Cerith Wyn Evans:
“Everyone’s gone to the movies, now we’re alone at last…”
14 April-22 May
2010
White Cube
Mason’s Yard
25-26 Mason’s
Yard
London SW1Y 6BU
This exhibition
is really fun. Wyn Evans has
created two installations in the White Cube that are meant to engage and
interact with the viewer.
In the ground
floor gallery as you walk in is 'C=O=N=S=T=E=L=L=A=T=I=O=N
(I call your image to mind)' a large polyphonic sound mobile made of circular
mirrored discs. The sound collage
that comes out of the mobiles was created by Wyn Evans using audio sources,
such as his own piano arrangements and field recordings gathered by the Lovell
radio telescope in Jordell Bank.
As you would expect a room full of mirrors at a White Cube opening is
very satisfying and exciting for the well-dressed crowd.
Openings are as much about looking at
other people as they are about looking at art. Different rules apply in gallery openings than on the
street, in regards to staring. At
openings you are allowed to stare at each other. We are all art in an opening. Art and people gazing.
Downstairs is
'S=U=P=E=R=S=T=R=U=C=T=U=R=E ('Trace me back to some loud, shallow, chill,
underlying motive's overspill…')' an installation of light columns that
reference the electricity sub-station that formerly stood on the sight of the
gallery. It consists of seven
columns that reach over five metres high and are built out of drums of tubular
lights. This artwork is a
test. It is like you are in the
crystal maze. The lights start off
and then over about 5 to 10 minutes they continue to heat up until it is
unbearable. My friend begged to
leave but we had to endure the challenge.
Plus it felt like we were in LA, the art elite bathed in a glowing white
light, removing their clothes.
Sometimes art is about endurance.
Cerith Wyn Evans
lives and works in London.
LARRY CLARK
What do you do for fun?
Simon Lee Gallery
‘What do you do for fun?’ Shoot up amphetamines,
drink 40s, have underage sex, get in fights, bum around? Well Larry Clark does, or did, his
subjects definitely do. The current show at Simon Lee Gallery, ‘What Do
You Do For Fun?’ is an exhibition of new collages and old works, from the late
eighties to the early nineties, of the renowned American photographer and
filmmaker, Larry Clark. Stepping off the smart streets of Mayfair you are
confronted with a girl’s genitalia as she bends forward, you are then
encouraged to peep up the boxer shorts of a teenage boy, his genitals quickly
coming into view. These two black and white photographs flank newspaper
cuttings detailing murder cases and underage sex offences. In the centre
of the work is a colour spread from a teen magazine, picturing a photo-shoot of
a 90s teen star, his abs subtly revealed by his crop-top riding high, as he
lifts his arm to take hold of the branch above his head. This 1991
collage is titled The Perfect Childhood. Themes of sex, drugs, and
violence prevail throughout the exhibition, and dominate Larry Clark’s work, as
does his ability to shock. The ‘What Do You Do For Fun?’ exhibition
succeeds from Clark’s recent retrospective Kiss the Past Hello at the
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which opened in October 2010.[1] This exhibition stirred the usual controversy
excited by Clark’s photographs, causing Paris’ mayor to ban under-18s from the
exhibition, to which Clark exclaimed: “They tried to censor me- and in France!”[2]
Clark began photographing in 1963, whilst he was in
his twenties, documenting the everyday life of himself and his peers. His
first book, Tulsa, published in 1971, is a visual diary of the
overlooked youth culture of Clark’s Oklahoma hometown, centred on injecting drugs
and having sex. Clark is an insider of outsiders. The
autobiographical reflection inherent within his work characterises him as a
pioneer of ‘intimate’ photography, a genre enriched by the photography of Nan
Goldin and Ryan McKinley. Clark’s subsequent books – Teenage Lust
(1983), 1992 (1992) and The Perfect Childhood (1993) – continue
to depict, expose and revere the cult of youth. Clark’s grainy black and
white photographs embody the snapshot aesthetic of domestic photography and
family photos, in order to communicate the intimacy of the relationship between
himself and his subject. However by the time Teenage Lust was published,
he was approaching his thirties, causing people to question his practice as
voyeuristic and perverted. Clark was no longer photographing his peers,
but a younger generation, with whom he associated with and socialised.[3] Clark
justifies his photography through embedding himself within the social groups
that he documents. He explains
that due to the benefits of time, money, and experience, he was able to
photograph what his subjects could not have, and what he wished he had when he
was younger.
Clark maintains his role as photographer as insider.[4]
Clark works within a documentary style, producing
uninterrupted confessional records of intimate social relationships.
