DORIAN GAUDIN: LOVE ACTUALLY

In Love Actually, Dorian Gaudin explores the interwoven relationship between the artist, their materials, and the viewer with a focus on the cycle of call and response initiated by each party over the course of an artwork’s life. 

Mirroring his creative process for previous sculptures, the three wall hanging works featured in Love Actually were born of a fight – a literal fight – between the artist and his materials. Sheets of aluminum are slammed against and distorted by Gaudin, conveying the physical struggle of the artist and resistance from the material in response, working together and against each other all at once; an act of destruction as an act of creation. The result is an unrecognizable three-dimensional form, so warped from its original rectangular frame that the viewer can no longer surmise how it once appeared. 

Gaudin leaves the sides of the form raw aluminum and highlights the most contorted area of its surface in chrome, placing a strong visual emphasis where the act of both destruction and creation occurred. The artist triumphs in his battle with the material, creating a unique visual effect such that one readily imagines the form being created from a cube of metal, rather than a flat surface, as if someone cleanly sliced into a melted industrial structure. 

This interplay, between artist, artwork, and viewer, is embodied further through “Love Actually,” Gaudin’s kinetic “interactive” installation created in collaboration with Zachary White. The physical aspect of this work, a Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption carrying items reminiscent of a romantic date or cocktail party, is based at Nathalie Karg Gallery. Skinny metal beams hold, among other things, wine glasses, chips, salsa, and a bottle of Pinot Noir, with two cameras feeding a livestream of the scene to a designated website. 

The “interactive” aspect of the piece utilizes both these online and physical spaces. Anyone with a computer is invited to log onto the designated website to view the livestream, providing facial movements that trigger movement of the sculpture itself – perhaps some wine is poured into a glass or a chip is dipped into salsa. Meanwhile, Nathalie and visitors to her office, where the piece is installed, can observe the movements of the work without the constraints of fixed cameras, a shadow of virtual interactions between strangers making faces no one will see.