More Beautiful Than American Beauty’s Plastic Bag

“You want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?” famously asks Ricky Fitts, the resident drug dealer/”psycho-boy”/tortured artist of Sam Mendes’ 1999 cult hit American Beauty. We all remember the scummy plastic bag in the wind video that followed, winning Ricky not only the heart of Jane Betts, but of repressed indie teen girls upstaged by their hotter queen bee besties the world over. Thirty Six, a site specific installation by German artist Nils Volker, gives Ricky Fitts’ plastic bag a serious run for its money. For one thing, Volker’s work has 36 of them.

Thirty Six is comprised of a mass of plastic bags which appear as a pulsating, living force as they inflate and deflate, appear and disappear, as controlled by cooling fans which are hidden from the viewer. The movement created by the bags remind us of the cyclic nature of life; the rhythmic pulsing of a beating heart, the inhalation and exhalation of lungs and a jellyfish swimming through the flowing current of the ocean are evoked.

The installation is a continuation of Volker’s previous works which have similarly transformed unlikely mediums such as garbage bags and pillow cases into objects of minimalist, mesmeric beauty which interact with the light and space of their individual environments. Thirty Six is showing as part of the exhibition ‘Rhythm’ at the Art Lab in Gnesta, Sweden until December 11th. Or you could watch the captured likeness here, but, in the word’s of Ricky Fitts, “Video’s a poor excuse, I know.”

Details

• Art by

  Nils Volker