About the exhibition:
Over July and August, Rib’s Summer Lab has played host to Erika Roux and Isabel Marcos, two artists who take their immediate social and spatial environments as the basis for forays into speculation. Summer Lab culminates in a presentation of their new works from 31 August until 9 September.
Roux and Marcos share a common interest in the dialogue between fiction and personal narratives. In their video and sculptural projects developed at the Summer Lab, the artists present imaginative worlds where the relations between subjects and their close environments become less and less viable. These separate worlds, permeated by a sense of anxiety, are inhabited by characters who strive for solutions in a more or less productive manner.
In Erika Roux’s video "The world has shrank", her actual house becomes décor for non-professional actors to play characters trapped in a shrinking apartment. The dialogue borrows linguistic and narrative tropes of tragic drama to create an absurd scenario in which the characters struggle together.
Isabel Marcos’ "Light mint green" addresses the phenomenon of “going floating,” of attempting to construct water-going versions of land-based activities as a solution for a perceived lack of useable space. Her floating garden-island is the potential answer for one character whose nomadic way of life requires the plants to travel with her.
