The art of the turn of the century (19th and 20th) was a peculiar mixture of hedonistic decadence, vital sybaritism with metaphysical undercurrents, religious syncretism captivated by Christian mysticism, pagan mysteries and esotericism. Those were the days of longing for new times, for a brave new world of social utopia. Now, a hundred years later, one has a feeling that this specific form of hedonism has returned once again. This time, however, it is not the aristocratic sophistication of decadents. Today’s colourful world of artistic messages makes use of techniques typical to popular culture, advertising and cheap gadgets found in supermarkets.
Galleries and public places are full of attractive, colourful objects that are enjoyable to look at, touch and which please the senses of those who take part of the world governed by the myth of limitless consumption.
Or perhaps this is ironic and devastating criticism of the ideology of consumption? Or maybe an affirmation of the global supermarket of ideas and products? A superficial fascination rejecting anything that is deep and profound and blaming it for the irrationalism responsible for all the bloody ideologies of domination? Or perhaps this is just an emanation of unfulfilled desires, which are always bound to find a way to go beyond one’s horizon? Aren’t these desires aimed at hiding and shouting down the overpowering feeling of boredom, which is secretly entering our world of apparent satisfaction. And thus, the benefactors of this civilisation who never used to struggle with the nature for survival, now have to complain about the emptiness of our culture. Or else – what is more likely in today’s world of continuous interpretation – just like a century ago all of the above is true, and their meanings mix and mingle with each other?
The latest exhibition presented at the Baltic Art Biennial in Szczecin showed a variety of art objects, both sensual and intriguing, unrestrained by any genre limits.
The organisers intended their visual attraction to be a mask drawing the attention of the viewers. The mask, however was hiding ambivalent attitudes ranging from optimistic affirmation to existential concern and social criticism. The artists were to create a contemporary version of Sybaris – a city symbolising sensual overindulgence, although most probably its sin was only sumptuousness.
“Pleasure” turns out to be a very suspicious word in the world of art, which in turn is not supposed to be “a comfortable armchair for the spirit”. The old scholastic categories dividing beings into intelligible ones (i.e. those that are capable of being understood through cognition) and sensible ones have never seemed to fit art. Works of art have always belonged to the spiritual, although no iconoclastic movement has managed to rid art of its desire for pure sensual coquetry.
It seems sometimes matters taking their course appear to ironically comment on the intentions of their authors. This seems to be the case with putting together in one room, which incidentally has the proportions of Duchamp’s Big Glass, Agata Zbylut’s object; a wedding dress a size much too big for her, with mechanical equipment from a “fitness studio” presented by Charlotte Petersen and Christian Q. Clausen. The latter is a parody of a device producing energy necessary for anybody who would like to mutually enjoy the freshness of a young girl’s body. The machines are run-down and their aesthetics intentionally leave much to be desired. They are accompanied by pictures and all of this produces an effect similar to dance macabre. Is it not possible to produce the energy of libido? The bride-groom’s allure of a baggy wedding dress is all in vain? Does she not live up to the expectations entrusted in her role? The exhibition is spread horizontally on the rectangle formed by the gallery. Can we not arrange the elements vertically? Has the Big Glass collapsed? The great Iconoclast ridiculing art should be glad.
However, the biggest metamorphosis has not occurred on the symbolic level. All the exhibits can be used just like the every day objects. It would be pointless, though, taking into consideration their respective functions these objects parody. In contrast, the Big Glass’s function was only visual “contemplation”. It could not possibly have been used otherwise. Almost 100 years after the Big Glass the Kantian ideal of altruistic aesthetic pleasure has found its contemporary shape in the form of a pointless activity, which only appears to be well grounded in its every day function. A “work of art”, even in its ironical form turned against itself, is no longer the object of our contemplation. Instead of contemplating objects chosen by the artist, we gaze at gadgets, the accessories of every day’s life. The artist seems to have made them become one with the reality. The only things that differentiate them from the environment are the visible attributes, such as e.g. the frame or the gallery.
The cosmos of monumental senses created by Jarosław Kozakiewicz refers, on one hand, to the old idea of a special relationship between macrocosm and microcosm, on the other, is an unintentional parody of land art. The canonical form of land art, e.g. known from Noguchy’s work, was about the poetry of elements, the natural forces. A literal large scale representation of all human body cavities is a “blasphemous” reversal of the old myth about the world created from the parts of the body of a killed god (Tiamat). The limits of our senses have become the boundaries of our world and it cannot be denied that we reach much further both in micro and macro scales. The photographs of distant galaxies rich in colours are only comparable with the pictures of molecular explosions occurring in accelerators. Nothing is so visually attractive while at the same time being completely “inartistic” as a clearly functional, architectural model. Their orgiastic presence in gallery’s space where they are so tightly packed is a real landscape revolution, a giant statue of the body and its limitlessness as it glorifies those places through which the inside communicates with the inside and it blurs the boundary between them.
