Fourplay

The installation Fourplay illustrates the way that architecture is able to partition and hierarchise space. Matěj Al-Ali took the space of a specific gallery and split it up still further by splitting the playing area of a table tennis table. Architecture defines and delimits the possibility of a balanced game. The playing area in Fourplay can no longer serve its original function, namely the possibility of measuring strength under impartial conditions. Al-Ali shows how architecture can influence the conditions of our movement and create rules that, though they may seem objective and natural, are in fact subject to the ideological or power-based context in which they arise.