Visual spillage and sculptural games. No blue alien life forms as the title might promise, but a full spectrum of colours here, and a large dollop of childish playfulness. When spots and blobs fall off of the canvas and sit on the floor, you feel that it’s naturally where they belong. When parts of paintings levitate and others drift away, you know that’s just what they do. In fact, all of Cornelia Baltes’s solo exhibition at aspex feels likely to float away like a bunch of pastel balloons.
Baltes’s work, at once both sculptural and painterly, simultaneously benefits from and appears to open up a parallel universe to the clean white gallery space. The conversion of the Vulcan Building which houses aspex has been sympathetic to its historic architecture, and therefore the resulting space of Gallery 1, in which Hooloovoo is presented, lacks the rigidity of the pristine cube whilst retaining something of the air of authority conferred by an established regional arts centre. Semi-serious then. The features of the period building – bricks, arched doorways and cast iron pillars – are integral to Baltes’s installation, with architecturally dependent pieces such as Mouse Door and Sunday Smile, which hangs between the arched gallery entrance. This quirkiness is intentionally magnified by decisions such as opting to hang 99 Summer Styles across three walls of the gallery, uncomfortably punctuated by a separate photographic diptych, or placing pieces high up on the wall, out of the comfortable range of sight. The hang, drifting up and down the gallery wall, makes you work for your reward. The hide-and-seek forced upon the exhibition-goer is a part of the installation, which in turn is a work in itself, more substantial than any of its individual parts.
The informality that results works well with the apparent naivety of Baltes’s work, and in particular Steve’s Trees, which meander down one side of the gallery, up into one of the recesses in the pillars and outside of the gallery entrance. These truncated logs and branches with their stumps painted a range of bright shades of jesmonite may resist deep investigation but definitely work on the primary level. Apparently their seductively coloured surfaces were too tempting for many to resist, as a sign on the reception desk asks viewers not to touch the jesmonite coatings inside the gallery, offering a sacrificial painted log for fingering instead. 2b3D, half photography, half partially-folded pasting table, screams for attention and wins, unlike much of the photographic work here, which perhaps needs to fight back more. The exhibition’s accompanying statement says that Baltes distills all information into the bare essentials, discarding anything which might be distracting; this presents an interesting challenge to the concept of what is actually essential and what is valuable. Why this here and not that there? There aren’t any real answers. Like the colours on Steve’s Trees, this show feels… sweet. In fact, Hooloovoo bears more similarities to the bright commercial offerings of the shop within the corridor, than with anything one would expect to see once emerging into the ‘serious’ end of the building. Maybe that’s allowed – Baltes wants to share her own ideas of beauty, and the keyword is simplicity, the tools are humour and colour. There’s sometimes a bit of a sense that the pieces discovered after a short hunt aren’t exactly delivering the punch you’d expect, and the cohesion of the photographic pieces to the paintings may not always be successful – but somehow, seeking to unpick the fabric of this show to find its roots just feels wrong. It wants you to float away with it. It’s light hearted. It’s good natured. It’s fun. If you want to enjoy it, then look up, lighten up, and put on your own Sunday smile.
First published on a-n Interface, March 2012
Lee Devonish 