Five Propositions for the Tourist – review

Sandy Smith's exhibition at Space in Between

The weather outside may be frightful, but artist Sandy Smith has five warmer and more appealing propositions for you.

Smith’s exhibition Five Propositions for the Tourist doesn’t merely make a performance out of transporting the viewer to sunnier climes – the installation literally radiates heat.

The sauna-style decking of Take your time, embrace your misunderstanding boasts a grid of white-hot bulbs, while Sometimes it goes deeper than you think warms the skin with the burnt orange of reptile lamps.

A seeming mash-up of existential philosophy, popular psychology and obscure poetry, the names of the works on display might already have revealed that there is more to the exhibition than the simple reptilian pleasure of basking in artificial heat.

The show grapples with two underlying grand influences: a photograph, taken in 1934, showing the façade of the Rome Fascist Party’s headquarters, wrapped in a banner repeating the word ‘si’ over and over; and a story about Ludwig Wittgenstein who, for most of his later life, lectured in a room unfurnished bar a safe containing his notes.

It is not instantly clear how Smith has rationalised these two ideas and it is easy to be sceptical of the feat, but it is also possible to see these distilled into two harmonious elements.

The repetition of ‘is’, an inversion of the Fascist slogan, is described by Smith as “simultaneously an affirmation and a questioning, a churning out of meaningless language and an overstimulated form of Zen meditation”.

As language plays at being more complex, this over-stimulation radiates through the breezy slogans which Wittgenstein might see as a fresh assault on philosophy.

Smith explains that “for a long time I’ve been fascinated with self-help and other pop-psychology texts, I’ve used slogans and mantras from these for some time, such as ‘every day in every way I’m getting better and better’ by Emile Coué, to name a familiar one.

I think a lot about texts (and materials) which hover between intent, or vibrate between positive and negative interpretations.”

Thus we might find solace or menace in titles such as A hyperactive field of indecision is not without form or Stretch your legs, interact, and remember.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about the show is the wallpaper, the only element which was created off-site, in New York.

Three hundred foot of paper was printed in just three hours after Smith had spent six months building his own rotary printing press. By turning everything together the press allows for “a continuous stream of printed text”.

The repetitive formula of ‘is‘ from that vinyl wallpaper will burn on in your retina, along with the respite of those grids of heated lamps. There’s certainly plenty to keep you thinking even after you’ve left the remit of this exhibition’s warm aura.

Five Propositions for the Tourist
Until 27 April

Space In Between
Unit 26 Regent Studios
8 Andrews Road E8 4QN