Max Ruf
Phthalo Green
Union Pacific
17-19 Goulston Street
E1 7TP London
http://unionpacific.co.uk/
CUT
Phthalo Green
Union Pacific
17-19 Goulston Street
E1 7TP London
http://unionpacific.co.uk/
STILL
An unfocused gaze held momentarily upon a discarded paper.
White glossy surface yellowed under the dulled glow of
street lamps, the bold graphic layout of the page is
disturbed by a pockmarked texture of scratches that moves
across the surface creating an almost seamless consistency
with the coarse background of concrete. The top banner a
grubby but intended pastel blue, bordered by a
pre-generated curve, stroked with white and filled left to
right by preselected purple, blue, red. Screening down a
female figure in black night robe caught in mid step, left
foot forward, right arm perched upwards supporting her
weight on a largely scuffed out to reveal the paper stock.
A white mat is thrown to the forefront with an unexplained
protrusion reaching down from the corner warping its
perspective, between a softly laid out bathroom textile
and a graphic speech bubble.
"A warm welcome for wet feet"
AS SEEN ON TV
PAN RIGHT
AN ENHANCED ARTIFICIALITY TO THE NUMEROUS BULBS OF LIGHT
GLOWING SYNTHETIC SHADES OF RED, PINK, YELLOW, BLUE.
TEMPERED BY THE SCREEN, MISTY AND CONDENSED, WITH PATTERNS
THAT MOMENTARILY FOCUS, FORMING SMALL INTERLOCKING ISLANDS
THAT REACH OUT FROM AND BECOME SEPARATED BY CONTINENTS, TO
SUBSEQUENTLY DISAPPEAR INTO THE BANAL GRADIENT OF GREY
TARMAC RISING UP INTO DULL BLACK HORIZON. THE FOREGROUND
IS INSISTENT, A CURVED PLASTIC BAR UNFLATTERINGLY VISIBLE,
A SHADE OF YELLOW THAT GREENS AROUND THE EDGE LIKE BADLY
MIXED PAINT, NONE OF THE DUSKY ROMANCE OF THE LIGHTPLAY.
Laboured frictions of surfaces clicking over rising in
intensity. Shuffling. Sharp bell rings
SWEEPING PAN RIGHT
Distracted glances backwards against the sweeping pan
tries to capture some detail against the fogged, uniform
black texture only affording a cursory distinguishing of
mass, a voluminous tower reaching upwards beyond the
frame, overlooking more modest outcrops.
HIS HANDS CLASPED AROUND THE DANGLED
YELLOW GRIP PULL UPWARDS BRINGING WEIGHT OFF THE FLOOR AND
THE NUMEROUS TINY MIRRORS SOWN INTO HIS HAT REFLECT UNDER
THE STRIP LAMP.
THE UNIFORM TEXTURE OF BLACK GREY GIVES WAY TO A SERIES OF
OVERLAPPING GRIDS. INFRASTRUCTURAL BEAMS ON HORIZONTAL AND
VERTICAL PLANES SUPPORTED BY SPINDLED UPRIGHTS ANCHORING
HUNDREDS OF GLASS SHEETS, FORMING A MOMENTOUS CURVED WALL
STRETCHING FROM THE CORNER AND BEYOND THE FRAME. LED BLUE
IS RADIATED FROM WHAT COULD BE AN ENLARGED PEG BOARD, AN AMATEUR ELECTRONICS SIGNAGE OR CRAFTWORK WITHOUT THE
RESOLUTION FOR A SEAMLESS DIGITAL IMAGE, ONLY CAPABLE OF
ATOMISED SHAPES WHICH FORM AT A DISTANCE FROM THE EYE. ALL
THE HOLES HAVE SIMPLY BEEN PLUGGED AS AN EXTERIOR DESIGN.
ZOOM
(The tops of the bollards are either miniaturised
crowns or inflated lemon
juicers. The former would be
continuous with the obelisk
like base and decorative
stars, rendered in the same
utilitarian shades as the
road surface marks, a kind
of tragicomic embodiment of
sovereignty through street
furniture. Somehow they are
more convincing as lemon
juicers though, bloated and
weighted through a brute
casting that eschews light
touch and precision of
manufacture)
CUT
Foregrounded and encased, precise intersections of lines
visualise routes, distances, locations, their
relationships along a broad vertical trajectory for ease
of use rather than accuracy.
\
\
SCANNING UPWARDS, SQUINTING SLIGHTLY
Luton Airport Pkwy - 05:09 On
time
Mill Hill Bway - 05:09 On time
Mill Hill Bway - 05:09 On time
Otford 3 05:24 On time
"The driver’s only just turned
up. He needs to taxi in from
Smithfields. Have you got a
flight to catch? 07:30? You’ll be
alright. Then they leave it to
frontline staff to take the shit,
I just tell them, don’t tell me,
what I meant to do about it? Tell
the fucking driver, know what I
mean. They always say ’Oh he’ll
be there early’"
OUTWARD SIGHS EXHALED BY ALL.
