Aki Sasamoto’s “performance-slash-installation” work questions the nuances of everyday life, channelling queries about topics ranging from cravings and laundry to garbage, cleaning, and romance through absurdist scenarios, deadpan humour, and a stream of consciousness logic. Sasamoto’s ideas or questions crystalise through a system of structured improvisation. Her installations – often realised through meticulous arrangements of sculpturally altered objects – provide the tools for scenarios to occur, functioning like a score, with stories unfolding and interconnections forming through the body moving in time and space. On view at the Giardino delle Vergini inside a self- standing building, the components of Sasamoto’s piece Sink or Float (2022) appear to levitate. On top of a series of tables constructed from stainless-steel commercial sinks that have been retrofitted with thousands of small air-blowing holes – the same technology used in industrial air float tables – a collection of objects enacts a chaotic, improvised set of movements. At one end of the space, framed by a construction of HVAC air ducts, is a rotisserie oven and a commercial cooler that have been transformed into light boxes. Sasamoto’s constructed environment employs controlled chaos to transform the everyday into the fantastical, inviting the viewer to retune their perceptions of the seemingly mundane in everyday life.
Madeline Weisburg
