Ivan Moudov

projects realized RAVE 2012: STONES, 2013, site specific installation, Casa Cavazzini Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Udine.

Tap water (Trivignano), 2012 tap water, bottle, label, Old Videos on Old Monitors, 2013, installation in the kitchen of Casa Cavazzini, TVs, DVD players, twelve videos, Nineteen Problems, Eighteen Paintings, 2013, performance and site specific installation with art works from Casa Cavazzini’s collection.

Stones, the installation by Ivan Moudov, is made thanks to the insertion of a layer of foam rubber underneath stones. In this way the floor becomes unexpectedly soft and those who walk over it find their feet sinking down a few centimetres. This forces pebbles to infiltrate between the feet and the shoe uppers or, in the case of sandals, between the toes. For the observers this is both ironic teasing and a warning to take nothing you see at face value, whether in everyday life of within the walls of an art exhibition. More in general, Moudov’s Stones represents an expression of how art could be: uncomfortable and able to make us look at the world with a view never previously attempted.

In Stones, the pebble-covered courtyard of Casa Cavazzini is surprisingly yielding, and people walking on it find themselves sinking ten centimetres into the gravel. Layers of foam rubber were placed under the pebbles to give the visitor an experience that is at first disconcerting and then funny. The experience overturns the long established topological assumptions about the consistency of the surface we walk on, with the trivial effect of finding your shoes full of stones (which many visitors, me included, removed by taking their shoes off and shaking them out).

Daniele Capra, extract from Try walking in my shoes, with a stone between the toes,  RAVE book, 2012.

Stones was a site-specific installation created for Casa Cavazzini he conceived during his residency at RAVE in Trivignano Udinese in 2012. This piece is perfectly camouflaged in the museum courtyard, silently welcoming visitors. However any visitor who steps onto the gravel floor in the centre of the courtyard, hoping to walk across to the buffet on the other side, will suddenly find themselves sinking into the stones. It is precisely these stones in the visitors’ shoes, and the discomfort they cause, which reminds them of the reason for being there. It highlights the need to consider the experience in a museum for what it is: a way of experiencing the world through the filter offered by an artist, and not the vacuous and vain practice of attending preposterously liturgical inaugurations as the only reason for going there.

Vania Gransinigh, excerpt from When a museum gets into your shoes, RAVE book 2012.