Ad Infinitum
Part I
Heringa / Van Kalsbeek
Zoë Walker + Neil Bromwich
Alex Hudson
Ad Infinitum – Part 1
In recent years there has been much curatorial preoccupation with the reemergence of gothic sensibilities and dark iconography within contemporary visual art. Curators have grouped the work of a broad range of artists together and asked us to consider this tendency – with its deathly preoccupations- from various positions. Often it has been from the position in which the tendency denotes, curators postulate, an overall disillusion with positivist social aspirations. Or perhaps the tendency denotes the undeniable collapse of The Enlightenment for a second and arguably final time.
Many such overviews have focused on the surface; on the aesthetic and content similarities of contemporary practices, most notably the reemergence of a dark gothic aesthetic sensibility or obvious narrative content.
Ad Infinitum – Part I, is the first in a series of projects that aims to consider this current curatorial notion from another angle, as it were. Not from the angle of works that sit readily in the category of ‘the gothic’, but from the angle of works that do not. It certainly acknowledges the tendency towards a certain disillusion or non-engagement with humanistic meta-narratives and humanist models for technological and social progress in the work of contemporary artists. However, rather than examine this tendency in the context of a common aesthetic or content drive, it seeks to turn its gaze on the ways in which themes emerge in the work of disparate contemporary artists whose work shares little obvious similarity in practice, content, form or aesthetics.
What their work does share – and in some cases, this even extends to the visually dominant tendency towards the gothic- is a certain disillusion, questioning or even disinterest in the sense that entirely humanistic narratives of meaning remain sufficient or tenable to account for the contemporary condition. Their seemingly unrelated work nonetheless suggests that explanations for human existence and its purpose are insufficiently satisfied by philosophies or doctrines that contain their explications within the realm of the human, the rational, the scientific and technological.
In some cases these notions are underpinned by a questioning or even refusal of art as a vehicle for social or humanistic discourse. We may enounter a certain insistence that art and artistic practice can remain a platform for exploring or expressing urges that have little to do with rational, social understandings of existence and, instead, may yet remain an uncynical possibility for exploring the philosophical, cosmic, mystical or even unfashionably religious drives of sentient beings. If these works make use of a different visual language from the visually dominant (gothic) tendency, then it is also arguable that it might be because they eschew the dark nihilistic negativity of many such works within that trope in favour of developing a discourse that is without irony or cynicism: these are works by artists seeking to genuinely and seriously engage with ‘the bigger questions’ that have been systematically edited from popular cultural languages over the past four decades in favour of ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ irony and sarcasm.
In some cases, the clearly philosophical or even religious connotations and aspects of the work is evident. In others, the practice itself, if never religious or religiose, gives central place to the infinite possibilities of the uncontained universe; the artists abandoning the role of authors of objects, in favour of facilitating a highly directed gaze at the forces of unruly nature and the chaotic universe that exists on every level from the sub-molecular to the cosmic.
Yet, whether working with more traditional media and object-making, taking an interventionist documentary approach to fundamental questions about existence or assuming a practice in which the role of the artist is to work with existing chaos rather than to determine it, all of the included artists directly engage us with the notion that dominant narratives and explanations for existence in pure scientific or human terms remain insufficient to gratify our will to meaning.
Heringa/Van Kalsbeek
Heringa/Van Kalsbeek are an artist duo based in Amsterdam who make sculptural works in various media, the most prevalent of which is ceramics. Theirs works – abstract and non-figurative- often come about as they negotiate chaos and chance in the production process rather than working towards the notion of a preconceived art object constructed according to a pre-existing plan. Eschewing the notion of the artist as a genius creator, their process might better be described as that of facilitators; shaping here, allowing there. Although they are very conscious of looking to the natural world for forms and observable patterns within apparent chaos, they are deeply conscious of disciplining themselves in allowing a work to take shape in which the coincidental, accidental and circumstantial are allowed to exist in the resulting manifestation.
Works on both an intimate or large scale often have a sense of something universal about them. The artistic process results in works that allude to the sheer infinity of possibilities on a cosmic scale, both visually and through their production. And of course, they play complex games with the viewer. In the context of their Dutch heritage of Abstract Expressionism, are these works that are supposed to be understood as pure abstraction in an atheist world, or something that might talk of a spiritual reality in a time when it is no longer fashionable? In this refusal to offer a linear straightforward reading, there is also something of an underlying sense of artists, quite literally, questioning the role of art and the art object in a contemporary context. For example, their highly individual practice seems to throw into relief some of the ongoing debates about the role of the artist and art in contemporary society. On one level – like the advocates for a purely abstract and expressive art- they refuse to produce easily interpreted works. And yet, on another, the very nature of the works and the processes by which they have come into being cannot but help raise commonalities with art’s age old relationship with the spiritual and religious. Like very old paintings commissioned for a cathedral, these are work that cause the viewer to stop for a while and ponder the bigger picture. In this dichotomy, this tension as to which direction the viewer should proceed in order to make sense of the work, Herringa/Van Kalsbeek offer only minimal direction, perhaps reflecting the process of their practice itself. If art is to be a functional experience, then the viewer, rather existentially, needs to plot the path to understanding exactly what that function is, alone.
