Observation 1 — Shelf (Masami Tsubouchi / Curator)
As one in charge of an exhibition, I am in close, daily contact with the artwork. And thus over time I notice certain fascinating aspects that may not have been so obvious in the beginning. And having direct contact with the work during the installation, the things that I realize are often physical in nature. An example of this is The Blind (1999).
The exhibition starts with a work which asked persons who were born blind the question What is beauty? Made in 1986, this work comprises 23 sets of images. One set was chosen for this exhibition, a special version with a photograph of the sea by Hiroshi Sugimoto, a friend of the artist.
The work consists of a portrait of a blind man, his words (“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen was the ocean.”) and Sugimoto’s photograph which is a visualization of the words. The portrait and words are affixed to the wall, while the photograph of the sea is placed on a shelf. It has been noted how Sophie Calle-esque the installation is in its solemnity, with the shelf, simple and white, giving the work the look of an altar.
When I placed the photograph on the shelf with my own hands, what hit me physically was the transitory nature of the image. It seemed to me that the sea that sat on top of the shelf was not a fixed image, but one that could be replaced with another image of the sea. That is, the shelf served as a place at which anyone – Calle, Sugimoto, the viewer – could place their envisioned image of the sea which the blind man had “seen.” Each image different from the others, and indeed different from the one envisioned by the blind man. Sad as it might be, the shelf is a place that represents the absence of a common perception.
At the press conference for the exhibition, Calle said, “All that I wish to say is in the artwork .” But modest though it might be, that 10-cm-deep shelf is a superb device for expressing the theme of “absence” that runs through all of Sophie Calle’s works.
.