. Samenstelling en tekst: Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, Michael Petry, Jeremy Wood en Clare Fitzpatrick. Publicatie n.a.v. de tentoonstelling ‘Scale’in het Museum of Installation te Londen

‘Scale’

There is a key scene in "The Sacrifice" - the last film made by Russian director Andrei Tarkovski before he died - where the protagonist of the story, who is increasingly entering into a delusionary and schizophrenic relationship with the world outside, encounters, without explanation, an exact scale model of the house he is staying in. The shock of recognition is as startling for us, the viewer, as it is for the protagonist himself, for it alerts us to the realisation that all is not as it seems, that we may indeed be 'seeing things' and that this uncanny substitution of model for the thing it represents, could be a symptom of a more fundamental confusion between objects and their representations.

SCALE is an exhibition of miniature installations by a group of Dutch and Belgian artists which explores the power of the 'model' to challenge and confuse our perception of the thing it represents. The artists use a variety of techniques and technologies to play with SCALE and the possible transformations of visual experience offered by the act of miniaturisation. As viewers we are simultaneously offered the privilege of a 'God's eye' view over the model and at the same time made to feel oversized in relation to its intricate detail, whilst being denied access to its 'interior', as the exhibition curator, Maurice van Tellingen, explains:

"As such we are viewing a reality that we can only ascertain in a very limited way -if at all. The miniature is out of bounds, as it were. It is a reality that is fenced off, an installation bearing the sign 'no entry'. And of course, there can be nothing so fascinating as forbidden ground, the zone, the uncontrolled space that can only be viewed under certain conditions. At the same time, the conditions set by the miniature tend to be such as to allow us a glimpse of this untouchable world, as if a spaceship fitted with cameras has penetrated a hostile environment, a view of Mars or an image of the deep sea under the Polar Ice Cap."