Cornelia Parker

Heart of Darkness, 2004

Mass - Colder, Darker Matter, 1997
Displayed at the Tate

Anti Mass, 2005
De Young Museum, San Francisco


Cornelia Parker changes and reassembles things that are destroyed by violent means.  When reassembles the items suggest transformation and quiet.  The viewer contemplates how these transitions pertain to personal reality.

Cold Dark Matter, 1991,  reassembles organic bits of a blown up garden shed.  Following that, Parker reassembled charred remains from an electrical storm that destroyed a Southern Baptist Church in Texas and named it Mass - Colder, Darker Matter.  This installation haunts the viewer with the memory of destruction.  The black charred pieces burst strongly from the center and drift and fly in all directions.  Nothing remains but undefined charred matter.

In 2005 Parker assembled a companion piece, Anti Mass from the charred remains of a black congregational church in Kentucky.

Heart of Darkness in 2004 reassembles the remains of a tragic forest fire in Florida.  The cube holds haunting remains of an accidental event.  Charred pieces of black remind us of the loss of beauty and life.  They drip toward to floor in a sad display of objects that cannot return to their former existence.

The effects of the organic shapes is amplified by confinement in linear, geometric space.

from Firthstreetgallery.com & Artfortune.com