Exploration of the 'self' without resolution

Pretoria News, February 15, 2008 Edition 1

Runette Kruger

Exhibition: Us + I

Venue: Fried Contemporary Gallery, Charles Street

Dates: Until March 1

In the exhibition Us + I, on show at the Fried Contemporary Gallery, a group of young artists have set about exploring notions relating to the self, in all its complexity, mystery and banality. The artists, each in their own way, highlight the multiplicity and contradiction inherent in the overarching spectre of "self".

A video loop by Daandrey Steyn mesmerises with the virtually imperceptibly slow mutation of a self-portrait into a vague, purposefully distorted biomorphic image and back into a face. At no point are either the recognisable image or the distortion static, athough they might appear to be - a reference to the unending deconstruction and reconstruction of identity. Steyn asks: "Do you still recognise yourself?" - a question harder to answer than at first glance.

The distorted images by Thelma Marais show the eerily manipulated figure of a child-woman in canvas after canvas.

The images are identical - (sharing a common "identity", if only externally), but present the hidden aspects of psychic turmoil which bubbles under the surface.

Relating these child-women to feminist artist Orlan's statement "I never have the skin of what I am", Marais explores the fertile if disconcerting gap between perceived and realised identity as it relates to gender.

Hanje Whitehead attempts to unravel the notion of a fixed, non-negotiable imposed feminine identity - the solipsistic repetition of swimming in circles. Rusted, constructed fish-forms with latex, breast-like attachments flail with repeated mechanical movements.

Conversely, Rebecca Emery's photographs attest to a conscious attempt at establishing, and capturing, a personal sense of identity, memory and space.

Emery uses the camera to freeze fleeting images of her life into a simulacrum of stability and permanence.

The landscapes blur into vestiges of environment. Photographs of hands, everyday objects and banal scenes, on the other hand, are crystal clear, and yet reveal as little of their inner meaning as the hazy landscapes.

The work of these promising artists represent the fragmentation of identity in an epoch where one's sense of self is under constant threat of being overrun by pre-packaged media imagery, social expectation, or plain confusion.