Full-Stop Comma Closed-Bracket
In Full-Stop Comma Closed-Bracket, five large metal plates identical in size are hung with cables from the ceiling, in complete alignment and evenly spaced from one another. With the proportions and rounded edges that suggest a hand-held device – albeit of monumental size – this dark gray, shimmering object appears to flicker slightly so long as we ourselves move in relation to it. Completely still, with no moving parts or any light projected on to it, it takes advantage of the ambient light that filters through the grid of squares etched out of the plates, radiating something akin to the continuous flicker of a digital display.
As we move towards the sculpture we perceive the faint recognizable marks of a wink emoticon peering at us discretely right from the middle. Itself the product of perforation etched into the metal – in this case, the middle plate – it is barely there, able to appear and disappear with the flicker of an eye, and, contrary to a screen displaying content from its own end, here it is up to the viewer to move about in order to make it reappear.
Raising questions related to perception and movement, Full-Stop Comma Closed-Bracket was also inspired by the notion of the Augenblick ('the blink of an eye') in modern existential philosophy, a concept denoting the sliver of a moment outside time which contains discreet knowledge that is outside our cognition and barely perceptible, and yet is key in informing our experience. In Mittwoch's piece this insight comes to life through bare, non-technological means which nonetheless project the impression of a screen, a passive device to behold, powered by our own movement.