Tessa Hollman-Gustin: Between You, Me, (and) the Lamppost

“What would we do with reality if it was  aware of itself?” asks Tessa Hollman-Gustin in one of her autobiographical fictions, which she often uses to complement her object-based compositions. With this question, she draws us into polemics about the autonomy of objects—whose functions usually make our lives easier—and, in the soft light of a lamp, she blurs the lines between the scenery of everyday reality and illusory fiction.

Tessa has long been interested in objects whose purpose is to usefully extend our physicality—to grip better, to see farther, to be heard from a distance, to protect against impact. It may seem that the aesthetics of such objects are purely functional, but Tessa explores their inherent melancholy and hidden stories recorded in their morphology. She imagines that an airbag is filled with the breath of her ancestors, and that the grab handles which offer support when exiting a car with a low roof are affixed to all walls and ceilings to help her come to terms with the ever-elusive present. After arriving in Prague, she became fascinated by the local house intercoms. What happens to these columns of names and ornamentally arranged speaker holes when they fall silent and deaf? In the minimalist installation of the exhibition, they become autonomous portals, behind whose pale blue surfaces and layers conversations and memories come to life—memories of people who once announced their names, reasons, and requests through their innards. In the divided space of the gallery, they serve as various ends of an imaginative communication system, hidden from our eyes. The exhibition space thus becomes a fictional gathering place of speaker persons and stories, its dense air waiting to be stirred by a ceiling fan—if it were to work. Even that fan, with a weary stretch of one of its arms, has freed itself from its original function and become one of the storytellers. Melancholic listening to these memories is supplemented with catalog photos of lamps, pasted to the bottoms of emptied drawers.

Although the entire exhibition gives off a clean and summery impression, its nostalgic components create a slightly surreal, cinematic atmosphere. The secrets it potentially holds, and the stories whose unexpected dynamics might be set in motion by the blades of the old fan, are an intuitive reference to the cinematic works of David Lynch or even Steven Spielberg. Tessa, who spent childhood summers in Los Angeles amidst the film industry, works in the exhibition almost exclusively with materials used for making stage sets and models. She doesn’t camouflage the balsa wood or model-making polystyrene, using them directly to mimic reality—or rather, to bring fiction to life. Is it our imagination, someone else’s memory, or a fragment from a cult movie? “…Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue, And so my heart is paying now for things I didn’t do, In anger, unkind words are said that make the teardrops start, Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold, cold heart…”[1]

[1] Williams Hank, Cold, Cold Heart, song lyrics, 1951

The project is implemented with financial support from City of Prague and State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic.