grob, Daisy Hild­y­ard, Noël Ho­chuli, Kon­rad Fisc­her Galer­ie, Kun­st­giesserei St. Gal­len, Large Glass, Ros­anna McLaugh­lin, Marc Ohli­ger, Thomas Rieger, Char­lotte Schep­ke, Sonja Schürpf, Heinz Stamm und Lei­hge­ber­*innen, die nicht na­ment­lich genan­nt wer­den möcht­en / and lenders who wish to re­main an­onym­ous

KINDLY SUP­POR­TED BY 

Hans und Wilma Stutz Stif­tung
Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don
Kon­rad Fisc­her Galer­ie
Kan­tonales Landes­bauamt Ap­pen­zell In­nerr­hoden
Ernst und Olga Gu­bler-Hablützel Stif­tung