above: View of White Chalice (Ennoia) at the Armory Arts Week, New York, 2015, curated by Asher Remy-Toledo, Hyphen Hub

White Chalice (Ennoia)

2004

polypropylene, resin, fiberglass, water, projected video, sound composition

collection: Asher Remy-Toledo and Marc Routh, New York

Credits

written, created, choreographed, composed, filmed and edited by Monika Weiss

movement performance: Monika Weiss

text: Monika Weiss, But if the earth is only, 2004 [performed in English and Polish]

sculpture produced at the studio of Brendan Atkinson

sound mastered by Matthew Griffin

ARTIST STATEMENT

In White Chalice (Ennoia) [2004] the octagonal sculpture was cast in fiberglass and polypropylene and is filled with water onto which a moving image is projected. Upon closer view, the viewer sees a virtual representation of a figure curled-up inside and moving slowly, and hears the blended sounds of whispers and water. The resultant image is strikingly holographic. White Chalice (Ennoia) is part of a cycle of works is inspired by the shape of a medieval baptismal font, which I encountered in 1996 in a church in Wrocław, Poland. In 13th century this octagonal font, made in stone, was used to baptize adults. I began this series of projects by making hundreds of drawings, imagining my own immersion in the vessel, while concurrently, in Gnostic texts, I discovered the word énnoia, an ancient Greek word meaning “the act of thinking” and “thought”. In Gnostic cosmology énnoia evokes the edge of light that collapsed into this world, the world of matter, and into darkness. The sound is composed of my voice reading in Polish and English, But if the earth is only, a text partially inspired by the writings of Maurice Blanchot.

But if the earth is only the dispersion of body, can we cross the distance and conquer the absence? This is a separation, a sensitive interval that brings back the presence. In this return, when all disappears in the darkness of the night, the disappearance becomes the depth of a shadow, which makes the body more present, and the presence more dense and more foreign, with no name, and no form, which we cannot call alive anymore, nor dead.

- Monika Weiss

Essay Excerpts

As well as cultivating intensity within prescribed limits, her work muses philosophically on the nature of space in the most general terms. For example, the notions of the horizontal and the vertical. Their relationship is obvious but at the same time deeply mysterious. In several of Weiss’s video/performance installations visitors take in the scene from their normal standing or sitting position. From a vertical viewpoint they see the horizontal body of the artist, lying in a concrete container or vessel, or on the floor on a layer of books. At the same time a camera films the artist from directly above, and this horizontal image is then projected vertically, sometimes in another room. To the spatial experience is added the cinematic, in which not only is the live action mediated by video but may be manipulated in time according to whether the projection is a direct transmission or an edited version. The tension between live body and spectral image is beautifully suggested in White Chalice (Ennoia), 2004, by the projection of the naked, curled-up body of the artist directly into the waters of the receptacle.

-Guy Brett, Time Being, in Monika Weiss: Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, in collaboration with Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montréal, 2007

While Monika Weiss frequently works with her own body or choreographs others, she also absents the physical body, choosing to explore its refracted image instead. For White Chalice (Ennoia) [2004], Weiss projected a video documentation of her repeated immersions and curled-up body onto the water that filled a five-foot tall octagonal fiberglass chalice, creating a ghostly reinhabitation. Sounds of whispered words and splashing water could be heard as visitors approached the vessel, their own shadows reflected in the water’s mirroring surface. Water is a recurring material in Weiss’ practice due to its relational nature as it holds the refracted reflections of its surroundings, tentatively separating the interior and exterior. The artist’s sculpted, water-filled baptismal fonts speak to American artist Roni Horn’s translucent metal and cast-glass pools of water that act as metaphors of fluidity, performativity and androgyny. Likewise, for Weiss, water undoes the culturally-imposed boundaries of the body, returning it to its pre-natal state in which the self, the corporeal and language are all in a state of continuous becoming.
-Katarzyna Falęcka in Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021

EXHIBITIONS

Monika Weiss-Vessels, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, 2004, curated by Nina Colosi

Monika Weiss-Intervals, with Carolee Schneemann, Remy Toledo Gallery, New York, 2004, curated by Asher Remy-Toledo

Monika Weiss-Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York, 2005-2006, curated by Susan Hoelzer

Rozmowa-Początek, with Roland Schefferski, Galeria EL, Elbląg, 2009, curated by Jarosław Denisiuk

Opening, Montanelli Museum, Prague, 2010, curated by

Hyphen Hub at Armory Arts Week, New York, 2015, curated by Asher Remy-Toledo

PUBLICATIONS

Monika Weiss-Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York & Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montréal, 2007

Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021

Exhibition Views