If Bryan Zanisnik wasn’t an artist, his latest work might see him getting a visit from social services, or even worse, the New York equivalent of a Channel 4 documentary crew. Hoarding can take over the lives of sufferers, but there’s a method to Zanisnik’s… we’ll call it dysfunction… which reveals itself on closer inspection of his Five Weeks in a Balloon installation-cum-prison. Taking its name from an early Jules Verne novel, the intricate central piece of the exhibition at first looks a chaotic collection of junk – but is in fact a web of personal scraps and clippings in which the Brooklyn-based artist is trapped.

Salvaged objects from Zanisnik’s native Amsterdam are peppered with photographs of outmoded transportation with the artist strung puppet-like at the centre – he gave a performance from within the structure at the Ten Haaf Projects gallery exhibition launch last month. Along with the attention-grabbing main attraction there comes a collection of candid (or possible staged) personal photos, Capgras Syndrome True Indigo, showing his parents helping towards a previous show by the artist, and a section dedicated to venting spleen towards author Philip Roth following a recent spat. With all that going on it’s no wonder Zanisnik seems to feel a little tied up. Five Weeks in a Balloon is tethered at the Laurierstraat venue until 10th April.

Five Weeks in a Balloon,
Site-Specific Installation and Performance, 2013