26 November 2011 to 21 January 2012

©Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio

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EXHIBITION ESSAY

 

Elfriede Dreyer, Pretoria, November 2011

 

In an interview with Gabriel Rockhill, the well-known French philosopher Jacques Rancière (2004:49-50) states that: "It is possible, from any given point, to try and reconstruct the conceptual network ... that causes a painting or a piece of music to make an impression ... . Statements or forms of expression undoubtedly depend on historically constituted systems of possibilities that determine forms of visibility or criteria of evaluation  ... . In this way the aesthetic regime of art ... is a system of possibilities that is historically constituted but ... at a given point in time, several regimes coexist and intermingle in the works themselves."

The artworks that form part of Dimension reflect such intermingling and simultaneous  coexistence of different 'regimes' or dimensions, maybe of an aesthetic, historical or social  kind. It could mean the impact of a personal experience; a  conceptual turn in the development of the artist's thinking or use of materials; or the archaeology of levels of meaning 'hidden' in the artwork, waiting to be revealed. As Rancière (2007:116) maintains, the experiences of the audience or the spectator are linked to the logic of the artwork, or to the so-called representation, so that these dimensions can be detected in the way the work has been coded through the use of materials; the position of objects and figures; colour; composition; titles; the public statement of the artist; and some other factors used by the artist to 'code' the work. Yet, such blend of dimensions in artworks extend beyond the mere physicality of the work, much further than its paints, paper, stone or found materials. These are hidden dimensions that are not immediately visible or cannot be perceived straight away.

In varying degrees the success and 'fame' tasted by the three exhibiting artists have not come without a certain degree of angst and introspection. As artists grow and mature in outlook and technical brilliance, another dimension kicks in that does not necessarily fall within the frame of representation and making. Produced during a recent sabbatical in Berlin and Krakow, the works of Wayne Barker on this exhibition come after a major 'mid career' exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2011 and South African representation at the Venice Biennale in 2010. These events created  some significant introspection after 25 years of art making, questioning his work and society and how these have informed his art production. In ongoing way the artist's oeuvre has shown an acute awareness of the social dimension and the Other, perceived as the world out there and its artifice, ready for the taking and use. When Duchamp appropriated and displaced found objects such as a bicycle wheel and a urinal, it was within an artmaking dimension of the parlêtre (the speaking being) in which the names of images and objects he utilised constituted a defining part in the evocation of meanings and the articulation of his concepts. His sense of aesthetics was a kind of prostitution, a ruthless taking  that  does not go to the momentous but remains captive in the moment. Barker states that in Berlin he painted the prostitutes in the same street that George Gross had made many of his drawings and drawings; thus a symbolic act of wanton prostituting and simulation that confirms the artist's position of being at home in the world.

Similarly, Maria van Rooyen in her artist's statement says: "As an artist I am trying to understand the fabric of the society we live in. It is the traces that I focus on, traces of places visited or maybe traces of the past.  The technique of constructing the drawings from layers of rubbings made from various coins is used to evoke not only the exoticism of faraway spaces but also the significance of commerce in the construction of place and transformation of location and in the creation – and the alleviation – of misery and suffering." Her layering of different realities and memories turns into an archival deposit of experiences and encounters that set up a referential  system that continuously resurfaces in the artist's work. Yet it is the sensibility that is always different in every work, denoting her search for meaning.

Hovering between extremes, Angus Taylor's expressive heads in soil and stone are seated between the boundaries of mortality - dust to dust - and the intransience of stone; fly-by-night and eminence; hegemony and precariousness. Fragmented from the body, the heads are on an edge, facing an unknown, another dimension or a decision; yet it is a dimension that is not known by the spectator, only implicitly sensed. It is a dimension that we as human beings share and understand intuitively so that his figures' facing of the unknown becomes the spectator's dive into consciousness. Taylor creates tension in all his figurative work that is enhanced by the placing figures in relation to one another, often in pairs and groups, but also in the deconstruction of the familiarities of the living body and revealing its hidden (but known) dimension of mortality. Reducing the body to soil and stone in works such as the series of  rammed earth heads creates immense strain in the (human) viewer being directly confronted with its own fragility and temporality.

 

These choices in subject matter and material are not about a morbid obsession with mortality but, once again, about reflecting on what, who and where the artist is finding himself as human being. And it is a position and an awareness brimming with positive energy, evident in the light piercing and emanating from the solid stone work that speaks about the disentanglement from hegemony and control as well as of the power of the imagination, both providing a positive and uplifting air to the work by suggesting a sense of hope. Such attempts at trying to make sense of the world - with reference to identity and processes - are poetically described by the celebrated author Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) as follows: "The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? ... The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us."

 

What are the artists choosing - weight or lightness? Fame, truthfulness, silence? or appropriation? It is about desire in the end. But desire for what? The metaphysical dimension of desire in the artmaking process, as well as in the consumption thereof, can never be fully grasped. It is a desire that imposes presence, and often remains invisible. Rancière (2007:121)  suggests that when the artwork (or the artist for that matter) becomes representable or understood, its representative system is ruined. It is the "underdetermination" or the mystery surrounding the work and its mode of material presentation that constitutes the aura and specificity of so-called 'art' (Rancière 2007:121). The desire for meaning - and for taking full possession of all the dimensions of the artwork in its organic totality - destroys its symbolic order. The aura should remain.

 

Sources quoted

Rancière, J. 2004. The politics of aesthetics, translated with an introduction by G Rockhill. London/New York: continuum.

Rancière, J. 2007. The future of the image, translated by G Elliot. London/New York: Verso.

Rancière, J. 2009. Aesthetics and its discontents, translated by S Corcoran. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press.

Angus Taylor, Entangled Heads, backward and forward, 2011

 Wayne Barker, Woman in Berlin, 2011

Maria van Rooyen, The new crossing, 2011