Courtesy of the artist, Haswellediger & Co. Gallery, NY and Foundation 20 21, NY. With special thanks to Craig Robins / DACRA Bob Gramsma local aesthesia, OI#0497 Miami's Design District, referred to as "The Square Mile of Style", has emerged in the last few years as a hotbed of the contemporary arts. Vibrant visual aesthetics, inspired in part by the saturated colors of Southern Florida, permeate the area, from its building design to the sartorial choices of its inhabitants. For his most recent object installation, "local aesthesia, OI#0497", Swiss/Dutch artist Bob Gramsma investigates the continuum of perception, taking as his starting point the two opposite ends of sensual, tactile appreciation: aesthesia vs. anesthesia. Aesthesia is the simple act of feeling or perceiving sensations. In contrast, anesthesia is the total or partial loss of sensation. Most commonly, anesthesia is associated with a hospital setting, one in which a patient is induced into insensibility to pain by a drug, with or without the loss of consciousness such as nitrous oxide, opiate, muscle relaxants. However, with "local aesthesia, OI#0497", Gramsma addresses the growing and insidious anesthesia, or desensitivity, we experience in our everyday lives by hyper aestheticizing our environment. The installation is comprised of medical "privacy" screens surrounding a pillar. Behind the screen, the viewer finds anesthetic equipment, including tubes and medical bottles. Some of the tubes are "injected" into the pillar itself, leaving the viewer to wonder if the artist is applying local anesthesia directly into the central nervous system of the environment to morph or narcotize our surrounding or to vigorously awake us to become more discerning, selective participants in our own spatial experience. Bob Gramsma lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland and Reeuwijk, The Netherlands. With special thanks to Craig Robins, Michele Burger and Allison Goldberg, Per Hansen, Urs Ruetschi and Peter Lehnherr. Exhibition: December 1 - December 5, 2005 Buena Vista Building Atrium Design District 180 NE 39th Street USA-Miami, FL |
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