There are two types of artists, according to Alexandre Singh: artists just with telephones, and then those with ateliers, staff and a cook.“It’s always more exciting visiting the ateliers with a cook,” he said during a recent visit to his Paris studio (sans chef, but a generous offering of biscotti and tea).Singh says he doesn’t have that pressure to staff-up because he is not an “object maker.” But he does make objects come to life in his theatrical installation “The School for Objects Criticized,” on show at Sprüth Magers starting April 30 during Berlin Gallery Week.Though Singh’s performative work has previously taken the form of full-blown drama in his ambitious creation myth play “The Humans,” he says he doesn’t follow much theater.“I’m one of those odd people that prefers reading plays to seeing them. Maybe it’s the director in me,” he said.Given the specificity of his characters and sharp dialogue, it’s a surprise that Singh wasn’t a literature-obsessed drama kid when he was growing up in Manchester. Instead, he said, “I was always at the bottom of my class and under the perennial threat of being kicked out.”Eventually he found more independence in his school’s art program. Not until his 20s living in New York was Singh drawn to literature and the stage as he became interested in storytelling and narrative within art.“I’ve always been drawn to imaginative spaces, and I think literature and writing by nature are more involving and expansive, even in cinema,” he said.Discussing process, Singh explained, “The storyteller has a spotlight, and they’re tracing a path along a table. All of the objects this spotlight hits have been preplanned and fully detailed and constructed. For the storyteller everything is somewhat vague until the spotlight hits.”In “The School for Objects Criticized” – previously shown at the New Museum in New York and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris – that figurative spotlight stops literally on a bourgeois cocktail party hosted by Daphne Spring, a slinky toy, and her guests, all inanimate objects sitting on pedestals.Singh says the piece is “a vehicle to create characters who are defined by their object-ness.” Some of the characters include a tape player whose record button is always pressed, so he’s always regurgitating opinions. There is also Daphne’s naïve intern, an unformed sculpture who is impressionable and being shaped by the people around her. Then there is a bleach bottle with a splash-less label, whom Singh says is “a real Lothario. He’s very sort of Matthew McConaughey in ‘Dazed and Confused’ with a Marxist bent.” Finally there is a “feminist toaster” who is always getting hot and bothered and exploding.Through the dialogue, it becomes clear that the objects are debating and criticizing a new exhibition of, well… random objects sitting on pedestals by none other than Singh. Between searing remarks about their creator and trading barbs, the characters fall into Beckett-esque bouts of waxing poetically – and humorously – on grand questions of God and the meaning of life.“On the surface it appears to be completely removed from our world,” Singh said. “It’s a reversal of human beings looking at objects where objects look at and criticize us.”The title of the meta comedy of manners references Molière’s play “The School for Wives Criticized” and takes its structure as a response to a play. “The Humans” used the format of an Aristophanes play with heavy influence from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”Tradition, like these works, Singh said, offers “a framework within to work.” But embracing tried-and-true tradition doesn’t have to be boring, as Singh proves. He makes it fresh with new witty characters, quirky scenarios and small absurdities.“Breaking tradition often just means breaking things,” said Singh. He certainly knows how to remold it.Alexandre Singh’s “The School for Objects Criticized” is on show at Sprüth Magers in Berlin from April 30 through June 25, 2016.
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