bodies in uniform, cardboard sculpture, oven mitts, small fish bowl, bread and drawings printed as stickers, variable dimension, 4 hours.
performed at VSSL studio, London, United Kingdom, 2021.
video documentation by Alican Abaci.
translated into /command7.text, pencil drawings and texts on found object, 17.5 x 22.5 x 0.5 cm, series of 9, 2021.
Wanting to see the sea
And somebody to love me
Even monsters
Have a heart
A Monster’s Ballad, Yuuko Aioi, 2011
Clasping his palms, a male figure moves them as if they were a fish lost from its school. Nearby, another similarly clothed body is slowly breaking a loaf of bread into an empty small fish bowl and resignedly watches they turn soggy and uneaten. In the corner, a third performer with a pair of oven mitts struggles to stand still, making sure the sculpture he is holding stands upright. The three breathing pedestals are accompanied by drawings, both printed on stickers on the wall and hidden inside pages of notebooks as they invite the audience into a larger fish tank, the exhibition space itself.
WARNING! The final boss is coming!! is the first in a trilogy of works by Kelvin Atmadibrata exploring the identity of a transfer student. The work narrates the student’s first day in school and within social context, it investigates the conflict between adaptation and alienation, self-inflicted or otherwise.
The project is a result of the artist’s studio residency program with VSSL Studio from October 2020 to June 2021, which was documented here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.