Am 12. Juni 2011 besuchten wir Ariel Schlesinger in ihrem Studio.

“If beauty can be found in any slight shift in the rhythms of the world, in temporal or functional disruptions, Ariel Schlesinger (*1980 in Jerusalem, Israel) will be there to capture it – he might even have provoked it himself. His practice creates a tension between the materiality of mass-produced workaday objects, and the function these objects were intended for. The artist introduces a subtle disruption to consumer goods, not by dramatically modifying their external appearance, but rather by “enhancing hidden aspects of their existence”. In renewing how we regard such objects he makes an often trivial reality sublime. As a teenager, he practiced train hopping in California, and developed a taste for the improper use of objects – creatively appropriating established normative conditions. Taking this liberating experience as a starting point, the artist began to seek out other latent opportunities for the subversion of the everyday, by modifying consumer devices or accessing features in them that had been disabled by the manufacturer.

The machine constantly pumped cooking gas into soap bubbles. After a slow descent the bubbles reached a high voltage grill that sparked upon touch and triggered an explosion. The whole mechanism was driven by a cordless screwdriver, moving slowly as if running on its battery’s last reserves.”