Receiver
Marlon Kroll

“Receiver” is focused around the idea that objects and paintings can be spirit mediums. The show uses speaker horns and cones, and the implied form of a trumpet, as motifs, and in this fictional stage play, they are disconnected from amplifiers and electronics, instead receiving and amplifying through their wires the latent voice of spirits that may float through the air.

Four of the paintings depart from the speaker horns they were inspired by, and lean into the horn- like form that lies within their compositions, alluding to spirit trumpets, archaic spiritualist devices said to focus and amplify the voice of spirits. The other two act as figures; one imagines a staircase as a body as it bends over to stretch, and the other imagines the Neapolitan San Carlo theater as a larynx, becoming both the singer and the room it performs in.

The sculptures are basically drawings; confident gestures in three dimensions. Two found objects combine to form another spirit trumpet on the wall, with an egg at its center; two chairs rest on-top of each other, like two sleepers, an egg balanced on one of the feet. On one wall, another chair is suspended upside down, with a speaker picking up signals from the air with another egg balanced on its seam, and on the other wall another speaker does the same.

In this show, the sculptures are both the mise en scene and the actors of their own play.

This show is really about accepting my family and their strangeness, and to find a way to communicate with my mother, who has passed on. She was a fortune teller, faith healer, tarot reader and artist, and finally instead of denying the spiritualism in my family, I am exploring it.

I am hoping to reach my dead relatives, and maybe this work can help you reach yours, too.