"Inside" Wrap Us Up
Tape Paris is an installation built for a group exhibition titled “Inside” taken place in the Parisian Palais de Tokyo until January 2015. This installation is made up of scotch tapes wrap around the concrete columns pf the gallery to form a network of hollows and tunnels in the installation.
The concept of the installation was to express both physical and psychological interiority. It was to transform the whole building into a convulsive mind organism whose slippery inner limits a motivated explorer has yet to trace and confront. It transformed the gallery entrance hall into an inhabitable organism-like structure using layers and layers of sticky tape and plastic similar to Clingfilm. People can go inside the installation and walk their way through the tunnels really allows them to experience a different kind of interior space. The installation was suspended between two floors and has a translucent “stretched biomorphic skin”. The slippery inner limits a motivated explorer to move forward and yet to explore the space further more.
I have never been inside this installation but I would really want to have the chance to climb and crawl inside such amazing installation. Imagine yourself inside this translucent interior space, navigating our way through the piece not knowing where exactly you are going by choosing different path. It is like a dreamy maze, made me feel like Alice in the Wonderland. The light inside the space are very warm and peaceful passing through that translucent layers. You can climb, crawl, roll, relax and explore it. It makes me felt that is I was inside, I can be an explorer.
From the exterior, it is like veins in our body. Rather than using “blood” to “wrap” us around in a space, Numen uses “veins”. This sparks me. We always wanted to be different than other people, v wanted to dissect one thing to the very depth of it so that we could stand out. Somehow, we always forget the basic idea of that particular thing. We could think of blood, we could think of cells and here come all kinds of cells living in the blood, but we forgot what wraps around the blood. We should starts from basic to become different rather than wanting different but using the ordinary ways.
Other than the creative idea of this installation, the material used to build this installation also inspires me so much. Scotch tape is a sensitive-pressure tape. It is very impressive to use much ordinary material we always see in life to be used to construct such amazing structure. Who could have thought that scotch tape can be used to wrap-up concrete columns in a large entrance hall into a maze of accessible translucent passageways?
It is not a small installation either, it coils 50 meters through the gallery space and reached the height of 6 meters. In my design projects that are required to design installation, lecturers always encourage us to explore materials that can be used but I would think to myself the same old materials: timber, bamboo, steels and so. We always limit ourselves and thought that that is all our world are made of without just really see all little single tiny things in our life differently. If we could just really explore things around us, we will get more, learn more, and receive more. This installation really inspires me a lot.
EXPLORE,
u will be different :)
