The University of Ulster Masters of Fine Arts Department year 1 MFA student show held at Platform and STATION from the 1st until the 12th of June 2010.
Vanitas, 2010, mixed-media installation, dimensions variable.
Artist Statement:
Alissa Kleist’s installation engages with the themes of illusion and reality by blurring the boundaries between the two. She is interested in creating a moment of suspended disbelief before eventually disclosing the actuality of the situation. Using the traditional template of a “still-life”, in Vanitas the whole room becomes a set, where objects act as allegorical props and are not as they initially seem. The viewer is invited to engage in the pleasurable act of looking at an installation in which the artificiality of the work is ultimately laid bare.
This mixed-media installation consists of a mirror at the back of a room, suspended from the ceiling and framed to imitate a landscape painting. As the viewer walks in they are met by this suspended ‘frame’, which is positioned to reflect an installation set up in a second adjoining room.
The layout allows the viewer to see the reflection of the work in mirror upon first entry, after which they can walk on to view the actual installation.
The still-life, in the tradition of classical Dutch and Flemish still-life painting, is composed of an array of fruit, food, cutlery, etc. In the mirror this still-life appears as a painting, perfect and real. Yet when the viewer approaches the ‘real’ installation he/she discovers that everything on the table is hand-made and artificial and the food looks like it’s rotting and mouldy. This piece aims to create a visual interplay between reality, fiction and the artificial.