Truter fleshes out her ideas

June 08, 2006 Edition 1

Miranthe Staden-Garbett

Underlying this body of work are some profound ideas. Carmen Truter explores the fascinating relationship between text, symbol and flesh and religious concepts of incarnation and sacrificial ritual. Yet these ideas struggle to surface visually, resulting in a schism between form and content. Taking a daring leap from the metaphysical into the visceral, Truter calls the tangible, physical manifestations of symbols out of their hollow cerebral shells. Be warned, you may want to postpone lunch, before and after viewing. Granted, the gross depictions of hearts and kidneys are not gratuitous.

There are sound and specific justifications for their representation. That they carry import, and that the artist, through meticulous ritualised processes, such as lacerating the kidney of lamb in a ritual of purification, may have reached some remarkable insights and possibly even a mystical-type experience, I don't debate. In fact, facing the physical aspects of this mortal coil, the blood and rot, has historically been a means of wrenching forth spiritual awareness. Francis Bacon, among others, waxed lyrical about the beauty of meat. I am suggesting, though, that the viewer may find him/herself excluded from these revelations and at a loss about how to negotiate meaning from these frightfully exposed and glistening organs.

But let me qualify by saying that Truter treats her subject in two distinct ways. The aforementioned emphasis on viscera, which makes the first impression due to its placement in the gallery, calls to mind an operation, with clinically resolved images of organs pierced with needles, sliced with knives and singed with smoke. These series of photographs seem more suited to a textbook, though the sequence of actions, and their purpose, is mystifying.

But other interpretations are more poetic, expressive of an entirely different aesthetic sensibility. Thus, a dialogue is struck up between the gross body and the mind's projections thereupon. The power of symbols is often suggestive, operating on subtle intuitive levels, so it is not surprising that when taking a less literal approach, the symbolic value is more forthcoming.

In Filtered Affections, the kidney, no longer a raw slab of meat, is layered in translucent slivers and contours. Dangling like a Christmas decoration or chrysalis, it becomes a precious, multi-dimensional object with enhanced metaphorical value. In this vein, the weaving of photographs into objects and over surfaces is thoroughly evocative of the processes whereby text, symbol and body merge. This fluid layering and meshing facilitates another kind of engagement with the body as symbol, and creates a beautiful visual metaphor for the ways in which spirit is inextricably entwined with flesh. With this possibly controversial exhibition, Fried Contemporary once again sticks its neck out, providing a much-needed space for unorthodox art and ideas.