Clark subverts the traditional function of documentary photography, by
depicting his peers or a social class that he has emerged himself within. Documentary photography commonly
functions as a reformist tool, inciting political responsibility through the
exposure of the realities of people down (Hine, Lange), or sometimes up
(Weegee) the social scale.[5] Clark
is aware of the moral purpose of his work, to divulge the realities of youth
and drug culture, exposing the viewer to the adversities that exist behind the
neat, Disney façade of teenage life[6],
but his photographs are not legitimised by a call for reform or government aid,
as with pre-war documentary photography. Instead, Clark’s license to look
and to capture, is legitimised by the presence of the camera and our
identification with the subject.[7] Clark
attempts to naturalise the photographic transaction by establishing a
relationship between the photographer and subject. By recalling the aesthetics of personal snapshots, Clark
emphasises the intimacy between himself and who he is photographing,
determining the taking of the photograph as an equal exchange between friends.[8]
The exchange between the insider photographer and
their intimate subject is not the usual exchange associated with photography,
usually in the promise of political reform or a print. Instead the photograph is taken in
exchange for recognition, the gaze of others confirming the subject.[9] Clark’s
photographs are not family snapshots, they do not end up in private photo
albums; instead they end up on gallery walls and in impeccably printed art
books, where the person in the photograph will be continuously examined.
The intimate relationship between photographer and
subject established in Clark’s images, relegitimises the practice of social
documentary, whilst discarding its association with social surveillance.
However, in accepting that these photographs are not voyeuristic because they
are images made among friends, ignores the history of photography and the
established language of photography inherently structured by the power
relations existing between photographer and subject. The issue of who is
in control of the subject’s representation is an essential problematic legacy
of photography. These issues are apparent in Clarks’ works with the
controversy they cause over the difference in age between himself and his
subjects. We find it hard to disassociate from the connotations of an
older man taking a photograph of a younger, semi-clothed boy, as we are so
conditioned to place the image within narratives of pedophilia and
perversion. Therefore intimate photography, like all photography, remains
within the realm of surveillance. The photographer as insider continues
to allow us greater access to the subject and the photographer’s looking
authorizes our own voyeurism.[10]
Larry Clark’s new exhibition addresses the mass
media’s sexualisation of teenagers by placing magazine pin-ups of teen idols
alongside pornographic images, as in The
Perfect Childhood, 1991. He is addressing the eroticisation of
subjects inherent in popular culture, by comparing magazine photographs with
his overtly erotic, and voyeuristic images. The controversy and uneasiness around Clark’s photographs
alert us to the power transaction that occurs between subject and photographer
in his own work, as well as popular imagery. Untitled (Matt Dillon),
1990, displays screen grabs of Matt Dillon alongside a newspaper article
detailing the hidden phenomenon of teenage deaths caused by auto-erotic
asphyxiation. Clark displays the overt sexualisation of teens, connecting
it with private teenage sexuality, drawing a comparison and in Clark’s own
words challenging “the Hollywood lie about teenagers.”[11]
Even though Clark’s books are mainly banned in
the USA and are rare and expensive, it is the influence of the look of his
photographs, which has widely dispersed into our culture, filling fashion
magazines and advertising campaigns.[12] The
ordinariness and amateur qualities of Clark’s photographs allow the viewer to
easily engage with these images, encouraging the viewer to project their own
intimacies onto the familiar snapshot composition. Yet they remain
particular to Clark’s life, as they are so personal. They are private disclosures, which became public spectacles. However, the commercial success of
Clark’s images and their mass dissemination, inevitably compromise their
intimacy.[13]
In the 1990s, intimate photography became a reference
point for fashion photographers, focused on injecting a harsh realism into
fashion photography. The style and content of Clark’s images became the
basis of the ‘heroin chic’ look that prevailed in subversive fashion
culture. Lifestyle magazines, such as i-D and The Face, based in London
and at the forefront of ‘grunge’ style, mimicked homemade zines of punk culture
and a DIY aesthetic, to break away from the glossy editorial fashion magazines
that dominated in the 1980s. The photography of Corrine Day and Juergen
Teller embodies the snapshot aesthetic inspired by books such as Larry Clark’s Tulsa
and Teenage Lust, and Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
They used 35 mm cameras, harsh flash, domestic gritty settings, haphazard
cropping and younger, thinner models, with whom the photographer actively
engaged, to produce intimate, un-staged snapshots, seemingly taken among
friends. In the theme of Clark they celebrate youth culture, packaging it
into images and inciting desire in the viewer, persuading them to evoke the
‘grunge’ lifestyle. In referencing art photography and selling a
lifestyle over a product, these magazines attempted to take an anti-commercial
stance in opposition to advertising and editorial fashion photography.[14]
The snapshot aesthetic and practice of intimate
photography has seeped into everyday culture and largely dictates how we take
photographs. The natural lighting,
the excessive cropping and the grainy qualities of Clark’s photographs create
an aesthetic that enhances their status as private divulgences. The
amateur aesthetic makes them an appropriate reference point for amateur
snappers. The exhibitionism we encounter through Clark’s casual representation
and exposure of his private life for a public audience, is now a constant
impulse in contemporary life, with the abundance of intimate snapshots that
circulate on the Internet, and social networking sites. We are constantly
under the gaze of CCTV cameras and mobile phone cameras, manifesting in a
constant state of exhibitionism.
