Visual Art
www.list.co.uk/visualart
‘I WANT TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO BURN MORE AND MORE’ Hitlist THE BEST EXHIBITIONS *
✽✽ The Creative World of Alan Davie Highly recommended, vast retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s best -loved visual artists. Dovecot, Edinburgh, until Sat 26 Sep. ✽✽ Cerith Wyn Evans with Throbbing Gristle: A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N This collaboration between sculptor Evans and the pioneering musicians captivates and liberates in equal measure. See review, page 89. Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Sep. ✽✽ Lili Reynaud-Dewar: Power Structures, Rituals & Sexuality of the European Short-hand Typists French artist Reynaud-Dewar explores social structures through the lost profession of shorthand typists. Reviewed next issue. Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 3 Oct. ✽✽ Henry Coombes: The Bedfords Coombes’ film portrait of Victorian painter Sir Edward Landseer features a cameo from writer Alasdair Gray and music from Cleveland Watkiss. Reviewed next issue. Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Fri 9 Oct. ✽✽ Agnes Martin The ‘abstract expressionism’ of Martin’s work easily creates the sense ‘of beauty and freedom’ that the artist has always aimed for. See review, page 89. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, until Sun 8 Nov. ✽✽ Dani Marti: Insideout The Barcelona-born artist explores gay men’s health and sexuality through sound, video and sculptural installations. Sh(out) Space, Glasgow, Fri 11 Sep–Sat 10 Oct. ✽✽ Thomas Hirschhorn: It’s Burning Everywhere DCA scores a major coup with the first ever solo show in the UK by the renowned Swiss artist. See preview, left. Dundee Contemporary Arts, Sat 19 Sep- Sun 29 Nov.
Substitution 2 (The Unforgettable)
Fire sermon With his first UK show Thomas Hirschhorn has provided Dundee Contemporary Arts with its most eye-catching exhibition to date, as Neil Cooper discovers
‘It’s burning everywhere / It’s burning far away / It’s burning in my neighbourhood / It’s burning in the “conflict zone” / my house is burning / I am
burning myself / there is no escape from it / because I am the “conflict zone”.’
The apocalyptic monologue that opened Godspeed You Black Emperor’s debut album, which so epitomised the end of the 20th century, provides the visceral opening statement for Thomas Hirschhorn’s first ever solo UK show in a public space, It’s Burning Everywhere. This major coup for the DCA is arguably the most eye- catching exhibition in the gallery’s decade-long history, featuring as it does the trademark bomb-site detritus of the Swiss-born iconoclast’s oeuvre – mannequins, strip lights, tin foil, cardboard, parcel tape and found images. Hirschhorn may not have been born in flames, but he sounds spectacularly scorched from their blast. ‘The fire burns everywhere,’ he says. ‘I want to give form to the point that the fire is in me. I am burning, not only from what touches me from the “outside” but I am also burning from the “inside”. Every day I open myself more to the world, and I want to have the courage to burn more and more. This is the “conflict zone” in myself, which grows. There is no escape.’ Also on show are Hirschhorn’s ‘Substitution 2 (The Unforgettable)’ and his ‘Ur-Collage’ series. While explicit in their juxtapositions of the airbrushed gloss of found fashion images set against warts-and-all frontline scenes of war-zone atrocity, they’re similarly contrary.
‘They are artworks made with love,’ Hirschhorn insists, ‘not with anger, hate or resentment. Rage is not negative. I rage against myself, not against something. I can only
88 THE LIST 10–24 Sep 2009
do my work when I agree. But agreeing does not mean to approve everything in the world, with its chaos, its violence and its contradictions, with its fragility, its incommensurability, and with everything which stays non-resolved.’ Born in Bern in 1957, Hirschhorn spent the 1980s working as a radical graphic artist in Paris. He joined Grapus, a group of Communist graphic designers, who used the language of design to stage street-poster guerrilla interventions. Hirschhorn left to concentrate on installation and site-specific work in a manner that reinvented the environmental inclusiveness of Joseph Beuys. A major project this year was The Bjilmer Spinoza Festival, a three-month Amsterdam residency that was essentially a giant community happening. While such social engagement tallies with a rediscovery across all art forms of 1960s-inspired counter-cultural ideas, Hirschhorn’s outlook is defiantly personal.
‘I am not interested in what is currently happening, or what is currently “on view”,’ he says. ‘When you think there is re-engagement with some kind of art today, that’s fine. To me, total engagement is necessary for doing all kinds of art. Only with full engagement do I have a chance to reach the other with my work. But as an artist I have a mission,’ he adds. ‘My mission is to create a new term of art.’
Thomas Hirschhorn: It’s Burning Everywhere, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Sat 19 Sep–Sun 29 Nov. A series of accompanying lectures begins with Hirschhorn speaking on Thu 17 Sep, 11am. Booking is advised as places are limited.