In this year’s Baltic Biennial the works of art have for the first time been put side by side with the museum’s exhibits. The richly ornamented silver exhibits coexist with the silvery shining pulpits of Maurycy Gomulicki. On their smooth surfaces glimmer star-like structures, which (probably) refer to the vagina in their shape. Can the spikes around the vaginal centre resemble monstrances? Is it a bad joke at the religious iconography?
Or, perhaps, what is mocked here is the culture, which preferred its sybaritic desires to its spiritual obligations? Or is this just reminiscence? Mystic literature and poetry are full of erotic metaphors, as it is impossible to find emotions more overpowering in a human being than those connected with love. The lusciously ornamented linear structures have a long tradition in the history of art, which on the one hand go back to the almost archaic ornament practice speaking, through its rhythmical structures, about the universe; i.e. the world as formed by God’s will. From the other side, this tradition can also be seen in the avant-garde of the early 20th century and its conviction that what is abstract reflects spiritual forces. This “discovery” was in fact only a recollection, although even today it seems to be wisdom reserved only for the erudite rather than common knowledge.
Among the portraits showing the sombre expressions of the long dead magnates, generals, and princes presenting themselves in all the glory of their functions we find two suspicious looking pictures. Within the famous paintings of Madonna and St. Sebastian by Antonello da Messina, Olga Tobleruts has fitted the faces of the two well known actors starring in the hit of the century, “Titanic”, as a pair of lovers. Are they the heroes of the century, who witnessed millions becoming famous due to the medial inflation of their faces? More tears were shed at their fictitious story, which is incidentally based on a true story, than about the real suffering of the martyrs whose faces we shall never get to know. Or, perhaps, this should not be interpreted as sarcasm? Maybe the time has come for movie stars to personify Madonna in this world of a not very successful princess who tragically died during one of her love trips and was later called “the princess of people’s hearts”.
In a 17th century Italian painting a woman is pressed to the bosom an elderly man. This scene of Cymon and Pera, framed in gold, seems to be very distant. Even the very space of the museum suggests distance. This is a story only to be found in old and dusty reference books ... What we see next to the picture is a caption composed of plush letters smiling at the audience and saying ESTONIAN BEAUTY... Mare Tralla wants us to touch the plush alphabet, to pull the strings uncovering photographs of naked girls found on the covers of soft porn magazines. When we do pull, though, what we see are not the anatomic details of their slender bodies. Instead of the faces of porn-star we see fat, badly dressed women. Nobody knows who Cymon and Pera are any more. In Sybaris our “porn magazines” are the main points of reference. They co-exist well with other kitsch objects dating from both before and after the collapse of the Berlin wall. This functions in the sphere of aesthetic, which, as Zbigniew Herbert believed, could save us from communism. Is Artur Klinow developing it even further with his installation called ECOLOGICAL ART (with the warning: “do not light fire”)? His straw room seems to rustle with any movement. It is furnished with baroque straw furniture with a touch of the period’s horror vacui. The straw inhabitants seem to be ready to indulge in their bodily desires, but unfortunately they are separated from each other and (alas!) are made of straw. The material the people, the wardrobes, the flying butterflies, the mirrors, the armchairs and the pictures are made of is identical. Everything is equally ephemeral, just like straw, and can easily be destroyed, e.g. by a burning match. Incidentally, let us have a look at how the Belorussian artist fits in a Baltic exhibition. Is it, perhaps, just a gesture of good will or the result of good contacts between Belorussian and Polish artists? One look at our common history is enough to place the whole matter in the sphere of political correctness, the favourite game of intellectuals today. Actually, Minsk is no less Baltic than Leipzig, Berlin or Warsaw. In addition, Lithuania, Belorussia, and Poland used to be one country with one political structure, and the centre of Lithuania, a country which by no means could be described as land-locked, was in what is now Belorussia. It is only our old-fashioned mentality that makes us think about the Respublica, as the Polish-Lithuanian state was called, as something that belonged solely to the Poles.
In the next room the objects created by Thorsten Goldberg and Anja Jensen are placed close together. On the floor we find a short poem about the Chinese written by Goldberg. The letters are made of half eaten pieces of toast. The toast consumption executed by several junior school pupils. There are several variants of the text with different vowels; an unavoidable gibberish articulated by someone while eating and reciting at the same time. In fact we are laborious text-phagous creatures consuming media pulp of all kinds: billboards as well as electronic media. In this consumption craze we resemble Gogol’s coachman who reads all printed matter enjoying gobbling up letters, words, sentences, pages unable to worry whether or not he understands anything, because he did not understand anything at all. In fact, the excess of information, just like its deficiency, can lead to ignorance. What remains is the pleasure of consuming messages void of any hierarchy.
