Introduction of the artist:

Jonathan SCHIPPER(American)

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Introduction of works:

001Slow Motion Car Crash, installation, variable size, 2006

002Slow Motion Car Crash, installation, variable size, 2006

003Slow Motion Car Crash, installation, variable size, 2006

American artist Jonathan Schipper crashes two cars very slowly. For the duration of this exhibition we see a head-on collision happen inexorably so that the result is a crumpled mass of metal, glass and plastic where once there had been two vehicles in perfect working order. These are “muscle cars”, proud signifiers of American culture, of an economy that prefers ostentation to subtlety, conspicuous consumption instead of an unexciting albeit vital sustainability. They are drawn together by an hydraulic mechanism that moves at a steady rate of millimetres per day, instead of the wild acceleration and top speeds that the cars are capable of, and so we enjoy both irony and some sense of poetic justice as witnesses to this strange disaster.

The crash is unseen, as the speed of the cars here is imperceptible to the human eye. This is not the consequence of a split-second human error, a driver fallen asleep at the wheel or a misjudged bend in the road - something so fast that we need to analyse it through slow-motion review. It is, rather, slow-motion in itself and thus a metaphor for a catastrophe that could have been avoided. The gung-ho recklessness, the short-termism and, above all, the pointlessness that the cars represent are essential subjects of this work, making it as cautionary as it is compelling.