< N55 | Henrik Olesen >
After Kerouac
96 pages / b/w / 18x12 cm / 700 ex / 2007 / published by Pork Salad Press / ISBN 87-91409-35-7 / € 18.00
The content of this book documents the building process of Mike Nelson’s exhibition After Kerouac. It shows Mike Nelson’s four weeks of planning and constructing the 46-meter long spiral corridor at Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, from March 17th to June 7th 2006.
In After Kerouac Mike Nelson fuses his encyclopaedic range of literary and art historical references to create a three-dimensional narrative. Compared to Mike Nelson's previous work After Kerouac is a simplified built structure - without the multiple spaces and props – however the title and installation is as puzzling and ambiguous as his other works. The After Kerouac structure leads the viewer through a bleak and corridor into an unresolved, absurd space consisting of more than 500 tires either rolled or dragged into the spiral’s middle space - hence the abstract painterly marks in the corridor. Before the tires were placed in the middle space they were compared and divided into groups, registered and photographed. The book includes this index of the different tires used in the installation.
