Solar Anus

by

Dennis Adams

Fabrication by Mark Baumgartner Studio.

Link to pictures of the fabrication process In The Studio below.

Size:            98” W x 48” H x 9” D

                   248.9 cm W x 121.9 cm H x 22.9 cm D

Materials:     Aluminum, Plexiglas, Cibatrans, stainless steel hardware, fluorescent light tubes

Installation View

Peter Doroshenko: What about the work The Solar Anus? In relation to the other transaction works, it has a very different effect.

Dennis Adams: That’s true. It’s not a construction of a transaction window in a real sense. Basically, it’s a photograph suspended over a bed of fluorescent lights. I took the photo of a cinema ticket booth in Tokyo. There were soiled fingerprints all around the hand-slot and what looked to be discoloration from people’s breath around the voice aperture. The effect was somewhat scatological. I pushed this reading by doubling the image up, like two cheeks of an ass.

PD: So it’s an image of sex and money.

DA: That’s a little rough, but yes, perhaps.

PD: Where does the title come from?

DA: From an essay by the French writer Georges Bataille.

PD: And the fluorescent lights! Why do they extend above and below the image?

DA: I didn’t want the image to frame the lights. They are two separate systems, a transmitter and a receiver slightly out of sync. The effect of the bulb fragments also suggests film sprockets.           

Text excerpt from: Interview with Dennis Adams (p. 8 to 11)

Dennis Adams: Selling History

Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston

Interviewer: Peter Doroshenko, Engelhard Curator