Needle in a haystack - level 3
An Italian artist has begun the arduous task of finding a needle in a haystack on a two-day art installation.
New York- based Sven Sachsalber will spend 48 hours sifting through the immense pile of hay at the Palais de Tokyo gallery in Paris, aiming to find a needle hidden in it by the gallery's President.
Whether it's considered art or not is down to personal opinion, but the artist insists there's more to the installation than first meets the eye.
The display is said to explore the complex relationship between words and actions, juxtaposing metaphors for the immensely small and the incomprehensibly large and complex.
“It's like playing the lottery, you don't know if you're going to win or not. You hope you're going to win otherwise why play the lottery? It's the same thing here. There's always hope. I hope I can find – even if it's hard because it's itchy, this hay, and I have it everywhere after a few hours, but it's fun at the same time.”
Although he avoids the label 'performance artist', Sachsalber has a history of displaying unusual, even dangerous, activities in the name of art.
His escapades also include spending 24 hours in a room with a cow and climbing over gravestones pretending to be a squirrel.
Difficult words: arduous (difficult and tiring), installation (demonstration), sift (examine to find), immense (extremely large), pile (a large amount of something), whether (if), insist (demand something forcefully), more than meets the eye (greater than is first apparent), juxtapose (place together for contrasting effect), incomprehensibly (not able to be understood), avoid (keep away from something), escapade (an act involving excitement or adventure).