Review: Janice Kerbel “Kill the Workers!”

Currently on view: London
Janice Kerbel “Kill The Workers!”
at Chisenhale Gallery, through 15 May 2011

Janice Kerbel’s new installation “Kill The Workers!” commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery sets up four stands of multiple light fixtures facing each other to suggest a central ‘stage’ area. The theatre lights follow a series of cue scripts written by Kerbel to condense a 24-hour day-to-night period into 24 minutes. The otherwise empty gallery this way undergoes a succession of narratives and progressive plots, played out solely by the different settings of theatrical lights.


Installation view. Image courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery

The scope of effects is bewildering: White spotlight ellipse appears on the stage set, gradually dim out and give way to hazy ambient lights merging in from other directions. Later, a skewed rectangle beam covers the same surface, glowing blues move in and greens fade out, then orange lights harmonize with pink. Sometimes operating individually, in duets, or complex layers, Kerbel exploits the theatre lights’ full potential with variations in shape, pattern, colour, position and intensity sequences. On the 24th minute the light show sees the gallery space immersed in blackout, a dramatic finale revealing the last breath of luminosity, slowly disappearing from the spotlight. Since no actors or objects take part in the conjured atmosphere, Kerbel’s installation compels us to shift our attention towards the moving lights as main protagonists for this exhibition. ‘Workers’ in theatre-speak refers to the house lights, non-theatrical lighting that provide overall illumination. So in this context “Kill the Workers!” means to turn off the house lights and allow the theatre lamps to provide ambience for the play-for-today. In a recent interview Kerbel mentions that “Light is the very element that allows objects to be seen; I wanted to take away the object and work with the mechanics of seeing – to look at what actually enables visibility, formally and aesthetically”†

Installation view. Image courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery

Kerbel has been working on the question of “visibility”, to find forms for things that otherwise cannot be seen. She works in a range of materials and disciplines, including drawing, writing, audio and print, meticulously examining language as well as analyzing visual codes. In her sound installation “Ballgame (Inning 1–3)” (2009), Kerbel constructed an engaging baseball commentary monologue of an imaginary game, playing on a 75-minute looped tape recorder. In “Remarkable” (2007) she created posters using the hyperbolic language of fairground to attract audiences to anomalous physiologies of imagined being.

Installation view. Image courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery

“Kill the Workers!” is an enchanted theatrical production of lights staged between the real and the symbolic, as well as between abstraction and representation. By minimizing the structures of theatre, this work explores the undefined spaces between perceptual encounter and imaginative reconstruction. There is a certain mystery in her work that gives audiences a sense of ambiguity, a mood however that adds dramatic value to the piece.

Janice Kerbel (b.1969, Toronto, Canada) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Art Now, Tate Britain (2010); greengrassi, London (2009); Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, Canada (2009); Remarkable Frieze Art Fair Projects (2007). Selected group exhibitions include Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., ICA, London (2009); Gartenstadt, Kunstverein Hildesheim (2009); Magic, Hayward Gallery Touring (2009); 1st at Moderna, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006). Her book, 15 Lombard St (2000), is published by Bookworks, London.

Kill the Workers (2011) is co-commissioned with Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany and will be presented there as a solo exhibition, 1 July – 11 September 2011.

† An interview by Jamie Stevens, Exhibitions & Event Organiser, Chisenhale Gallery, March 2011.

By Miwa Kojima

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