Stimuli
Kay Walkowiak (2014)
Materials: HD video. Edition 2/6 + 2 AP. Duration: 2' 22''
b. Salzburg, Austria 1980.
Lender: evn collection, Maria Enzersdorf, Austria
In Kay Walkowiak’s film Stimuli, monkeys—macaques to be precise—encounter abstract art in the form of four flat objects. These are designed in various combinations of white, gray, beige, red, blue, and black. The rigid, rectangular surfaces are slightly larger than the monkeys. The monkeys come across the objects leaning at an angle or lying flat on the floor. One of the animals is hiding behind a plate, its fingers still visible along the edges. Another is chewing on a corner, as one more is intensely focused on the object, turning it over several times and feeling the underside and edges. They resemble De Stijl objects but also fit naturally into the macaques’ environment, in this case between brick walls, niches, stone, and earth. Kay Walkowiak describes the core of his film Stimuli as follows: “The [monkeys’] spontaneous interaction with the objects humorously deconstructs the conventions that shape the perception of Minimalism and its aesthetics of reduction, which is traditionally meant to be experienced as distanced, rational, and analytical.” (1).
Do the monkeys, then, prompt viewers to shed their learned distance from art? Or are the monkeys themselves stimulated by art? Kay Walkowiak also explores the multifaceted relationship between culture and nature in other works. In Divine monochromes, a parrot picks lucky colors from a Corbusier color palette. (2) Walkowiak’s exacting dramaturgy and formal language weave sculpture and film into a new texture both tactile and narrative. Culture and nature intertwine to form a new dimension. For the Paper, Rock, Scissors, exhibition, Kay Walkowiak’s Stimuli demonstrates the transformative power of artistic materials and tools.
Mona Jas