Ceal Floyer

Stable

Ceal Floyer rose to prominence in the mid 1990s with a series of neo-conceptualist works that were particularly eye-catching by reason of their reliance on the materials that were to hand. While the norm in contemporary art is that the simpler it looks, the more technically complex it is, Ceal Floyer’s works are often so simple that you could make them yourself. Another distinguishing feature, and perhaps one that developed only gradually, is that in spite of the ordinariness of the materials and the constraints of stringent simplicity, the artist manages to convey an emotional complexity not normally encountered in conceptual art. Perhaps because conceptual art has traditionally been something of a male domain. Floyer’s contribution to Karriere Bar takes the form of a low-key intervention that interacts with the tables in the restaurant. Floyer has placed beer mats under the table legs as you would to steady a wobbly table, except that she has placed the same number of mats under all four legs. The result is that the intervention, instead of being an attempt to stop the table rocking, becomes a bid to raise the table level, and beer mats are hardly the most effective way of achieving this. Raising the table, however, is not what she’s up to. She is describing the difference between resourcefulness in the remedying of a defect and ineffectuality in seeking to raise the level of something. At an exhibition in Berlin in 2005, Floyer displayed the works Till I get it right and Apollinaris – a sampling of lyrics composed by the country singer Tammy Wynette. The song’s lines “I’ll just keep on/ till I get it right” were accompanied by a video of bubbles shooting upwards in a glass of mineral water. In the sampling Floyer had deleted “falling in love”, which comes between “I’ll just keep on” and “till I get it right”, perhaps because Wynette’s voice has already said it all. And because it’s not about an unhappy love relationship but more generally about an act poised between fending off disaster and hoping for something better, between fall and flight. Like the situation beneath the table at Karriere Bar. (NH)

Ceal Floyer, born 1968 in Karachi, Pakistan

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