Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Paula Cooper


			Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at the Paula Cooper Gallery
	Untitied, 1999, installation
	In a Chelsea scene full of sardonic wit and scathing societal critique, it is a cathartic experience to enter into the presence of art that is not only mellifluous but unmeretricious. This installation's holding power is not based on its ability to shock, rather Céleste Boursier-Mougenot ravages the senses with this untitled work that commands the entirety of Paula Cooper's vast central gallery. This synesthetic composition is made up of five inflatable plastic pools arranged in a grand horseshoe and filled with water. In each of these round pools, glasses and porcelain bowls of varying dimensions ride on currents created by ultra-silent electric pumps. With approximately thirty vessels in each pool, there are great numbers of collisions between these delicate materials as they float in gentle flocking patterns. Though not intrinsically part of the installation, many chairs are scattered thoughout the gallery, and one wants to use them to take part in the phenomenological "completion" of this work. In a city where an artwork gets an avarage seven seconds of attention, it is fascinating to see people linger, and even more amazing to behold genuine enjoyment. The random sounds, which resonate from the cavernous gallery walls, vary in pitch, duration, tone, and volume, and seem like the bells of countless cathedrals rung at once. There are in the reverberations a wonderfully inconsistent fluctuation of assonance, dissonance, and silence. The effect is affectively overwhelming, evoking all of the venerable chimes ever rung in celebration, elegy, or to mark the passing of time. The sounds themselves are not electrically amplified, but the pools, each approximately two meters in diameter and filled with about a half meter of water, act as amplification devices. The water is also heated to a constant twenty-two degrees which optimizes the pitch and calculatedly becomes a medium of sound as well as movement. It is indeed astonishing how the ambient tinkling of glasses and porcelain can be so well amplified by this element. Because the vibrations move through the pools, the sounds seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, and the randomness defies one to find cause and effect in this work's metaphorical clockwork. One is only vaguely sure that the impact of bowls one witnesses actually produces a subtley displaced sound one hears. The work itself is a great musical instument playing a chance composition. One initially reads chaos, but upon contemplation comes to understand the exactness of the artistic choices that bring together such disparate elements. Boursier-Mougenot assembles otherwise tacky materials into transcendent systems. The floating glasses and porcelains in this exhibition are common household items, i.e., department store delft. The vessels are neither expensive nor lackluster, rather, they are afforded a certain dignity, and given an aesthetic use for which they were never intended. Although the porcelaneous materials are tastefully limited in palette to whites and blues that work in a color scheme with the cerulean pools, one can only suspect that the materials were selected for their resonant qualities. The unabashedly georgeous sounds eminating from the mundane evoke Tchaikovsky or Copland's elevation of modest folk melodies to great symphonies. Arising from such humble materials this work is a paean to the household gods--thanks for the readymades. William V. Ganis Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, September 10 - October 16, 1999

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