The Madre museum of Naples hosts the first museum solo show of Ceal Floyer (Karachi, Pakistan, 1968 – lives in Berlin) in Italy. The curator, Mario Codognato, selected fifteen works to trace the development of the British artist’s practice from the early 1990s – when she attracted the attention of critics – up until today.
Winner of the prestigious Preis der Nationalgalerie of Berlin, and one of the artists invited to exhibit at the al 2008 Frieze Project (the special programme of the Frieze Foundation organized every year within the framework of the Frieze Art Fair in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier), Floyer established herself as an international artist with a practice that combines the desecrating spirit of Dadaism and the Conceptual and Minimalist traditions.
Her site-specific readymade installations are instruments to reflect on the obvious; moreover, through a plain use of video and audio technology they represent the illusion and the absurd. With a subtle irony Floyer reveals the ambiguous or figurative power of everyday trivial objects, showing the extra-ordinary aspect of ordinary things, the complexity of things that are so simple as to be nearly trivial. The choice of the title is an integral part of each work. The double meaning of the words suggests a double point of view on the work and the elements composing it, forcing the viewers to renegotiate their perception of the world.