RINI TANDON
Similar bifurcations can be found in most of Tandon’s pieces here. Dark Horizon consists of a smooth gray wood block with a narrow slit in the front. A black rubber mat hangs from the slot and reenters the box through another slit at the bottom. I thought immediately of a rest room towel dispenser, but of course this object is utterly nonfunctional. Viewing it as art, one notices the difference between the ribbed rubber and the smoothly lacquered wood; one notices the way the rubber creates an enclosed space between it and the wood. One travels, in the mind’s eye, from a perception of the whole form to a close examination of its surfaces to a sense of the “inner” space between rubber and wood–almost as if entering the work, as one clearly cannot do through the narrow slits filled with rubber. In Fluid Circuit, a clear rubber sheet hangs from both sides of a similar brown wooden block, forming a closed loop below it. In the more elaborate Split Level/Mysteries Beyond, a rubber mat is threaded through slits in a horizontal tan block, forming a series of loops above and below it. Viewed from left to right, the upper loops grow smaller while the lower ones grow larger; the mat appears to be one continuous sheet, entering and emerging from the wood 20 times in all.
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Fluid Triumph is a particularly elegant example. Stuffed through a small, off-center hole in a gray wood block is a large, clear sheet of plastic. As it emerges from the hole at the top the plastic forms a small irregular cone, while at the bottom it extends for several feet in a large, irregular, widening cylinder. There is a hint of violence in the way the sheet is scrunched up to fit in the hole, but also a kind of triumph in the way it emerges, free to distribute itself as it likes, the near-white clarity of the plastic contrasting to the solid lacquered wood. Each work allows, even encourages, the viewer to bring to it a variety of personal associations, but it seemed strongest to me when viewed as an autonomous, utterly new entity.
