IONIZER: Ivy Lee
The first solo exhibition by Ivy Lee (1992, Berlin) explores a dialectic between romantic visions of immersion within nature and modern attempts to recuperate such values through the deployment of new technologies. Trained in architecture and urban design, Ivy Lee approaches atmosphere through the dual lenses of ambience and air conditioning. At stake in IONIZER is the capacity of technical understanding to facilitate phenomenological transformation of individual experience and shared social space.
Dramatically organized around the figure of the Chizhevsky chandelier—a Soviet era technical device designed to purify air and improve the human condition by creating negatively charged ions—the exhibition juxtaposes Ivy Lee’s quest in search of the salutary effects of anions (captured in her video and photo works) with a research portfolio that surveys atmospheric manipulation agendas in recent history. Embodying the Greek root of the word ‘ion’ in ‘wandering’ the artist moves across stark natural landscapes and mythic episodes, evoking the foreboding and ecstatic promise of harnessing natural forces. A mixed-media installation comprised of video, photographs, and drawings alongside found artefacts, footage and research, the exhibition stages an interrogation of the visitor’s own experience of the ionzer’s effects.
The last century of rapid urbanization and industrialization has provoked interest in special qualities of atmosphere associated with certain weather conditions and natural locations. Why do we have an especially strong sense of well-being at the seaside, amidst forests and mountains, or after a thunderstorm? Explanations abound—at least one offering a scientific justification this widely held cultural assumption. Namely, the unseen influence of electrical charges within the environment: Negatively charged ions (atoms or molecules that carry an extra electron), present in high concentrations in dirt and near rushing water, are held to improve one’s biological, if not also one’s spiritual health, casting into sharp relief the ills of being surrounded by positive ion-generating electronic devices. With this insight arise desires to moderate the condition of the atmospheres we inhabit from day to day, whether by returning to nature or bringing its effects within our regular spheres of inhabitation.
Lee is interested in an imaginary set of coordinates: soul—technology; encounter—manipulation; bounded—unbounded space. How can an environment be improved—how can it improve one who inhabits it? In IONIZER Ivy Lee draws upon a Soviet historical episode and its material tokens to catalyze a reverie concerning exceedingly contemporary ambitions to improve oneself by applying tools and techniques. (Indeed, ionizers are marketed today for their capacity to remove viruses, pollen, dust and other particulate pollutants from the air, and their positive effects on conditions ranging from allergies to depression remain under scientific investigation.)
Such aspirations are is frequently framed as a ‘natural’, or timeless desires. The landscapes that appear in the artist’s videos and her naked figure would perhaps appear to uphold the aesthetics of this ‘universal’ condition. Yet this exhibition pushes back against such certainties, historicizing such longing and the imagined modes of its fulfillment. Documenting the social-cultural role of the Chizhevsky chandelier in the now-defunct Soviet Union is a key move in this regard. For the device and its social context serves as a mirror of sorts, reflecting the limits of what contemporary users may expect from technology.
Between the cutting-edge engineering of yesteryear and the irresistible promises of what might—or might not—be pseudo-science, IONIZER reconstructs the dream of technical efficacy. Deploying a handmade device and repaired historical artifacts in relentless pursuit of the phenomenon in question, Ivy Lee becomes the ionizer: her embodied performance enacts the oracular promise of the ionizer to transport us to other realms.
--Dehlia Hannah & Nadim Samman