(Leaned, propped, slumped
against various convenient
architectural features. The
feeling is one of wanting to share but being caught
between weariness,
alertness, anxiety, boredom,
indifference and
inevitability, such that its
easier to stay solitary,
keep scanning for
information you already
searched for and registered
before you left)
CUT
FURTHER GRIDDING OPPOSES TEXTURED PANELS
SCANNING DOWNWARDS
Perforated and breathable, border broken by the extruding
flatscreen casing, casting a shadow which diffuses into a
marbled texture of stone that might be Castle Travertine
Chocolate (L)450mm x (W)450mm cut to rectangular sections
descending beyond the bottom of the frame. Further grids
are layered within the frame from a backdrop of pleated
solar panels overlayed with no transparency by annotation,
EXCEL green infomercial bar charts and crudely aligned
clipart.
’The total electrical energy
generated this week is enough to:
toast 190426.9 slices of toast’
’The total electrical energy
generated this week is enough to:
roast 927.7 roast dinners’
’The total electrical energy
generated this week is enough to:
boil 77310.8 cups of tea’
’The total electrical energy
generated this week is enough to:
wash 1947357.2 dishwasher loads’
’The total electrical energy
generated this week is enough to:
iron 45702.5 shirts’
CUT
3 shades of green competing for your attention in trying
to be of assistance. Flashing LED green that doesn’t quite
resemble a shade rather than light focused dispersing
colour outwards - mechanism is working. Flat industrial
green inset by an excessively big button more like a
clowning prop or party badge - Emergency Push. ’High
Strung’ Sherwin-Williams, ’spilled out of the 1970’s,
pasted on by a round sticker
’Talk to us, We’re here to help’
(The boredom and weariness
has really given way by this
point where you begin to
take note of the restless
standing and sitting of
bodies around you. The
anxiety is shared, almost.
You’ve focused
disinterestedly at the
digital information boards
trying to summon up clever
metaphors for what the
unintentionally uneven
purple gradient might be
symptomatic of. You’ve
stared lazily at the
cleaning trough, perfectly
positioned on the floor
between two tubular
architectural barriers, with
long wooden handles
similarly symmetrically
upright and parallel,
wondering if this was
assembled. But all you know
is that the Sevenoaks train
is in 32 minutes and it’s
not your one)
CUT
"Taken from a series of high
vantage points...each panoramic
picture is made by combining up
to a hundred separate images to
create a final image with
exceptional detail and clarity to
catch the mood and flavour of
these startling vistas."
The height is improbable. It falls short of a birds eye
perspective; too withdrawn from the ground for film or
television; too elevated for capturing a horizon. It must
be the ’assisted realism’ of tourist postcards, a
perspective that tries to simultaneously immerse you in
the fantasy whilst making the wider horizon of
possibilities available to the eye. It’s not exotic
enough, with the sweeping track of muddy water very
stingily broken from the expanding subdivisions of muggy
blotches by single files of green caricature mounds of
modelled vegetation.
PULL BACK AND TRACK RIGHT
High pitched ringing cuts through murmured conversation,
live voice hindered by door and through radio Looking outwards the dulled strip lighting can only
illuminate a confusion of inside and out. Vaguely
figurative suggestions are filled by a beaded texture,
projected weakly onto a grid of 2 x 4 black stroked
squares almost reading like frames of a motion study with
figures taking successive positions until the left corner
reveals a surprisingly deft lurch forward, half pirouette
and exit.
TRACK RIGHT
Inside and outside begin to form definite boundaries, less
confusion and more double exposure. The beaded texture
crystallizes into a textile motif that is still rather
oblique, struck through by brick sprayed with letterform
and intermittent shades of green. The top of the frame has
introduced a global light evenly distributed replacing the
intense glares or relegating them to passing incisions.
Angled infrastructures cut, intersect, frame, pole, beam,
brick across the middle band of the image in a play
between foreground and horizon that continually cuts
attention entirely to black.
LABOURED PAN DOWN
accompanied by sliding of polyester, nylon, vinyl in a
rustled cut resting unfocused on black reflection trawled
by thumbnails, mechanic and pictographic. Boundaries have
given way
A SIMPLE VIEW OF TREES, FIELDS, LIGHT INDUSTRIAL
BUILDINGS, WITH THE FIELDS INTERSECTING WITH FENCES AND
ROADS, EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT TO FIND SOMEWHERE
BETWEEN ST ALBANS CITY AND HARPENDEN.
