This Is It (1992)
Cherry, hornbeam and apple wood staffs and polyurethane varnish, each with inlaid mahogany and teak veneer, hinge, Ecstasy, glass phial, sealing wax, foam
178 x 30 cm each
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This Is It! suggests the legacy of a rave culture that has grown old, evolving into a more solitary search for an ecstatic sublime outside somewhere within a landscape. Based on a traditional design that secretes a source of pleasure or power within the interior of a generic walking stick (eg: walking cane flasks or sword sticks) This Is It offers the possibility that three different people can walk together to a particular location in the landscape, assisted by these staffs. Having arrived at their destination they can open their sticks to reveal their hidden phials and consume the ecstasy inside chemically heightening their experience of place and, of course, each other. This drawing together of a community (of three), a sublime release on a mountainside perhaps, or in the midst of a city at dawn, or in the darkness of a dense forest; enables a revelation, or epiphany: This Is It! Or perhaps the materiality, cultural history and mythologies of the particular trees (cherry, hornbeam and apple) is significant and This Is It is partly about the acknowledgement of their differences in feel, appearance, fruit, growth, history etc. This is It? In which case how do we find out which one of the three gives the best access to It?!
This Is It is an early example of Adam Chodzko’s interest in the idea of an art object having a form of ‘use value’. As ‘kit’ or ‘prop’, in relationship with the viewer, either directly or through imagination. The artwork has the potential to guide, enabling an enhancing of perception for its user. M-path, Mask-Filter, The woods shall rise up in those places where you pause, Ghost, Props for memorising the gravity of mime objects, Deep Above , Thru hole..., and The Dreamshare Seer etc all allude to a similar ‘functionality’. Each suggest that by interacting with this particular piece of art, as event, and the transformation it catalyses, the viewer will then be able to see ‘better’.
The suggestion of the artwork existing as part of a ritual and magick, of its capacity to reveal a secret technique or ingredient that might catalyse a change in the viewer’s consciousness also appears throughout Chodzko’s practice; from A Plan for a Spell to White Magic to O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix .
As with works such as Better Scenery and Next Meeting…the location of the base of the staff marks an actual and particular geographical place on the ground, but its MDMA catalyses a state of mind which might be altogether elsewhere.
Initially exhibited at Chodzko’s first solo exhibition at Bipasha Ghosh, London (1992), alongside another urban youth counter-culture/rural traditional sculpture This Is It! (1992) it was later shown in exhibitions such as Zombie Golf, 1995, BANK, London) and Proxigean Tide, Tate St Ives (2008).
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Mask Filter (2013)
O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix (2020)
Secretors (1993 – )
Nightvision (1998)
a loose leaf falls between (2013)
Plan for a Spell (2001)
a way from heaven (2017-2023)
Accretor (no.11: Before we begin…) (2019)
April – May 2000 Arc Ark (2010)
Better Scenery (2000 – )
Deep Above (2016)
Flashers (1996-)
I See Through Every Image.
(A souvenir for Laarni; A planting
template for Belladonna seeds), 2013
M-path (2006)
Love Space: (A Plan for the Perfect 24 hours) (1997)
Mask Filter (2004)
O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix [live] (2020)
Here (2015)
Synthetic Copse: Our Ash Hospital (2018)
Test Tone for Landscape (2005)
The woods shall rise up in those places where you pause (1995)
White Magic (2005)