Kairsergruft

In this next gallery, the thin, red, vinyl line continues along the perimeter. Though most of the gallery is white, Bordowitz has painted a large section in the right-hand corner with red-ish brown paint, a color calling to mind a dark terracotta or rust, or blood. The color extends from the corner of the gallery to fill about one-third of the two adjacent walls. It stops abruptly with a sharp, clean edge.
In this corner stands a short white sculpture of stacked paper plates coated in a thick white plaster. The sculpture stands about 3 feet or 1 meter tall, comparable to the height of a young child, on a disc-shaped platform of the same dark terracotta color. The platform’s rim is encircled by the same red line.
The sculpture has a wide base and narrows at the top. The tip resembles a large bone protruding from the pile of plates.
On the walls around the sculpture the artist has made a freehand drawing interpreting Scottish philosopher David Hume’s essays “A Treatise of Human Nature: Book II: The Passions.” The drawing is based on a diagram Bordowitz made in his notebook.
The artist’s diagram consists of big, scratchy, all-caps text and wobbly curves and lines in mostly royal blue, with flashes of white and gray.
An infinity symbol hovers at the center of the drawing, about two-thirds of the way up the wall. Its curves are an overlapping of gray and blue and its intersection point is exactly where the walls meet. Down the center, bisecting the halves of the infinity symbol, a wobbly line extends from just above the symbol to about a third of the way to the floor, stopping at the top of the paper-plate sculpture. Here, the vertical line diverges into two wobbly horizontal lines extending about halfway across both walls' dark terracotta sections, creating an upside down T. At the top point of the upside down T, a skull is drawn, like the head of a scepter. Above the skull, near the gallery ceiling, the artist has written SYMPATHY, in a scratchy, white all-caps with royal blue accents.
A series of words encircle the infinity symbol’s loops, including the words PRIDE, SELF, LOVE, and OTHER. Cradled inside both loops are the words HUMILITY and HATE. Along the T’s spine, the artist has written the word SENSATION. At the end points of the upside-down T’s horizontal line are written the words AGREEABLE and UNEASY. In the open space between the infinity symbol and the horizontal line are royal blue left and right handprints with white specks. The handprints, nearly parallel to one another, look at each other from their respective walls.
On the left terracotta section, along its edge, a column of individual scribbles transitions from dark royal blue, to a brighter royal blue, to turquoise, to white, like a vertical color scale. In this same section, the words “BOOK II OF THE PASSIONS DAVID HUME A TREATISE OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING NATURE” are written in large, all-caps, royal blue and surround the curve of the infinity symbol. The word “UNDERSTANDING” is struck through.
On the right terracotta section, a column of word pairs run along the edge. The words in each pair are separated by greater than and less than symbols between them, resembling butterfly wings. The word pairs are: VICE><SERVITUDE. Just below this, text reads “MORE OR LESS” and “NEVER ONE OR THE OTHER,” both phrases separated by a slash.
This work makes reference to an imperial crypt located beneath the Capuchin Church in Vienna, Austria. In German, Kaisergruft means just this--imperial crypt. The cloud-like forms of the sculpture reference the baroque ornamentation of the sarcophagus, a visual theme that echoes other works in the exhibition, such as Pestäule.