THE TRACKSIDE OBSCURES YOUR VIEW
(You can’t really see
anything until you go on the
free wifi and find that the
closest point you can reach
is under the bridge next to
Harpenden car park. A rusted
lattice work of crumbling
Buckingham Green metal slats
reinforces the concrete
weight. The surrounding
walls still have some rare
pockets of the original
ebullient Langwith Red
Rustic Brick but its
primarily chipped, faded,
snagged, caked to a
flattened dusk of exhaust)
DRAG LEFT 3 CLICKS
"Green Lights All the Way"
STUNNING WIDE ANGLE SWEEPING ACROSS DENSE PINE OUTCROPS CAUGHT ALMOST IN SILHOUETTE AGAINST THE SUN RAYS STRIKING
’THE CLOUDS, "THE CHIEF ORGAN OF SENTIMENT", WHOSE SHAPES
MATERIALIZE WITHOUT RESOLVING INTO PATTERNS OR FIXED
FORMS’.
YOUR EYES CONTINUE TO SCAN
Within the allowed perimeter of the next click the
landscape is literally torn from within, the soiled grey
pasted undersides of print flayed outwards to reveal from
the bottom of the thigh down, a leg, rolled up denims to
knee and a red converse shoe treading on a perfectly
masked square of lawn, frayed grassy edges immaculately
cut with blades of shadow.
JOLT UPWARDS
Neon green rings rendered with full lighting and volume
chain together from a single disc to form the cheering
face of a fattened pig emblazoned upon the night sky
"Percy Pigs
Road hogs,
but in
a good way"
ACCIDENTAL SWIPE OF THE TRACKPAD
GALVANIZED STEEL POLE CUTS SCREEN THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF
THE DENSE LEAVES OVERLAPPING HUES OF LEAFY GREEN TO
HARVEST GOLD SCORED BY INTERSECTING BRANCHES, PUSHED UP AS
A SINGLE SURFACE TO THE FACE OF THE SCREEN, BOUNDED BY A
SEMI-TRANSPARENT WHITE FRAME,
FOLLOWING THE CURSOR AS IT PULLS LEFT
shifting in scale and wrapping to perspectival planes
inconsistently correlating to depicted volumes within the
image. The secure bike shed is the limit of this search.
CUT
SMOOTH TRACK
DOWNWARDS
JOLTY TRAILING OF BALSAM BAG, DOUBLED AND MIRRORED IN THE
COTTON JACKET.
At each stage of descent a small window opens up to frame
PERFECTLY BALANCED ROWS OF ORANGES STACKED HORIZONTALLY
AND PYRAMIDALLY, IN ROWS FILLED UP TO THE NECK REVEALING A
VENDORS HEAD WITH WHITE HAT. A JIGSAW OF DISTINCT FIELDS
CUT BY 2 SWEEPING TARMAC TRACKS AND AN EQUATOR. MIDNIGHT
BLUES GRADED LIKE WHISTLER’S THAMES BUT ILLUMINATED BY
INVASIVE SEARCH LIGHTS.
JOLTY TRAILING
CLEAN REFLECTIVE SYNTHETIC FABRICS
FADE TO BLACK
There’s a large elliptical cut out of Peter Capaldi’s
torso, stroked with a few points of purple, revealing an
interior of luridly coloured semi transparent innards that
could be bodily if they weren’t so uniformly spherical. A
purple hue continues to run steadily through his suited
body, running effortlessly through the diagrammatic cog
wheels onto comical light rays emanating outward at
regular intervals, into discs of candy, diffusing gently
into an almost imperceptible reflection off the dappled
white tiles
(Your eyes have to look down
as to not attract too much
attention as there are
limited excuses for openly
recording seemingly
arbitrary details in such a
surrounding)
PAN FORWARDS FACE DOWN
There are flickered suggestions of difference en route but
most of the fixtures are purple, just purple. Well some
isn’t actually purple but for the sake of this lets call
it purple. Various shades, hues, codes, opacities,
intensities, absorptions, embodied in different materials,
embossed by precise surfaces, distributed through pattern,
characterised in motifs etc. Much of it isn’t purple. But
it’s essentially purple. With different adjectives
(Finally you can actually
look out unhindered except
for the occasional grain of
the glass window pain. You
are at a height where you
see an expanse but retain
the scale of bodies in
relation to the
heterogeneous engineerings
that both connect
purposefully whilst in other
instances remain scattered
and isolated. The space is
awash with movements;operational, directed,
angled, targeted. Even
liming bodies are only
seemingly so, on call,
dressed in high visibility
and framed in logistical
dioramas)
INADVERTENT PAN DOWN
There is a frame where the vacuum formed curvature and
recess of the lid, fitted plug and spherical tab, debossed
motifs and warning sign vectors, wrapped corrugated sleeve
form continuous lines of engineering, bridging the inside
and outside.
