A
conceptual criss-cross
February 9, 2006 Edition
1
By Miranthe
Staden-Garbett
Exhibition: Livewire - A master's
degree exhibition by Celia de Villiers
Venue:
Fried Contemporary Gallery
Date: Ends on
Saturday
No doubt there's much to say about the
conceptual cross-this, post-that content of Celia de
Villiers's master's degree exhibition, but I'm not going
to say it. What really separates this wheat from the
chaff is that it is immediately, intriguingly tangible.
Poetic, more than academic, from the fireballs to the
faux fur, it's all about having a sensuous experience.
Materials used include latex, mirrors, vinyl,
velvet, glass, copper wire, suede and salt. Colour and
texture create a vivid and tactile environment in which
various installations, sculptures, a video and digital
prints languish. I loved the vinyl cut-out entitled Red
Obsession, which at first glance resembles a homely red
plastic flower-patterned tablecloth, but then exposes
itself as a decorative array of penis-shaped cut-outs.
The video Transmania encapsulates in name and content
the Baroque, Gothic, hybrid, queer, post-human themes
and angles that underpin the project. The strange
"shoes" which appear in the video, prints and the
Vainglorious distaste installation, play a pivotal part
in the exhibition as a whole, evoking a theatrical
spirit of make-belief, masquerade and fantasy, all the
while looking like the lost glass slippers of
Cinderella's ugly sisters.
Delving down in the
subconscious, and loitering around the subliminal is, I
suspect, what De Villiers is up to. Her works did have
an uncanny effect on me, stirring up vague girlish
fancies, laced, though, with distinctly grown-up
insinuations.
Teetering between fairy tale and
lurid fetish, these works may appeal to both the
wide-eyed child and/or the hedonist in one. They trace
an evanescent milieu somewhere between fascination and
fixation, a threshold of exploration, experimentation
and imagination.
In short: sensual, strange,
seductive, salacious - if the shoe fits, see it.
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R/€ 
R/£ 
JSE Alsi 
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