A I R
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Coming up for
Clearing the
Taking some
Off the
Up in the
Into thin
Air is the space between things. It is the v
a
s
t,
op en,
e
m
pty.
Located between the visible and the tangible. Filling the space between the earth and the sky, carrying invisible, coded signals. Everything and nothing. Around us and of us.
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Air can be thick and salty and hot and fresh and clear and heavy. Warm, vapour-visible, polluted, insistent or still. Oppressive, soupy, crisp, breezy, quick. Hot and getting hotter. We trust it is there, suspending disbelief because we are told from the beginning that it is. Air is psychological, it is mass consensus, it is scientifically proven and we believe in it like religion. It is composed of elements and compounds, it is healthy, it is life, but to a fish it is poison. We recycle it as we inhale and exhale; parts attach themselves within us and what we expel is less than the intake. Suffocating, isn’t it?
Air is a refusal of space. A quantifiable assemblage of particles. The density of water and the anti-matter of a vacuum keep it at bay, otherwise this world is wall-to-wall with air. There is no such thing as emptiness; the ‘empty’ is full as air balloons to fill the available space. Everything that appears void is full of this conglomerate of gases: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide. Minimalism is an illusion.
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Objects cut through air, thrusting into the void, a parabola carved out from a wall and into space. Air is held within, around an object. The object takes up space to create awareness of it. Without obstacles there is no openness: a sense of space is relative, only perceived in relation to a lack of it. Carefully, shapes are formed from an aggregate of materials of varying density, tone and adhesion, hardening to shape and reflect the air. To contain it, exclude it, place boundaries on it, reconfigure it. And yet air is in them still, these shapes that shape the air. Air moves through invisible gaps and weaknesses, an externalisation of internal processes as our bellows pump in and out in unceasing rhythm.
-Rebecca Gallo
