As usual, I left going to this show far too late. Realising in a panic on Friday afternoon, on my way down to Hamilton, that Saturday would be my last chance to see it, I ended up shoehorning my visit to Two Rooms in between a trip to the mechanics and a 5-year-old's birthday party. What I'm saying is that I was in a hurry, this particular Saturday was chaotic, and that nothing could have calmed me down better than Daniel Crooks' 'Imaginary Objects'.

A testament to the virtues of seeing works in the flesh rather than pamphlet reproductions, the images of the imaginary objects were, in a word, hypnotising. The video screens of the slowly spiralling sprials, which I didn't get to until the end of my orbit of the gallery, were not necessary for me to envisage the way these objects would move if they were, as they seemed, alive. Crooks' images feel vaguely familiar in exactly the way the title suggests. By the fourth or fifth image I had come out of the trance enough to wonder what the images actually were of, the Doubting Thomas in me craning my neck as though that would enable me to get inside the black boxes and touch the things.  Pages of a book? No. A slinky? Neither. With each guess as to the content and the method, I was reminded of the benefits of wonder, and also the pleasure of a purely aesthetic experience. It is better to not know what these white 'things' are.

This point was proven and the spell broken when I had circled around to the far wall, with the Imaginary Object that has figures spilling out of it. Automatically my mind switches gears, and I imagine the white as paint, as milk, as something rather than a thing or all things.

Crooks' images reaffirm the importance of the something that is nothing, the thing that is all things, and in doing so, the importance of the purely aesthetic experience. My Saturday sanity was very grateful for this show.

Image source:
Daniel Crooks, Imaginary Objects