Suchan Kinoshita

2002

Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials: carpet, chairs

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0405).

Uitzicht [View of the Outside] consists of a piece of red carpet and two chairs. They are installed at the edge of a museum space, in front of a window, with a view unto the outside. The elements appear to have been taken straight out of a living room. When we sit down on the chairs we turn our backs to what is happening in the museum. At the same time we become very aware of being in a museum, precisely because we are looking at the world outside the museum. The museum window becomes the ‘window to the world’, a literal translation of how a painting used to be regarded. Moreover, as we sit on the chairs we become part of a work of art. We are in a complex situation: inside the museum but also turning against it; part of the audience but also of the exhibition. Uitzicht [View of the Outside] plays with the relation between seeing and being seen. Kinoshita often uses marginal spaces and zones of transition for her installations, to question artificial institutional boundaries that inhibit cross-overs and interactions with other areas of art and society.