This specificity of material parallels the increased specificity of her mathematical composition for the work at ICA. Building a superstructure from four 2x4 wooden beams, Field stretched horizontal lines of string across the gallery's ceiling. Her handmade bottles were then suspended from a secondary (vertical) grid of strings reaching towards the ground, each of the ten pendulums located at a midpoint of the horizontal lines. This framework created a system of complex harmonic motion: an intersection of two movements (back and forth; in a spiral) physically manifest in the complexity of forms traced on the ground. Presented not as an installation but as a "60-minute site-specific performance with residual traces of diamond dust," the work was performed three times through the course of the exhibition. On February 6th, February 27th, and March 13th, a crowd would gather in the second-floor gallery to watch Field move through the rectangular space: using her body as measurement while releasing the pendulums positioned in alternating rows of two and three. Nested ellipses formed in her wake and remained in the gallery during the weeks between each performance, remarkably undisturbed by visitors as they leaned down: trying to understand how these forms were made, and from what they were composed.

 

 

Jennifer Burris is a writer and curator based in Mexico City. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and was previously the 2011-2013 Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.