The plenitude of intimate photography in mass culture
could signal the work of Clark becoming obsolete. However the fact that
Clark’s retrospective caused the mayor of Paris to ban under-18s is
representative of Clark’s reigning ability to create controversy, and shock his
viewers. As Clark recognises, his “work is still dangerous after
all.” The Simon Lee gallery exhibition displays a recent work from Clark;
I want a baby before u die, 2010. This is a large collage of
photographs, newspaper cuttings, and collected objects, and is an impacting as
any of his earlier work. It has a feel of a shrine, perhaps Clark’s
retrospection on his work, or an accumulative celebration of his subjects and
themes. The collage has it all: the tattoo ‘Larry’ under a women’s pubic
hair, a dirty tissue, a sexy Lindsey Lohan magazine spread, snapshots of a
teenage couple having sex, topless shots of young boys and newspaper accounts
of violent deaths, all injected with a large dose of unselfconscious scatology
and erotic obscenity.
[1] Simon Lee
Gallery Press Release
[2] Ryan
Gilby “Larry Clark: teenage rampage,” The Guardian, February 13, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/feb/13/larry-clark-photography-teenage-rampage.
[3] Charlotte Cotton, “Intimate Life,”
in The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Charlotte Cotton. (London: Thames
and Hudson, 2009), 143-4.
[4] Gilby, “Larry Clark”.
[5] Kotz, Liz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,”
in The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire, ed. Deborah
Bright (New York: Routledge, 1999), 208.
[6] Gilby, “Larry Clark”.
[7] Kotz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,” 208.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 209.
[10] Kotz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,” 208.
[11] Gilby, “Larry Clark”.
[12] Kotz, “Aesthetics of Intimacy,” 206.
[13] Ibid.,
207.
[14] Cotton, “Intimate Life,” 144-5
Barbara Kruger
The Globe Shrinks
Spruth Magers, 10-12 Francis Street (off Howick Place), London SW1P 1QU.
All violence is the illustration of a pathetic stereotype.
You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the
skin of other men.
God sends the meat and the devil cooks.
Your body is a battleground.
“So true!” is normally the exclamation expounding on
everyone’s lips as they are hit with the punchy, resounding irony of a Barbara
Kruger collage. They are powerful
graphic divulgences in black, red and white. Mimicking advertisements, mocking
their “savvy” drawl and sophisticated Madison Avenue canniness, in their
triumphant effort in turning us into unfulfilled desirous clogs in the
never-ending mechanism of consumerism.
Yeah, Kruger started in the system, don’t we all, working at
a Conde Naste publication. But we
can all make it out- she is now a hard-hitting, successful conceptual artist,
with a solo exhibition at Spruth Magers.
Her main body of work is characterised by found black and white
photographs, emblazoned with white letters (Futura Bold
Oblique or Helvetica
Ultra Condensed), slammed onto red backgrounds. She satirises the system through
appropriating images, and parodies through collaging unsettling combinations of
text and image.
Her latest exhibition, the one I am advertising here, is
called The Globe Shrinks. It’s a four channel video installation,
with four large projections, which keep you moving and engaged, unlike some
video art. The Globe Shrinks is the
moving version of her collages, fat capital-letter statements, such as BLAME
IT, infiltrate caricature-filled vignettes. Like the collages, they satirise and parody
stereotypes. Yet, this latest work
is not just a repetition on old themes, it is a successful, transgressive
development on a shrewd and acute concept.
A word of warning, on approaching the exhibition, you are
led down a dark corridor. As I
walked down, blind in a cavernous space, I was reminded how much I hated
exhibitions that required this much trust from you. I let this thought known to the friend I was with,
exclaiming, “I hate this, I have hated this sort of thing since I was a kid, I
am turning back, I’m turning back.”
