Nina Canell

An array of petals clusters around a string. As one approaches, the cluster gives way to an unexpected assemblage of pistachio shells and fake fingernails that have been loosely knotted into a dangling, lightweight sculpture. Like debris stuck in a spider’s web, its improvised form lends the work a fluctuating quality with an irregular time signature.

The assemblage is rooted in a family of vibrating sculptures that Nina Canell has been working on over the past few years. Thin and tendril-like, they stretch from floor to ceiling and are typically knotted with a diverse range of found materials. Powered by electrical impulses from frequency generators, the sculptures move freely between resonance and dissonance, tugging at the seams of determinacy.

The delicate, unplugged versions that Nina Canell has created specifically for the Jahresgaben are like cuttings from the aforementioned works, fragments that have been left to dangle with the natural vibrations that may stir a room. On the one hand, their constellations could have come straight out of a pocket’s random alchemy; on the other, their weightless precision seems to evoke a kind of broken musicality, cracked open by nutshells and the rhythmic tapping of fingernails.

– Robin Watkins