A Carpet of Dust

20 July 2008
Igor Eškinja - Dust Carpet

Just out of the opening throes of Manifesta 7 here in Italy. Thursday morning we were in Manifattura Tabacchi and ex-Peterlini in Rovereto, then moved on to Trento in the post office, then Friday to Fortezza and to the old Aluminium Factory in Bolzano. Pretty much an art overload on a daily basis, but lots of good work (and lots of bad).

The dust carpet piece (pictured above and below) by Croatian artist Igor Eškinja must be one of my favourite things in the whole show – transient, delicate, fragile, funny, beautiful in some way, and prompting strange performances of ‘taking care’ as people pass by it in the corridor where it is installed – a vulnerable object that really intervenes in space and changes action. At once a literalistation of a phrase (like much of Vlatka’s work) Eškinja’s piece also summons a thing from its own negative/residue (rugs collect dust, here is no rug, but the trace of one in dust), a pattern marked out in detritus.

Igor Eškinja - Dust Carpet Detail