Yes, we’re open (2017)

Can you remember the last time you smelt that burning? The discomfort from its scent, anxiety? (The smell of metal burning always made my stomach turn.) Or maybe it warmed you, brought you in closer, to a memory of friends in a dimly lit room. The wisps of smoke floating off candles. The smell was always a sign, a tell, a way to keep you alert, instinctively prepared.

In Yes, we’re open, Vandekraats and Johnstone are evaluating guidance through the forms of ephemeral performative works and archived disruptions. Smoke off the incense drifts, water reshaping a surface, wax melting around the wick. Incidents that outset change and activate a kind of (de)composition, providing a disruption of artificiality; an exchange opens to new growth. Time ticks past as the forms shift, dissolving their borders into the space between.

Within these spaces, a scene unfolds, waiting to guide you in to witness what can be but more importantly- what can only be now. Yes, we’re open invites you to breath deeply and seek understanding in wisps of smoke.

Exhibition at James Black Gallery with Liam Johnstone. Photos by Pongsakorn Yananissorn