Visual Art
Review
SCULPTURE. INSTALLATION. FILM PALE CARNAGE: GROUP SHOW DCA, Dundee, until Sun 2 Sep 0000
Pale Carnage takes its title from Ezra Pound’s poem ‘April’, written in 1915. Michael Bracewell’s catalogue essay places Pound as the product of an Axial Age, ‘a time of great transition; of cosmic cynicism . . . of spiritual restlessness and the search for new Gods‘. The exhibition puts forward our own queasy era of dissolution, expressed through the work of some 12 contemporary artists, as belonging to a similar moment. This means declaring itself from the outset as being prepared to tackle big themes. Modernism, fascism, sadism, voyeurism, destruction - an ambitious undertaking, to shoehorn all these unruly ideas into a pair of medium-sized galleries. What comes across is a mood, a jaded elegance dressed up for the most part in slinky, shiny, black patent leather finery. This is no season of summery colours, which are best left to beautify the furnishings of our parents’ dinner parties. While we sneer at their bourgeois comforts, though, another tyranny of good taste begins to exert itself over
84 THE LIST if) Jiil~ 7 Aug 200/
This Drinking Alone by Tom Burr
us wannabe Axial seers. In the meticulous arrangements of ‘cool’ minimal sculpture, the monochrome and the black gloss, such a carefully choreographed parade can itself settle into a style just as readily, only now overly eager to observe the etiquette of a more sceptical milieu.
The display becomes compulsive where the show forgets its manners. Aida Ruilova’s DVD performance ‘Beat and Perv’, a jarringly-edited, lurid crash of repetition, pounds the viewer into dumb supplication. Another highlight is the inspired pairing of two Araki photographs with Tom Burr’s collapsed structures. Burr’s boards and hinges, ‘This Drinking Alone (The Deep Intoxication Series)’ rests with a few sorry props of emptied bottles and torn fabric. They lie prostrate before the bondage scenes, appearing shamefacedly complicit in their own humiliation.
The catalogue includes an extended ‘picture essay’ collecting together around 170 images, persuasively arguing the case for history repeating itself: Abu Ghraib atrocities, a dapper Wyndham Lewis, Crowley scowling and Throbbing Gristle at ease in the Death Factory. Who could ever doubt the gravity of the task here, the quest for a truthful expression of the contradictions of our age. (Ben Robinson)
SCULPTURE AND PRINT KATJA STRUNZ: LAZY CORNER AND THE SUICIDE WALLS
The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until 4 Aug .0
The best avoided gallery text informs the ‘reader' of Berlin-based Katja Strunz' work that her sCqutures and prints should be understood as 'room language or 'neologistic sentences. The term 'coals to Manchester' comes to mind. Black square modernism makes a return to Glasgow. with new misunderstood versions of lessons that American minimalism learnt from High European Modernism.
Strunz' cuboid sculptures treat the wall as a picture plane. with Malevich- is/i forms that have been punched into the third dimension cascading down the surface. or huddled up like well- behaved universals in neat groups. The materials that are used fluctuate between exposing their own brute reality or are covered in black and white paint. A few of the bashed boxes are covered in rust. creating an intentionally trite sense of nostalgia. and forcing us to read a history into these dead shapes.
Are these leftovers. bits of Modernist junk that have been left out in the cold and rain? Although the sculptures seem theoretically weak. it is interesting that the viewer is forced to project such silly narratives at the work. But Stunz' sense of humour is not enough to hold this together. The work comes across like an undigested hotchpotch of learning and influences: it looks serious but is just a bit of fun. really. (Alexander Kennedy)
SCULPTURE. PAINTING. PHOTOGRAPHY AND DRAWING
Gregor Wright
TENDER SCENE - GROUP SHOW
The Changing Room, Stirling, until 11 Aug 00.
Maybe it's the red and white gaffer-taped maze of scaffolding in the Victorian shepping arcade that you have to weave in and out of on yOLir way to The Changing Room. but there's a slightly kooky heller-skelter sense of freak show funhouse at group exhibition Tender Scene — albeit in a rather cleverly understated way. if that is. of course. possible. The first piece you meet once you climb up the stairs to the gallery is one of Alex Pollard's fantastical black paintings. a surreal gothic dreamscape made up of distorted cosmetics. Gregor Wright's sculpture Sitting in the middle of the gallery soon grabs yOLir attention. and sWItches Pollard's delicate inkiness with a strangely cartoonish sculpture made of wood and Styrofoam -~ random limbs seemingly pushing their way out of their confines.
In the back gallery. you have to walk across an optically illusive black and white striped floor in order to see Clare Stephenson's drawings of ‘eXistential drag queens that look as if they have been torn from the pages of a 19th century pantomime playbill. And across from them is a second painting by Pollard. dramatically set against a bright red wall. The third of his j_)aintings. entitled ‘Jester'. and against a guickening skein of tiny black and white zig/ags gives a real sense of dark sideshow revelry. Finally. Fiona Jardine's photographs sit (jiiietly
u in the corner. but are also the most ominous. Her two arcane figures in ciiltish garb draw you in. and you know you shouldn't look, but you just can't help
*1. yourself. (Claire Mitchell)