Ian Anüll’s video sculpture Out of the box is the result of a random walk through Bangkok. It shows a boy playing with a cardboard box that is part of the video sculpture. The box serves as a toy, a home and a hiding place, all at the same time. The scene is so direct that viewers feel pity, sympathy and amazement about the fact that this child seems to have set himself up entirely in a world of his own.
The cardboard box in the video is also the ‘vehicle’ for a purely artistic interest in its relationship with Minimal Art – it is the ‘same’ material in the video as in the exhibition space, but it is only by doubling up in this way that it makes us painfully aware of the border that cannot be removed, the gulf between the worlds. We can touch this ‘other’ world, but never really understand it.
Ian Anüll
Out of the box, 1995/99