Towards the end of this soliloquy, a bright light illuminated the space,
revealing the entrance to a room full of people, standing in silence for the
video to begin. I realised that
only a thin wall had been separating them from me as I clambered down the dark
corridor, shouting that I wanted to go home, like a frightened child at The
London Dungeon. So if you get
nervous, just keep walking and keep quiet. Hold in that fear, and trust art. Once safely in the exhibition space, my friend and I stood
in awe of the four flashing screens, doing 360 turns, keeping up with the
fast-moving, sharp-witted scenes.
My friend soon whispered, “This is the best exhibition I have ever been
too.” I nodded, yes it is, I thought, completely overwhelmed, and so probably partial
to a bit of exaggerating. It is
one of the best exhibitions I have been to though. What’s not to love? Its like
watching a four ring circus hosted by Larry Davis, in the middle of Tottenham
court road, surrounded by gleaming shops selling flickering, glinting TVs. Lets hope consumerism continues so
Kruger keeps producing work.
Cerith Wyn Evans:
“Everyone’s gone to the movies, now we’re alone at last…”
14 April-22 May
2010
White Cube
Mason’s Yard
25-26 Mason’s
Yard
London SW1Y 6BU
This exhibition
is really fun. Wyn Evans has
created two installations in the White Cube that are meant to engage and
interact with the viewer.
In the ground
floor gallery as you walk in is 'C=O=N=S=T=E=L=L=A=T=I=O=N
(I call your image to mind)' a large polyphonic sound mobile made of circular
mirrored discs. The sound collage
that comes out of the mobiles was created by Wyn Evans using audio sources,
such as his own piano arrangements and field recordings gathered by the Lovell
radio telescope in Jordell Bank.
As you would expect a room full of mirrors at a White Cube opening is
very satisfying and exciting for the well-dressed crowd.
Openings are as much about looking at
other people as they are about looking at art. Different rules apply in gallery openings than on the
street, in regards to staring. At
openings you are allowed to stare at each other. We are all art in an opening. Art and people gazing.
Downstairs is
'S=U=P=E=R=S=T=R=U=C=T=U=R=E ('Trace me back to some loud, shallow, chill,
underlying motive's overspill…')' an installation of light columns that
reference the electricity sub-station that formerly stood on the sight of the
gallery. It consists of seven
columns that reach over five metres high and are built out of drums of tubular
lights. This artwork is a
test. It is like you are in the
crystal maze. The lights start off
and then over about 5 to 10 minutes they continue to heat up until it is
unbearable. My friend begged to
leave but we had to endure the challenge.
Plus it felt like we were in LA, the art elite bathed in a glowing white
light, removing their clothes.
Sometimes art is about endurance.
Cerith Wyn Evans
lives and works in London.
Backstage at the BeyondBackstage at the Beyond was an exhibition
held at the end of March in the Stoke Newington Library Gallery, off Church
Street. It was organised by the a
newly formed collective called S P A C E C R A F T, made up of a group of
Central Saint Martins fine art students who all graduated in 2009.
S P A
C E C R A F T is made up of Polly Brown, Sophie Von Cundale, James Drew, Chris Newlove Horton, Jack Lewis, and
Lorie Jo Trainor Buckingham.
Whilst at Central Saint Martins
they were part of a pathway called 4D, which specialises in conceptual
art. They clarify 4Dness as the
idea of ‘concept before media’.
The idea or concept is chosen by the artist before they choose the
medium that they will work in. The material is chosen on the basis of it being
the best tool to convey the artist’s idea and what they want the artwork to
achieve or say. This approach
defies traditional notions of the art-making process. It works in reverse to the method of painting, where the
material is the point of departure.
The artists of S P A C E C R A F T start with the concept and then finish
with the material. Their artwork
plays with the order of an art-making process. In their Stoke Newington
exhibition the audience is projected into the space of the backstage, or the
beyond, words that suggest we are in the beginning of the creative process, or
within the creative process. Therefore S P A C E C R A F T has projected the
viewer in to the creative process where their work exists.
Forming a collective, like S P A C
E C R A F T after art school seems like a very productive way to work, especially
after leaving an environment where you are supported by tutors and structured
by seminars. S P A C E C R A F T exhibit together, support each other and do
critiques with each other.
They are currently looking for a
new venue for the next exhibition.
They are also planning for their future events to include pop-up
restaurants, music gigs and club nights, so watch this S P A C E C R A F T.