The colourful structure on the floor composed of toast has its parallel presented on the wall in a cycle of photographs taken by Jensen. The pictures show suitcases X-rayed at an airport check-in. Their colours are as appealing and tempting as the colours seen on the floor. We get an insight into the world of things, some bought, some transported, some used up, and some received as presents, worn by people. The abundance is staggering. The old saying by Diogenes comes to mind; “The world is full of things I do not need!”. Really? Can we really do without them? At the same time we notice a commentary of sorts to the modernistic poetics of the “metaphysical” depth of the smooth surface of a painting which seems to obstruct the view of transcendence. Today it is easy to imagine a picture showing a suitcase, its surface ... the mystery of what is deeper, down there, the mystery of its owner? Nothing to it, all you need to do is X-ray it.... What nice shaving foam...
The German artists, Gebert-Johne-Möcker, present in their objects and photographs a completely different vision. Their space is arranged with meticulously assembled pedestals that are finished with milky covers. Owing to the defused milky light passing through these aquarium or reliquary-like structures we are able to see some indistinct shapes inside. Next we see black and white photographs of thick foliage. We can barely make out a part of a jacket, a silhouette... an unfinished action or perhaps one that has never even started... we shall never learn what is inside, condemned to the sight of smooth and technologically perfect surfaces tempting with their silky and velvety smoothness...
Not far from there the gleaming light of equally enigmatic “sculptures” and “paintings” by Morten Straede can be seen. Some of them, classical in their modernistic composition, are made of metal elements, which contrast sharply with the soft “intestines” bulging out of the metal skeleton... Softness and hardness of steel, which sometimes was supposed to be a kind of frame for blurred objects seen in radiant or subdued light. Otherwise, it just reflected with its mirror-like black surface outside sources of light. All this reveals how much the modernistic syndrome of technological precision has flattered our senses. It only pretended to rid us of bodily and carnal pleasures in favour of the pure intellect incarnated in the rational process of construction.
In other pictures, e.g. the burning man, created by Kristaps Ģelzis, is ignorantly walking straight ahead in flames, acting in this video show, marching to the music, foolishly unaware of the fire burning on his shoulders. What is here, the illusion; the good sense of humour or the burning silhouette? The sisters, Anta and Dita Pence present the complex machinery of a “mobile cinema”, which can be used for projecting the images of characters taken from the world of cinematography onto the screen. The enormous size of the machine seems to be out of all proportion with its effect, even though the thing has a charming poetic feeling about it.
Finally, the machine of illusion created by Jouli J. Strauss and Philippa von Hilgers in order to investigate dreams. It can also turn everything into a dream as it has done so during the preparation for the exhibition. Right next to it there is an intervention piece barely visible; among the portraits in the style of Polish Sarmatism there is a mirror, all of which belong to the museum standing exhibition. The visitors having suddenly seen their reflection in the mirror become aware of their fleshly existence being surrounded by the carnal representations of the old pictures among which one can also see a painting by Lacan...
A game of illusion, abundance, ostentatious charm of matter and structure... “Matrix” seems to be a symbol of the turn of the century. The film is full of action and draws on the themes drawn from Stanisław Lem’s work as well as other authors. It is the theme of reality hidden behind an illusion but impossible to recognise, because even if we wake up from sleep, how we can know for certain that we are awake, for both states of being asleep and awake are perfect illusions. Consequently, if art objects are getting similar to the environment does that mean they try to mirror it or perhaps the reality is trying to imitate works of art?
Do the artistic manifestations of our era have more to do with museum exhibits or with the gadgets of every-day life? And what does the answer possibly mean for the objects “certified” by the museum as artistic?
Andrzej K. Urbański’s computer (personal) code gleaming pink outside the gallery appears to warn us of the danger and the unpredictability of storing personal information. This is a distinctive ornament of today’s world, which refers to a depth lurking somewhere outside the sensually attractive sphere of the symbol. But who can read and interpret the information so that we do not suffer from yet another illusion... Sybaris has broken its ties with “reality” (if you can call that this lack of political common sense) and paid the price for it with its existence. It has returned as a myth more real than its defeated enemies, more authentic and seminal than the boring story of petty enmity among the colonial Greek polis.
Translated from Polish into English by Marek Stelmaszczyk.
Proof read by Simon Bretherton
Text originally published in Sybaris – 4th Baltic Contemporary Art Biennial in Szczecin, Szczecin, 2001, ed. by Marlena Chybowska, published by the National Museum in Szczecin.
Lech Karwowski. Director of the National Museum in Szczecin. Co-curator of the Sybaris exhibition.