Liet Herringa and Maarten van Kalsbeek have shown extensively in both solo and group exhibitions. Their solo institutional shows include Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo; Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam; Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam; Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague and The Museum of Modern Art Arnhem. The have fulfilled a range of commissions for art in public spaces participated in over thirty group exhibitions including those at Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Ceramic Biennale Korea and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn.
Alex Hudson
Alex Hudson is a young British painter whose practice was developed at a time when he and his contemporary students were grappling to process momentous events occurring in the world around them. Growing out of seminal works that Hudson made from photographs of the ‘ground zero’ site in the aftermath of the World Trade Center’s destruction, he sought to make a concerted effort to approach the subject matter in a way that was neither naïve nor ironic. The work -and the subsequent body of works he has been producing since then- uses the language of quasi-representational painting of the last three decades. Yet, dark and brooding as they may be, there is something else going on within them. Any impression of ‘the gothic’ soon reveals itself to be somewhat misplaced. For, Hudson’s works attempt to engage with the contemporary psychological and spiritual landscape with a certain optimism; a desire to cast off skepticism and cynicism in the hope that some epiphany beyond mundane humanity might occur.
Using imagery that is uncannily similar to other movements in which the need for a new hope was essential – from British modernism in the Post World War II period to German visionary architectural drawings immediately following the apocalypse of the First World War- Hudson’s works similarly appropriate an almost religiose vernacular as churches appear or things that don’t really look like churches are equated with altars. Cynicism is cast off as the dark and depressive atmospheres that abound simultaneously offer painted light sources that might indicate some form of renewal or rebirth. At a time when it is far cooler to be pessimistic, cynical or, at the very least, to sit on the fence when any question of human destiny arises, Hudson is producing work that steadfastly indicates a desire –perhaps even a need- to believe in some possibility of hope or redemption. Like Bauhaus architects envisioning a new world that needed building in the aftermath of societal and psychological destruction, there is a certain fragility or perhaps even illogical denial in the visions that are offered up.
Alex Hudson graduated MA Fine Art, Painting, from The University of the Arts, London. Wimbledon College of Art in 2007. He was included in the 2008 Bloomberg New Contemporaries at The A Foundation, Liverpool. He has participated in a number of groups exhibitions including those at Leicester City Art Gallery, Leicester; Cafe Gallery Projects, London; The Nunnery, London and Artsway, Hampshire.
Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich
Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich have collaborated in making art for over six years. Their work is frequently noted for its playful touch and social interaction, often taking the form of games or sculptural works that seem to invite interaction from the viewer. Many of their works allude to or directly address existential issues at the interface of science and more traditional philosophical or religious thinking. This is very much the case in the works resulting from the project ‘Celestial Radio – How The Universe Sang Itself Into Being’. Originally conceived in 2004, it is a sprawling project that saw Walker & Bromwich convert a full-sized yacht into an artist’s rendition of a pirate radio station.
Entirely covered in glimmering mirror-ball tiles, the yacht was then moored off the English coast, exactly half way between a nuclear power station and one of the oldest churches in England. Over a period of weeks, the yacht functioned as a working radio station, broadcasting discussions that Walker & Bromwich recorded with a broad spectrum of individuals including scientists and religious and philosophical thinkers on the topics of the Unseen, the origins of the universe, spirituality and faith. This was interspersed with music programming that alluded to the hippie-dippy era of Radio Caroline and its pirate broadcasts to which the form of the work partly refers. If Walker & Bromwich’s work often wears its interest in things spiritual on its sleeve, it also always brings a kind of artistic discipline into play. Through this, the form and tone of the work –often with a certain laconic humour- is acutely self-aware of both their context in historical terms and conceptual practices that bring contemporary credibility through ensuring a specific personal divide between content and form.
Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich have frequently produced site-specific projects or projects at extant outdoor festivals rather than showing in traditional museual contexts. Such projects have been achieved at the invitation of such agencies and institutions such as Whitechapel Gallery, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed; Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Cornerhouse, Manchester and Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain, Languedoc-Roussillon, amongst numerous others. Projects approximating more traditional exhibitions of their work include solo projects at Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; 1000,000MPH Project Space, London; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, Berwick upon Tweed; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, amongst others. Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich are represented by Pippy Houdsworth, London.
© Ken Pratt 2009