Untitled

Quiet and subtle in presence, Untitled by Berlin-based artist Kitty Kraus is an elegant and consummately organic sculptural installation. The basic components of ice, ink and light are brought into recognisable form with a simple wooden and Plexiglas cube-like construction, utilised as the vessel for the initial process of freezing the water. Within this geometric block of ice mixed with ink, the lightbulb rests, immobile and visually obscured by the frozen and opaque water. Once plugged into the wall, the lightbulb begins to melt the ice, drop by drop the ice transforms from solid state to a dark liquid with marble-esque patterns and designs running through it. Within days, even hours, an abstract terrain covers the floor, like miniature, monochromatic landscapes waiting to be discovered.

A gesture towards the 'cold' forms of Minimalism, Untitled references the rectangular shapes of Donald Judd's wall sculptures and perhaps the fluorescent tubing of Dan Flavin's light installations. Yet in some ways, this work ventures even beyond the cool, unaffected and industrial aesthetic of Minimalism, dematerialising from its original cubic form. Kraus integrates an organic process into her artwork, revealing her rigorous exploration into the purity of form and the ephemerality of this very concept. The dissolution of the ink-stained ice appears to be a slow and measured act of negation of the very form and 'object-ness' from which it first appeared. Using the natural process of water transforming from liquid to solid and inevitably back to liquid, Kraus reveals how even seemingly resolute forms are in fact simply part of a system that is governed by change.