Interaction and Chance
With a billiard table, cues and balls in four colors, a nod to Calder’s bold palette, Untitled 2021 (le jeu de l’araignée rouge) is a typical example of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work. Here, the player’s successive advances with the billiard’s cue alter the mutual relationships of the balls. During the game, viewers experience the work for themselves and, at the same time, change it for spectators. Tiravanija believes that art should not just be looked at but also experienced by socially inhabiting and activating it. The artist wants to minimize the boundaries between art and life whenever possible. He turns the spectators, whether or not they realize it, into a main feature of the artwork.
Rirkrit Tiravanija and Calder
There are myriad connections between the work of Tiravanija and Calder. For instance, a number of Calder’s sculptures (…) require activation in order for the viewer to achieve the full experience. Tiravanija’s work contains the same unfinished quality that characterizes Calder’s radical oeuvre.
Sounds and noises are also common denominators in the works of both Calder and Tiravanija. Some of Calder’s mobiles are sonorous: they make noises that could never be programmable; chance determines the experience and sounds of the work. Everything depends on conditions of the space, air currents and people’s movements. The same applies to Tiravanija’s works: the sounds they make are subject to the different configurations and the collisions of the billiard balls.
For both artists, the spectator is key and elements of chance are crucial. ”To most people who look at a mobile, it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry” (Alexander Calder, 1957)
Source: Interaction and Chance – text describing Rirkrit Tiravani’s work in the superb exposition Calder Now – which ran at Kunsthal Rotterdam in spring 2022.
Interaction and Chance
With a billiard table, cues and balls in four colors, a nod to Calder’s bold palette, Untitled 2021 (le jeu de l’araignée rouge) is a typical example of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work. Here, the player’s successive advances with the billiard’s cue alter the mutual relationships of the balls. During the game, viewers experience the work for themselves and, at the same time, change it for spectators. Tiravanija believes that art should not just be looked at but also experienced by socially inhabiting and activating it. The artist wants to minimize the boundaries between art and life whenever possible. He turns the spectators, whether or not they realize it, into a main feature of the artwork.
Rirkrit Tiravanija and Calder
There are myriad connections between the work of Tiravanija and Calder. For instance, a number of Calder’s sculptures (…) require activation in order for the viewer to achieve the full experience. Tiravanija’s work contains the same unfinished quality that characterizes Calder’s radical oeuvre.
Sounds and noises are also common denominators in the works of both Calder and Tiravanija. Some of Calder’s mobiles are sonorous: they make noises that could never be programmable; chance determines the experience and sounds of the work. Everything depends on conditions of the space, air currents and people’s movements. The same applies to Tiravanija’s works: the sounds they make are subject to the different configurations and the collisions of the billiard balls.
For both artists, the spectator is key and elements of chance are crucial. ”To most people who look at a mobile, it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry” (Alexander Calder, 1957)
Source: Interaction and Chance – text describing Rirkrit Tiravani’s work in the superb exposition Calder Now – which ran at Kunsthal Rotterdam in spring 2022.