There’s something about the creative act, the endeavour of making work, work we call art that is predicated on the possibility of failure. It is the possibility of failure, and ensuing vulnerability that are key components in Devlin’s practice. In these films he sets up a series of challenges to tackle the paradoxical moment that defines a decision. He draws direct attention to the thin cusp between an either/or possibility and we could identify it as a split second of stasis. For a work to be worth-while, whether it’s conceptual or actual, to be worth doing there’s the risk that it may not work out as planned, the plan itself proves unfeasible, or other unpredictable elements thwart an expected outcome.

In another work the dialogue continues this time it’s a simultaneous duality of internal thought processes, we see two Devlins side by side drinking coffee defining an idea of art’s ideality, its absurdity and in frustration the reaction, dousing with water, another splash and the dream dissolves.

In Window Tate we see the artist sitting in a room with a window behind him. Our view through the window is of the slope down into Tate Modern with the Frida Kahlo banners hanging above the entrance. And again the gentle play on artistic projection sets us following Devlin whose figure we see through the window approach the entrance. We watch while the action takes place behind his seated figure, he remains sitting and behind this image walks purposefully down the ramp to the entrance as if recessed in his own mind the thought seen simultaneously with the action. Then as with a blink, the name on the banner changes for a second or less to Daniel Devlin before returning to Kahlo as he himself turns to walk back up the ramp, back to and the through the window

Maybe when Daniel Devlin was planning his re-enactment of Bas Jan Ader’s Fall at the Serpentine as when we see him riding his bike along the path beside the lake past some passers-by he does the unexpected and continues his ride by steering the bike straight into the lake –for a split second of decision making he did not know what would happen. At the moment of confrontation, or rather just before it, is there a way out and for how long is the option available to turn back and say it doesn’t work, I can’t do this, I can’t follow this act through and to accept instead the disappointment of failure. The instinctive reaction of avoidance is subverted by an act that is both comical and ridiculous.

There is a more complex participation in the possibility of failure in this work, the recreation of Ader’s Fall in Amsterdam and in the conversation of art and its objects. There is a deliberate recognition of the age old paradox between an ideal and its expression, at each moment of a possible high point or the exhilaration of heightened sensibility at that moment the inevitability of failure kicks in, here the comic but salutary dousing, either immersion, falling in, or simply having a bucket of water chucked in your face.