Big Orbit Gallery: "Red Hearts/Black Tongues" by David Mitchell

When we first pulled up to the entrance of the Big Orbit Gallery, I wasn't even really sure where to go. We managed to find the entrance which is located at the top of some very dilapidated-looking wooden steps, across from a larger-than-life plaster cast of a woman's body. The door was blacked out except for the name of the gallery and exhibit, and at first we opened the door to nearly complete darkness. There was music playing, but nearly no light. You could see the silhouettes of two cars, and upon walking further, that there were actually screens in the cars. The screens depicted a man and a woman, in each of the two cars, and they had tears digitally streaming down their faces. It was poignant and puzzling at the same time.

I had looked up the description of the exhibition before I came, so I knew David Mitchell's proposed project was to depict crashed cars and taxidermy deer. In the darkness, I couldn't see any deer, and it was a little eerie in the space - I was just hoping that they didn't fall out of the sky at the end of the 10 minute installation loop. It turns out that we had entered in nearly two minutes into the loop, so we were out of sync with the story. Watching from the beginning, you begin to comprehend a little more, and thus when the headlights on the cars go bright and the inner car screens go dark, you know what happened. The video at the back of the space was completely eerie, but at the same time, it wasn't scary. Seeing the two human figures prone inside the darkening heart was a little unsettling, but at the same time, it was also peaceful. I liked the way the actual installation heart (a raised platform on the floor) had lights that slowly got brighter, instead of blinding you all at once.

I thought that the deer and the humans were an interesting comparison - in the end, we're all just road kill, but what matters is finding someone you love. I didn't even mind the taxidermy deer as much as I thought I would. But I did think that I liked Mitchell's sketch for the space (shown below) better than the actual installation. If you're going to use deer as a symbol for roadkill, and you want to show the tenderness between them, do something like you did in the sketch. I thought standing them up, having their obviously plasticized tongues touching simply could have been done better. In the sketch, the deer are lying down and the moment is more tender. I felt like the postures of the humans in the video and the taxidermy deer in the actual instillation didn't add up.

Still, I liked it. You just need to watch it from the beginning to comprehend what the artist wanted to convey.