In Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View
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This British artist approached the British army asking them to blow up a garden shed – and surprisingly they agreed to do exactly so. In a quiet detached green field in England, Cornelia Parker watched, from a distance, this tranquil surrounding shattered by the loud bang, her shed and its contents, sent hurling through the air into a plethora of burnt and distorted pieces.
Her work was always invested in deconstruction, she often blew up small objects - She would then take the debris and leave them outside to weather or even bury them in the ground. After some time she would retrieve them and make her art piece. This exact process is what she did when making Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. She took the leftover fragments and assembled them in such a way…show more content… It jolts the viewer as the shadows overtake them, at first they notice the distorted and transforming shadows then later focusing their attention on what the objects are – noticing books, toys, tools. Fundamentally, this is a frozen moment in time. The way the artwork is composed, it seems as if the shed is blowing up before your eyes and you were offered a moment to see the consequence of this mutation of what was once a home to memories and things people could not bear to part with, regardless of how useless they are now. This frozen moment juxtaposes the process of making this piece – as an explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner.
Exploring the theme of transformation and what happens when you use objects not for their intended use, I came to realization that in a sense this is mainly about perception. Without any doubt, the change in perception is obvious. When the viewer moves around the piece, the shadows change completely, making the viewer feel in control of the piece. Acting as an oxymoron, to some extent. The piece is not physically changing, only your