SLOW TRACK RIGHT
"Stories of the street portray
unique narratives as seen through
the eyes of international
photographers"
YOUNG WOMEN’S LEG IN BLACK TIGHTS FRAMED AGAINST DENSE
COLLAGE OF FLYPOSTERS
YOUNG MAN’S HAND GRASPING TABLET PRECISELY CUT TO ALLOW
ACCESS TO PADLOCKED METAL ELECTRICAL SOCKET TERMINAL
MANICURED HAND HOLDS COIN ENGRAVED WITH LAKE SCENE BETWEEN
TWO RED POLISHED FINGERS
PAN FORWARDS FACE DOWN
The grain of Bandura Bologna Oak is marshalled in
comfortable vertical widths giving a natural direction to
follow. Sequences of pipings, Footwear, bags adjusted to
movements, navigating retractable barrier posts and safety
clutch systems. The free newspaper awkwardly held between
bag, under arm, in hand with phone, ticket and passport
opened to photo page, keeps jutting in to the view,
increasingly so as it descends from it’s precise folding
without even being opened.
CUT
EVERY TICKET WINS £1,000 IN GU12 4EX, HA8 5BD, IP5 1EP,
NR1 2HZ, TW14 8NA
TURN
SAMUEL RAE COMPLETES A LIFESTYLE SURVEY AND FAILS TO TICK
’DO NOT SHARE MY DETAILS’ BOX
CUT
(Fresh air rushes in.
Following parquet bricks, a
seemingly infinitepermutation of arrangements
by shade, wear and grain,
you are in the elements and
the structure is a
provisional shield for the
transition. It’s a lower
league stadium dugout that
doesn’t really protect you
from rain but locates you
just closer to the action
than crowd. Maybe its
actually the same company.
There is no temporary
enclosure, with its own
floating atmosphere encased
by suspension and concertina
fixtures. There are no
glossed, contemporary
photographic portraits
investigating cultural
difference. Brick gives way
to frequently repaired,
aggregate heavy concrete
mixes, stroked by clean
white and yellow, slightly
browning tread plates,
rivets, hinges, rigs and
steps that you begin to
ascend.)
"Step up to lounge luxury"
CUT
Unrelenting sound of extraction.
CRYING BABY
The porthole is entirely fogged with light and only very
tenuous differences of opacity become visible, less to do
with the actual outside and more the adjustment of the
eye. Its uniform, dingy cavernous, with surfaces
immediately pushed against you, although occasionally
stoked by light as if through blinds, evoking Eric Fischl
for probably less than a second. Panning across a bright
shoulder is cut between the seats and some depth is
registered, the texture and pattern is something like an
inverse Peterborough United (away) 1993-4 or a highly
saturated Norwich City (home) 1992-3.
PAN DOWN
Past three marks that could only be described as gouges,
proceeding down further along soft purple striped folds,
meshed netting holding laminated card, reaching a crumpled
apex between two stone washed legs.
DESCENDING BETWEEN THEM, ACCELERATING AND PAUSING
Hovering over criss crossed lines, stitching together
familiar cut shapes of leather that are only conspicuously
absent of any other marking.
A NONDESCRIPT PAIR OF TRAINERS
(It becomes impossible to
focus on anything but the
comical loop of lace,
oversized and strikingly in
focus, from this angle
centred whilst the typically
irritating knotty centre is
somehow concealed. It’s so
big it droops all the way
over the curve of the foot
to the base of the sole,
almost a decorative feature
in place of the hang tag)
FASTEN
The dull lighting dims to almost complete shade allowing
hazy forms to emerge overexposed through the porthole
CRANING OVER
It’s impossible to register a stable viewpoint. The glare
is permeated by saturated greens burned to orange exceeded
by bright white. The focus is increasingly lost and
regained, a flickering of shape, hue and motion,
continually altered, adjusted and replenished. The only
consistency being the horizontal plane we track past until
this is lost to an indistinguishable fog and increasing
vibrations.
CUT
STABILIZE
PANNING FURTHER ACROSS GREY SEAMLESSLY TRANSITIONS
ATTEMPTING TO POSITION
Shuffled materials, unstretched, unclicks and increasingly
audible voice exchanges.
This text was published on the occasion of the exhibition Phthalo Green, at Union Pacific, London,
following conversations between Max Ruf and Ali Eisa, and in response to the authors travel
between Wandsworth Road, London and Vilnius International Airport, Lithuania.
Ali Eisa is an artist living and working in London. He also works collaboratively as half of Lloyd
Corporation.