On Vow (Jammer)

Part 2 of the Introduce Series, Schneiderei, Vienna, 2013

Untitled (Vow made out of a scarf), 2013, Oxford weave and gauze, Indian cane, 210 × 100 × 50 cm

Vow dangles lively and symmetrically off the wall. In this place with four right angles a yellowed white fabric forms a tetrahedra; its top points downward to the floor. Upside-down attic. Nook or corner, where a piece of bamboo lies. Hanging nest or a peculiarly built bed. It remembers the mollusk's shell; beautiful to look at, mobile and at the same time the construction seems segregated from itself.

The story starts in 1975. Travelling light the artist boards a plane. The collectors Sarabhai have invited him to their family's residence in the town of Ahmedabad in India. Following his arrival, with habitual self imposed restrictions, he collects material on his expeditions around the temporary workplace. In doing so he buys locally produced natural fabrics in nuanced textures and vibrating colors. He combines these with canes and other finds (small aluminum cans, a glass bottle, adobe, cords out of hemp et cetera).
"I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realized they were not so artificial."
A sequence of puzzlingly simple sets is formed. You'd think, uncoupled from their cultural context, the scarce formations appear post-minimal, Tuttle-esque and exotic. With the usual "vernacular glance" R. loosely interlaces color and geometric abstraction into architectures in which you could blow your nose. Doors and windows are missing, the rooms are lined with spontaneous folds; nothing is coming from the outside nor is anything going outward. This sort of house does not fight. It offers resistance in facile and subtle lineaments.
The superordinate name of the series (Jammer) is taken from Windjammer, the ultimate tall ship. Actually a mighty machine made of wood and steel, appareled with several masts and characteristically vast rectangular sails, it is also this type of sailing ship, which in its miniature form could be tucked in a decorative glass bottle. Some years before (1969) R. emerges in such a bottle; he relocates his once friendly, utopically opened studio from Manhattan onto an island off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. Here, belt, necktie and brogues stay in the wardrobe. What then are the options, kimono or oversized shirt? From such shells, the imagination allows amazing creatures to come out. In this same year, the summer bulletin of the former Midpeninsula Free University prints: "The natural state of man is ecstatic wonder. We should not settle for less".