Cornelia Parker

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'Cornelia Parker’s early installations brought her a great deal of attention and for good reason. They are ambitious in every way. Imposing in scale and visually stunning, the punch they pack is delivered upon the realization of what is being viewed and how it came to be. Politically and culturally astute, Parker’s work always offers layers of discovery, prompting thoughts that the initial, highly visceral encounters actually delay. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View of 1991 is a collection of charred building fragments that appear to float as they hang from the ceiling to reconfigure the garden shed that they once were, prior to being exploded upon Parker’s request by the British Army. Before reading the museum label or hearing about the origins of this piece the viewer is confronted with a beautiful but daunting form floating in the center of the gallery with a single light bulb, suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the piece as a source of light that casts dramatic shadows across the gallery wall. Enchanting yet frightening, like the monstrous shadows of a child’s room at night, the shadows expand the already impressive form to fill the room. Then the layers begin to peal away and the light becomes illumination as the viewer works through numerous implications from a humorous cartoon-like explosion that evokes the absurd; to the inference of violence and military force; to the philosophical, as the shadows bring to mind Plato’s cave and notions of reality.'