Viewed from above, Asim Waqif’s installation at the Palais de Tokyo, Bordel Monstre (2012), resembles a tornado in freeze-frame, a perfect storm sweeping up plastic chairs, packing crates and dying crops without discrimination. For fans of The Wizard...

Viewed from above, Asim Waqif’s installation at the Palais de Tokyo, Bordel Monstre (2012), resembles a tornado in freeze-frame, a perfect storm sweeping up plastic chairs, packing crates and dying crops without discrimination. For fans of The Wizard of Oz, such a sight is an invitation to dream, to enter another world. But Waqif’s installation is not meant to be viewed from above – or at least not only – but stepped into and explored. Wherein it becomes a kind of living creature, responding in different ways to different explorers, bellowing and belching through partially concealed speakers, shaking and stirring as you make your unsteady passage through its thatched belly.

Bordel Monstre is a fascinating exercise in making use of things otherwise neglected: constructed in a corner of the Palais de Tokyo which hasn’t previously been used, made out of materials discarded at the end of the previous exhibition. And if its exterior form resembles the damage wrought by a force of nature, its construction was as spontaneous and unplanned as the weather. Faced with a lot of discarded empty wooden frames – all straight lines and right angles – Waqif knew that he wanted to build curves. Beyond that, he simply started building one day on site, starting at the ‘mouth’ by which the public enters this rubbish-dump beast (which would be one way of translating its title) and working from there, sometimes alone, sometimes aided by local students and a trio of engineers – from both Paris and his native India.

Read my full review at Frieze.

01/11/13 at 9:02am
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