Breathe Pause Breathe

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An Exhibition by Clive Moloney

Contemporary Arts International, Acton, MA

June 2017

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Breathe Pause Breathe is an environment consisting of a skin, air and a life support machine. The life support machine sustains a closed system in perpetual motion and attempts to breath life into pseudo organic entities. Air gives form to and animates these entities, also know as inflatable latex sculptures. Additionally this habitat contains site specific skin sculptures, bulging walls and light sources, all created to slow the viewer. A frozen moment, a state of becoming, subliminal decay and perpetual motion create a slowness within the environment.

Latex is an organic material which decays very slowly over time. Using latex allows me to create life like pseudo organisms with very zoomorphic or anthropomorphic physical characteristics. The latex in the inflatable sculptures acts like a skin similar to our own. Human skin is paradoxical, it is a barrier yet it's porous, it's internal and external. We touch and are touched simultaneously. Because the inflatables consist of only skin and no 'flesh' beneath, we perceive an ever changing form and not matter. Something Buddhists might call 'Rupa'.

The life support machine (a motor, wooden gears, conveyor belt and bellows pump) actively inflates and deflates several latex inflatables and circles back on itself to also inflate part of the machine. These ‘non human forms' are not created in a direct manner. By using a particular process I am giving up a huge degree of control and allowing the form to emerge organically. Ultimately the air creates the form. I eventually give up complete control to the machine but only after I configure it. In other words i attempt to remove myself (as Dr. Frankenstein did from his wretch), unlike Frankenstein I am interested in observing my wretch perform