Order and disorder

It was hard to pry myself away from this Megan Suttles installation at the Governors Island Art Fair. Little pieces of a translucent material (shards of glass? bits of hardened plastic?) were strung on fishing line that extended between two walls of an apartment in one of the island's old residences. The sculpture felt kinetic, explosive -- but the material was quiet, reflective, almost not there, and the way it captured light tranlsated something that might otherwise have been overwhelming and chaotic into a moment of contained poetry.

From Suttles' artist's statement on her Web site:

Every now and then I find myself in these situations where it is very difficult to control the way I see, touch, smell, talk, breathe, everything. My vision becomes blurry, the world spins. It happens randomly, triggered by seemingly mundane occurrences: sound, wind, large crowds, solitude. Over the years I have learned to conceal these episodes by constructing a container. Through various breathing techniques and concentration, I am able to contain the chaos to the point where it becomes invisible.  My work has become focused on revealing this chaos; making the invisible visible again. ... Through this work I have been exploring the eternal struggle between restraint and disorder: the way we tend to conceal our inner confusion with the outward appearance of refinement and perfection.