Darren Almond - The Principle of Moments at White Cube

Darren Almond - The Principle of Moments at White Cube

06 September, 2010
by: Loredana

Loredana encounters moments of the sublime, even amongst the trendies at Darren Almond's latest White Cube opening.

I turn up at White Cube hot and possibly a little red-faced from the tube, met by what looks like hundreds of suave, trendy people all congregating in Mason’s Yard. And this little minion walks up, with my short black lace dress and hair pulled back from my face, trying to extricate myself from the gazes of the ones idle enough to start sniffing out the fresh meat. These people have the aloof button on their backs finely tuned to ‘super aloof’, but they can’t do aloof as well as I can do aloof; they need lessons in aloof. I contemplate this as I saunter in, desperately trying not to trip over myself.
 
I stride into a separate room, the walls are covered in white frames, and I’ve got to admit, now that I’m tuned to ‘super-duper aloof mode’ I’m ready to hate it. Unfortunately I don’t, and though I’m not knocked back straight away, the exhibition melts my icy exterior, washing over me slowly as I grow to love it. Darren Almond’s tiny time-lapse photographs of a clifftop scene populate the walls – all the same size, placed flawlessly in perfectly spaced frames. A cliff with a grassy top is inhabited with undecipherable objects, marking the green with white as the sea rides the rocks beneath. One photograph every minute for every hour of every day during a week.
 
You couldn’t say that every photograph is different because they’re not; some seem to be exactly the same as the others. The same sunny day repeated over and over, monotonous yet cheerful, fine and clear. The darkness comes and everything becomes unrecognisable; the stark black night can make any scene look sinister. When the darkness subsides, the definition of the photographs shot in the day becomes very different. Looking at two together, the sun moves and a certain part of the cliff is defined in a different way; a shadow beneath the rocks deepens in tone to make the scene completely different from the one before it. The mist rises up around the cliff edge and it’s stunning – as though the scene has been overtaken by frosted glass, ominous, mysterious and fizzing around the edges. At times the fog is grey, but in other scenes it has a blue tinge, a green tint even. The differences aren’t even subtle.

 
I’m not within the views; I’m detached and apart from them. I realise that when you’re so removed from something what happens next is inherently predictable. I start to see everything as temporary, inevitable and vital. I’m no longer sure of whether I’m thinking about the weather, nature, or my current state of mind, but ultimately I just think that there’s justice in the beauty of variation in life.
 
I’m getting too reflective now so I tear myself away and walk downstairs, bypassing the people in my little lost world. The stairs are dark – so dark that a lady lights your feet with a torch as you walk down so you don’t lose your footing. A noise from beneath leads me down towards the guttural groans of under the earth.
 
My eyes adjust to the dark and I see others, separated and cult-like standing around large rectangular screens so large that they dominate the room and people in it. I got a tingle of the sublime upstairs and I’m not quite prepared for this, so I’m pleased to remain unnoticed and slip into the background.
 
The projections engulfing the screens move fast over them, the images are of ice, cracking, and colouring, as if magnificent plates of ice are moving above you as you’re trapped underneath. A mixture of turquoise, grey and white merge together.
 
I slide in between the projections trying not to get in the way, or cast a huge shadow of myself at this seemingly critical instant. I can just about drown out some irritating woman chatting to her friends about how profound everything is, just as I’m having my half-arsed, non-religious, not quite life-affirming spiritual moment. And then right in my eye-line a couple takes the opportunity of the dark to roll up and devour each other’s faces, and before I can shout “get a room” the incessant moving of the plates, the snog faces next to me and the loud droning sound make me feel motion sick and I decide to leave before I’ve completely lost the moment.
 
The work apart is an experience, the work together is an overload of insight, even with the people –  the nature depicted overtakes them. All lives here are small and insignificant compared to the striking earth we live on.

Darren Almond - The Principles of Moments is at White Cube, Mason's Yard until 2nd October 2010.

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Loredana