Paradoxical Objects

Flow State was included in Paradoxical Objects: Video Sculpture from 1968 to today, an online exhibition launched on 24 September 2021 and presented by peer to space. Curated by Sue Bachmeier and Peggy Schoenegge, the project brought together forty-six time-based works by international artists, placing May’s work alongside key figures in the history of video sculpture including Nam June Paik and Tony Oursler.

The exhibition focused on the screen as both image and object, tracing how video sculpture has combined the physical presence of display technologies with the temporal movement of video. In that context, Flow State was a strong fit: a work built from synchronised screens that shifts between abstract light pattern and close observation of scientific labour, making the sculptural form of the display inseparable from the experience of the moving image.

For May’s wider practice, the inclusion mattered because it situated Flow State within a longer lineage of artists using screen-based structures to shape perception spatially rather than treating video as a flat window. The work’s concern with hidden systems, mediated looking, and the physical conditions of display became legible here as part of an ongoing history of video sculpture.