From Carrie Miller…
The Colour of the Sky Has Melted, Marco Fusinato’s latest show at Artspace, combines a number of his recent projects in a literally knockout exhibition.
The central piece Aetheric Plexus (2009) consists of a large metal rig powering 13,000 watts of white light and blasting 105 decibels of white noise which flips the usual relationship between viewer and work in a sensor-activated move that turns you from passive observer into engaged actor by knocking you out of your reflective comfort zone.
It’s a deeply visceral work which packs a visual and aural punch – suggesting a Molotov cocktail thrown into a riot and the raging, radical politics that has been a long-standing source of conceptual and ethical interest to Fusinato.
There are other works, all of which bear the mark of Fusinato’s high conceptual and sometime highly oblique concerns which stretch the average viewer’s attention span, most notably in his work dealing with avant-garde musical composition. The very idea of this may have some people run screaming for the nearest pub jukebox, but the thing about Fusinato’s work is that while it skirts dangerously close to the cliff of pretension that you want to push so many artists off, his work succeeds so well on a formal level that you actually admire his commitment to big ideas.
In fact, the dramatic combination of an extreme punk ethos and a monochromatic formalist aesthetic makes Fusinato’s practice continue to look new and exciting in a relaxed and comfortable world where the youth of today will blithely tell you that politics ‘doesn’t interest me’.
Until December 9
Artspace, Woolloomoolloo.
Pic: Marco Fusinato, The Color of the Sky Has Melted, 2012, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
