29 December 2010

Open your mind and absorb the sentiment: Walid Raad at Whitechapel

On entering Walid Raad: Miraculous Beginnings you will be met by a spidery diagram sprawling high and wide across the wall: a graphic explanation of the  Atlas Group. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective that is building an archive of fake documents that form a history of the oh-so-real Lebanon. A little confused? I was.
This exhibition presents the composed documentation of Walid Raad and his invented personalities. Apparent archives of life in Lebanon, lovingly collected and arranged and then, by chance, inherited by the Atlas collective. The works insight far more than the information they claim to order; they reveal minds infested with the same concern for humanity in times of trouble. A city profiled by a network of like-minded individuals who are simply trying to come to terms with the horrors of war; to give a semblance of structure in the midst of chaos. Individuals who are similarly (conveniently?) aesthetically driven. And although no hands could be raised in answer to a calling register of these names they exist in the mind of Walid Raad and in his mindful conception of the city of Beirut, given to us here, in the realised form of colour and film, photo and lettering. Is this practice deceitful, does it need to be reconciled?
Entering the gallery you are soon drawn to a video the other visitors are circulating around – Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (#17 and #31) (2001). It is a visual document of Souheil Bachar’s enforced captivity in Lebanon, during the years 1983 to 1993. The film is fascinating; shocking, enthralling, titillating. Fictional. You wonder what exactly you just spent 18 minutes experiencing.

Raad certainly does demand a great deal of thought from his viewers and you get the impression that much of his works’ content will fly over the heads’ of visitors to this exhibition, but is that part of the point? Raad’s mixed media art is engaged with the swirling throng of media that surrounds and informs us everyday. This involvement produces a critique by casting doubt on the authority of the media's document.
Furthermore, Raad’s art strives to capture a spirit. In a new approach to the formation of a history, his art declares: we can never know the whole and real truth, so why try. These events may have not occurred, but does that matter? Many events that did occur are left undocumented or are incorrectly recreated in print and image. The tales spun by Raad’s archive are comparable to mythical stories that tell real life lessons. They may be fictional, but you would never hold that against a novel. This is Art.
Whitechapel has not gone out of its way to clarify the complexities of Raad’s work. I approached this exhibition, as many will, with a certain degree of ignorance about the Atlas Group and background reading was required before I felt that I had even reached an understanding of what Raad is attempting. Some will see this as a curatorial failure others will argue it is a trait, or perhaps even a flaw, in Raad’s work. Either way, if you decide to visit this exhibition do be prepared for something taxing. But, open your mind and absorb the sentiment and you will find something ultimately insightful.



The exhibition continues until the 2nd January.

07 December 2010

James Turrell at the Gagosian Gallery

There are just a few days left now to check out James Turrell at the Gagosian Gallery in King Cross and I can not recommend it enough. 

The exhibition features Turrell’s recent installations, sculptures and prints that play with light and space. The centerpiece is his interactive installation 
Dhatu (2010)
and is the one the hoards have been queuing around the gallery for, every weekend for the last few weeks.
When you have waited your turn and performed the ceremony of removing your shoes and donning plastic feet covers that make you feel like you are preparing to enter a new dimension, the smartly suited gallery attendants direct you to ascend the staircase and cross the threshold into the installation. The interior is large, although the dimensions not initially obvious. Beyond the end of the room there is a seeming infinity of light that bathes the white walls and the space all around you in an ethereal haze that confuses your space perception.
Turrell’s installations are all about contemplation and self-discovery. He creates spaces that demand complete immersion; sanctuaries from reality. Dhatu evokes ideas of a space after death, or before birth, a dream world or a non-space where nothing is determinable. Looking back on the outside space, from within, the real world is no longer recognisable – the changing colour within the installation creates an optical illusion that makes the exterior gallery space seem similarly immersed in alien colour. This emphasises the feeling of isolation and creates a sense that things will never be the same again. 
Turrell has been using the combination of light and space as an artistic medium for more than forty-five years. In this installation he manipulates light in a way that transcends its everyday use; the light gains a physical presence that boarders on the oppressive. Light is not only the medium but also the subject of his art. Turrell studied perceptual psychology during the 1960s and continues to explore the possibilities of perception created through the interplay of light and space.


Immerse yourself in Dhatu at the Gagosian Gallery, until the 10th December.

03 December 2010

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography at the V&A

The five artists, exhibiting in Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography at the V&A museum, have not chosen straightforward careers for themselves. Their work is caught in a limbo between photography and painting; art and craft; acceptance and disregard. The lowly lit exhibition space swathed in black is reminiscent of a dark room and indicative of their purgatory from the mainstream.

There is much variety within this little exhibition; the binding aspect of these artists’ work appears to be the minority status of their medium. This serves to provide an interesting cross-section of what it is possible to do without a camera. The various techniques employed by the artists will mystify the greater part of visitors and this shrouds the works in the enigmatic power of the unfamiliar. 
The work of Floris Neusüss and Adam Fuss tends towards a material form, taking inspiration from art, photographic and cultural histories; many of Neusüss images are figurative – impish silhouettes of svelte females, while Fuss projects concrete forms with spiritual or personal meanings. Pierre Cordier and Garry Fabian Miller’s work are more evocative of intricate scientific photography. Cordier specifies that his images are ‘fake photographs of an imaginary, improbable and inaccessible world’, however they have the abstract flavour of photos taken under a microscope. Fabian Miller has produced empirical studies that explore the connection between nature and light, such as a series of petals that gradually progress from ephemeral traces into vivid form. Susan Derges blurs the boundaries between the scientific document and the artistic with her seemingly abstract underwater images.


At the centre of the exhibition is an informative film playing on loop. Each artist was given a few minutes to talk about his or her work. In varying ways each artist stresses that their images do not represent the real; that they are not documents. This assertion is a symptom of the controversial position of these artists’ work within the much-debated field of photography as art. I am not denying that photography is largely accepted as an artistic medium, however, what these artists are doing is different and issues arise with the inevitable task of categorisation; Cordier strives to be acknowledged as a painter, being repeatedly denied this title and refusing ‘photographer’ he jokingly settles for 
‘faux-tographer’. 
These artists have taken the mechanical out of photography, hereby negating one of the original arguments against photography as art, and by incorporating painterly elements into the development process it could be argued that they have successfully fused the two mediums. This would horrify particular bygone photographers and painters alike. However, in many cases, the artist is still withdrawn from the image making process; some of these works are truly made by nature’s hand, and so the argument of photography as document still applies.

What these five artists are doing is not new; Pierre Cordier was a contemporary of Brassaï, but the fact remains that there are few, nay no, well known Camera-less Photographers. A surprising fact given that some of these artists have successfully engaged with contemporary artistic discourses, such as minimalism, and given the incredibly broad definition of art today, which can range from oil painting to a man cooking Indian food, it seems that the only thing thus far missing is a receptive audience…  

The Exhibition runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum until the 20th February 2011.