David Prytz: Literal
Text by Anna Redeker
When we enter the work of David Prytz – and we do enter it, as it has occupied the space just as nature can occupy a space – we are immediately thrusted into the overwhelming impression of fragility and roughness. Winding shapes are looping through the space, appearing weightless and brittle and are thus in a bold contrast to their materiality which conveys rawness and incompleteness.
Prytz uses materials that are normally used to produce other things or repair other things. Building materials such as acrylic glass, copper wire and cable ties merge with tape and plaster, mirror foil is constricted by household string, led melting around stones forming an abstract figure which, driven by small motors and gears, moves and twists as if it had a life of its own. Nothing has been embellished or hidden, joints and braces gape like wounds and create the impression of unfinished rawness.
The material has no references by its own, the shapes do not have any function, even though the stuff which it is made of does literally emphasize the fact that there has to be some function. And so we are prepared to discover that function, but it’s an illusion because there is none.
We are ready to get involved in finishing a process, to get that abstract form done, but it can not be. The playful movements of individual elements are not following any function or pattern. They form an abstract drawing which is continually changing. An animation literally takes place, and we find a world of its own that only works for its own. We as a viewer do not get involved in that function at all, but rather get excluded completely. Our expectations to be integrated as a recipient doesn’t fulfilled, because there is no superior meaning that wants to be discovered, no explanation and no interpretation, no hints and no references. The piece is there just for its own, and was created just for the sake of creating. The objects become subjects, existing in their surrounding. And the viewer becomes an object too, an undemanding and modest part of the piece.
The installation, which is entitled „Tabula Rasa, again“ is supplemented with lightboxes and geometrical drawings, that all also turn out to be snapshots of ongoing processes and captured gestures, entitled „Literal Geometry“, „Two Points Moving in Space“ and „Dumb Alchemy“. The projection, caused by some kind of camera obscura with the title „Many Suns“, depicts a process that has no beginning and no end, turning and moving only for itself.
