Closer

Balice Hertling
September 3 — October 2, 2021

Sticks and Stones, 2021
In situ work, 13 metal panels and 2 boxes with keys

Sticks and Stones, 2021
Detail

Sticks and Stones, 2021
Detail

Installation View

Ooze out and away, Onehow, 2021
Inkjet print, 121.3 x 99.8 cm / 47 6/8 x 39 2/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Installation View

Installation View

Left to my own devices, 2021
Airplane chair with video on LCD screen
112 x 86 x 55 cm / 44 1/8 x 33 7/8 x 21 5/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Wings of Desire, 2021
Aluminium structure and handles
231 x 124 cm / 91 x 48 7/8 inches

Wings of Desire, 2021
Aluminium structure and handles
231 x 124 cm / 91 x 48 7/8 inches

I wear your ring, 2021
Inkjet print on archival paper
117 x 82.5 cm / 46 1/8 x 32 1/2 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Ganymede I, 2021
Inkjet print on archival paper
117 x 82.5 cm / 46 1/8 x 32 1/2 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Ganymede II, 2021
Inkjet print on archival paper
117 x 82.5 cm / 46 1/8 x 32 1/2 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Installation View

Ask and Tell, 2021
Inkjet print on archival paper
39.5 x 32 cm / 15 1/2 x 12 5/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Untitled (the Light that Filters through the Green), 2017
Inkjet print on linen
166.4 x 134.4 cm / 65 1/2 x 52 7/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Limerence, 2021
119 x 83.4 cm / 46 7/8 x 32 7/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Surge I, 2021
Inkjet print on
56 x 41 cm / 22 x 16 1/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Surge II, 2021
Inkjet print on
56 x 41 cm / 22 x 16 1/8 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Press Release

Standing apart yet connected by a larger metal frame, two subway poles announce the absence of bodies that might cling to them for support. Poised in anticipation of a hand reaching out, the navy blue loops that are adhered to these poles remain empty, effectively frozen in their invitation. Suddenly, this citation of city infrastructure no longer recalls what it was supposedly created for—the modern human—but takes on a formal value all its own. Such is the case, too, with a nearby airplane chair that has been deconstructed almost out of recognition. No longer a site of bored repose, the remaining shell incorporates the negative space surrounding it, making odd what once was banal. This is the life of objects as seen by Rafik Greiss. For his first solo show in Europe, Greiss brings particular attention to the objects, ideas, and individuals that have been marked by the spatiotemporal dislocation of urban environments. The result is a combination of photography, sculpture, and installation that explores themes of motion and vulnerability—of getting “closer.”

The adjective “closer” is relative; it describes a movement that is also an anticipation, a gradual orientation that exists without absolute value. Getting "closer" to something or someone isn't always straightforward. It's like taking steps towards understanding, but without a clear finish line. As we draw nearer to one another, we risk either exaggerating our similarities or magnifying our differences. In his photographs, instead of zeroing in on specific people or things, he tries to show how everything is connected. It's as if he's capturing the invisible threads that link us all together. What is lost, Greiss seems to ask, when too much emphasis is placed on the individual?

In another photograph (“Limerence”, 2021), two people embrace in the red sway of a smoky dance floor. Their faces are not visible, buried instead among the soft hollows of each other’s neck and shoulders. Their mutual action, however—a hug in the chaos of the club—emerges as the work’s animating force. Greiss captures a similar ambivalence in the photograph “Untitled (the Light that Filters through the Green),” 2017: here, a foggy window bears the tracks of fingertips that, in their wake, have turned the glass transparent, allowing it to become filled by the green of an outside forest. This etching in condensation recalls both the linguistic significance of hieroglyphs as well as the nostalgia of childhood doodles on rainy car windows. Yet this scene is also an unstable one. The markings will fade, vulnerable to conditions of temperature and time—as we all are. This subtle transition to the universal is a common effect of the artist’s work, which often deals with the passage of time and its possibilities (if not guarantees) of erasure and disappearance.

Free from moralism or manifesto, Greiss does seem to suggest one way to rage against the inevitable decay of our material realities. This proposition is to mark the world more, mark it deeper and with greater frequency. On the gallery floor there are cases containing keys. Visitors are invited to scratch the metal plates of the wall, just like on the train. This act of collective “vandalism” establishes a poetics of space that depends on presence and the beauty of chance. Through this work that is also play, the artist challenges the boundaries between public and private. More broadly, he also invokes questions of borders as mechanisms that containerize people and land. How might we understand something like a border through the senses? Once borders have been scratched, prodded, listened to and tasted, one’s position on one side or the other might seem less justifiable, less logical. This is not a scientific approach of impartiality that Greiss takes, but an up close and personal proximity that gives way to reciprocal respect and understanding.
“Closer” is a slow-burn transformation, a show that reminds us that intimacy is nothing other than a degree of closeness. Here, Greiss asks for a closeness that moves closer still, whether or not that transit ever leads to a moment of intersection, or if, like train cars crossing in the night of underground tunnels, what was close becomes far.

— Lou Ellingson