NUL
Exhibition view, NUL, artist curated group show at Foxy Production, 2008.
Main view featuring the installation work NUL.
NUL
2007-2008
Mixed media (six autobiographical boxes of arranged studio detris)
80 x 244 x 144 cm
Installation view
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, resin, dust, wax, oil
8.6 x 27.7 x 12.8 cm
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, wax, dust, glass, aspirin
35.5 x 43.2 x 30.9 cm
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, wax, dust, hair, aspirin, talcum powder, glass wax, soap
13.3 x 33.1 x 18.9 cm
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, sand, dust, paint, anti-freeze, hair
21.6 x 38.3 x 26.1 cm
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, clay, wax, glass wax, paint, skin, flour
16.5 x 7.12 x 17.2 cm
2007 - 2008
Plexiglass, wax, dust, aspirin, talcum powder
10.3 x 30 x 12.7 cm
2008
Wood, foam, polystyrene, bag
26.5 x 12 x 94 cm
The big works were the ones that suffered. They were obvious, their crates were big, they had handles — god bless the invention of the crate handle. Unfortunately, because they could be pushed around, they were pushed to the back of the container. They covered what turned out to be a leak in the container, a leak which, over the years, introduced water into the unit. Then, through the seasons, the temperature changed: intense heat turned the container into an oven, followed by icy cold turning it into a fridge. Perfect conditions for white mold to accumulate and creep over the works, covering everything. Like a flesh-eating microbe, it consumed organic material, especially metal.
These big crates wore their scars with pride. On their faces, they looked like they had been dipped in a snow drift. They were obvious, and so they were easily identified to throw out. But it was a mistake. The big ones are, of course, the major works — the ones to keep.
The smaller works survived, hidden away in two or three very large crates. Those crates themselves were leftovers from previously discarded works — like Elegy. It was a kind of Russian doll of trash: the sculpture was thrown out, but the crate was kept. The crate was then filled with unsold fragments of other works. These disregarded pieces were crab-like things that crawled into the carcass of larger works.
These big crates were too large for my small van and, now rotting, were broken up and discarded — no small feat in the relatively claustrophobic space of a poisoned shipping container. The small boxes were gathered into new boxes that could fit into the van. When I move again, they’ll probably be rehoused into yet smaller boxes. Small and smaller, like a Russian doll, until nothing physical remains but a photograph. Maybe that was the point all along — to make images. The sculptures are really stage sets, provisional structures designed to be photographed.
One of the works saved in this process is NUL. Appropriately, they are works of emptiness, portraits of loss. Plexiglas vitrines with interior bases, ‘platforms’ titled only by their dimensions. They are stored boxes within boxes. They were conceived as diary boxes: the bases are covered in minimal compositions made from sculpture materials, dust, hygiene products, and bits of unidentifiable matter from the studio floor. I kept them in my studio for weeks, from when I first heard about the Foxy Production show until it opened. Each day I added or removed something — aspirin, wax, a scrap of clay, dust that drifted from the rafters. At the time, I thought of them as time capsules, short-term records of a messy studio and life. They were portraits of nothing, but also of everything.
The show itself was called NUL. A show I curated of seven European artists — Salvatore Arancio, Anders Clausen, VALIE EXPORT, Simone Gilges, Lars Laumann, Nedko Solakov, and myself in Foxy production, New York. Each worked with loss, reduction, or vacancy. The word “nul” is German for nothing, but it is a word more suitable, shorter, minimal. Some of the artists engaged with the theme, others ignored it entirely. My contribution was to frame reduction in its most material form: residue, dust, the trace.
Throughout the making of the work, I kept in mind Man Ray’s photographs of Duchamp’s Large Glass, which are really just photographs of dust. Dust as sculpture, sculpture as photograph, sculpture as time-sensitive, ephemeral art. But I felt the images were not just manifest predictions of abstract art — they were also narrative statements on melancholia.
Melancholia has always haunted me. I identify with Turner and Blake — their endless wandering in the ruins of time, their hauntings of British history — even if it seems unfashionable now. Like Piranesi’s imaginary prisons or the ghost stories of M. R. James, their works are swamped by history yet find a way to let it live inside it. The remnants in the vitrines are ghosts of past sculptures. Only I know which works they belonged to, so only I can conjure them — like wisps of smoke escaping Aladdin’s lamp, traces that indicate huge, imaginary figures.
These smudges are a figurative minimalism — not the industrial power of Richard Serra’s steel, but a diminutive performance by transgressive materials. Minimalism often exploits what the material threatens: huge steel curves cloak the dangers of being crushed, or the socio-political difficulties of working in a steel plant, just as painterly or performative “freedom of expression” can conceal chaos, messiness, insecurity, or lack of craft. These boxes are caught between those two states: presenting the material and revealing its messy background. What they show is that between these states lies uncertainty, maybe beauty, maybe poetry — a void preserved.
The boxes pulled from the snowy, toxic crates were still in their original shipping boxes, covered with shipping labels, art handlers’ imperfect handwriting, knocks, old tape marks, and postage stickers from their one journey through the gallery system (Maureen to Foxy and back). I realized the packaging had become part of the work. The damage, the history of storage and neglect, even the mold, was part of the story. In the ideal dream world — the fantasy all artists have — the works would travel the world. By now the box would be covered in hundreds of stickers and, if exhibited alongside the vitrines, would present a portrait of their life. Instead, they are a portrait of a life cut short. But perhaps that is more truthful. It speaks louder because it reflects more artists’ experiences: just one show, followed by a lifetime of melancholic longing.
So NUL continues to age and tell its slow story of ambition and decay — the broken-hearted, endless struggle of making. But in its survival — battered, bruised, missing parts — it is a self-portrait: of an artist and an artwork’s battle against the world. This unflinching reality sits naked before us, framed in its perfectly proportioned box — its power lies not in a perfect rendition, but in the ruins.
Sunday, 24th August, 2025 - NUL - Journal Entry
