Carnival
of Perception: Selected Writings on Art
by Guy Brett
by Guy Brett
Institute of International Visual Arts,
London, U.K., 2004
264 pp., illus. 120 b/w. Paper, £ 14.99
ISBN: 1-899846-34-4.
Reviewed by Katia Maciel
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
kmaciel@acd.ufrj.br
Carnival of Perception is collection
of essays about artor rather
yours, and my, "carnival" of
sensations experienced only through art.
Rose Finn-Kelceys work Openings
,illustrated in the book, is a single
room with many doors. This image captures
what Brett suggeststhat is,
many virtual paths. What is meant by this
statement is that his writing is like
an invitation that you can either take
up or not: He never imposes his
point of view. On the contrary, he leaves
you free to find your own way of experiencing
the works he writes about. And many are,
indeed, included in the book. Works by
Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, David Medalla,
Cornelia Parker, Gabriel Orozco, Susan
Hiller, Juan Davila, Joao Penalva, Derek
Boshier, Takis, Eugenio Dittborn, Carlyle
Reedy, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Tina Keane, Hanna
O Shea, Mona Hatoum, John Dugger, and
Rasheed Araeen are all present in this
volume. Artists were not selected by chance;
rather, they are all dissenters from the
institutional context of art, all concerned
about the relationship between art and
life.
Brett was a close friend of many of these
artists and shared their preoccupations.
He shows a kind of complicity with them
when he says, "I would like to be
seen as one of the interpreters of these
non-verbal discourses in words".
And the artists have repaid him reciprocally
with a homage. For example, Oiticica
dedicates his Program in Progress CC7
to Brett. Like many other experiments
by Oiticica, these experiences were a
kind of path to paradise, to happiness,
to joy. Brett is constantly enchanted
by such feelings, by the freedom that
inspires such propositions. At the same
time he has taken into his fold artists
that turn this relationship the other
way round, putting us in the cage as with
Hatoums work; activating our senses
as in Duggers banners, being in
between the material and spiritual as
in Takiss pieces; being captured
by narratives such as with Penalva; sleeping
as a monument as with Parker; seriously
being not serious as in Medallas
work, and perpetually reversing inside
and outside as in Clark.
In the way Brett matches the processes
of art with the words used to describe
themwhich go beyond the limits
of description, demonstrates a sensitivity
to problems of experimentation, and leaves
them wide-open for interpretationBrett
conducts a unique dialogue with contemporaneity.
Just as Medallas
Bubble Machines are simultaneously
energy and event, so are these
texts because Guy Brett extends the poetic
sense of each work with a light touch
that forms and evaporates the space between
the work, the artist, and life.