Death Drive by Cayetano Ferrer @ Heaven Gallery

Death Drive Art Opening
Artworks by Cayetano Ferrer
August 02, 2008
12pm-10pm, Heaven Gallery

Death Drive is a one-day exhibition of art works that speak to the function of monuments and memory. The main space contains work in various media, including photography, painting and sculpture. Inverted Taj Mirror (2007) a mirror cutout of the Taj Mahal, plays with the history of this architectural monument, and a reassessment of the complicated intentions of it's creator. Historians Against History (2008) is a sculpture made from a book by the same title, where the pages are glued together and all the text on the open page is blacked out except for a single phrase. These and other works in the show play with the processes through which history is recorded by way of object-making. This reference of historical artifacts is interrupted by hyper-specific site works that encapsulate the present moment by enveloping the architecture around them. In contrast to the works that tell a story from the past and from external sources, the site works exercise a sense of place and perform a shift in the activity of citation, bringing the present into the narrative.

The show culminates in the second space, which is a darkened room containing a single sculpture. Launch Ramp (2008) is a skate ramp that is perforated with thousands of small holes, revealing a glow from the interior. A light emanating through the perforations make up a constantly shifting image, an obfuscated film looping on a muted television which is only experienced through its rhythm and palette. Made as a memorial for a friend who died in a skateboarding accident earlier this month, this sculpture will be dismantled after the one-day show, making it less an enduring monument to his death than a moment of contemplation about his spirited, and at times reckless nature.