88 bottle racks in metal and one bottle rack in neon
‘By accumulating a large number of bottle racks related to this single bought object, Bethan Huws is therefore following Duchamp’s logic. This makes it all the more important to examine how – a hundred years later – she inscribes the explicit and deliberate quotation of an object and a gesture into her own artistic practice. All of Huws’s earlier works involving the duplication of a floor in an exhibition venue were already characterized by a difference, a break. In the same way, the foundation upon which Forest is based is not constant; it oscillates between physical presence and linguistic dynamism. For the title of the installation Huws has chosen “forest,” a term that refers to a large wooded area with a tendency towards wild growth, and which can be etymologically derived from the Latin foris (“ outside, outdoors”). Forest is not tamed nature but rather a place of potential growth and change. Huws’s Forest is based on the principle of repetition. Although the structural similarity and the deviations in terms of the individual form of the bottle racks occur on a macroscopic level and are therefore clearly visible, this repetition can also be related to Duchamp’s notion of the “infra-mince”.’ – Hans Rudolf Reust
