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The home page of www.oracleoftruth.com (of rare graphic austerity) offers two fields to visitors: the first one to provide an e-mail address where the reply made in the second one can be received; the “submit” button replaces, favourably, the human and animal sacrifices of yesteryear, and there is nothing to show that the result is not every bit as effective. “Oracle” has now come to mean a “database”, with the network taking over from the prophetess, a network on which millions of personal mythologies intersect every second. While there is no direct relationship between oracleoftruth.com and the exhibition of the same name at the Aeroplastics Contemporary Gallery, the mysterious divinatory site reflects the works gathered together by gallerist Jerome Jacobs to evoke the confrontation between the age-old dream of controlling the oracle of our own fate and the reality in which our fate is steeped, against a background of popular mythology.
A disciple of C.G. Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz dealt with the psychology of divination, and also with the myths of creation peculiar to every civilisation. The original destruction often plays an important role in this as order proceeds from chaos. To speed up the process on a worldwide scale, the best way seems to be to place the recipe for the atomic bomb in the hands of just anyone, as Gregory Green has been doing for several years. Here he presents a more modest, but obviously more efficient, version of a weapon of destruction. His personalised Torah and Koran remind us, if this were necessary, of the strong link between monotheist religions and the death wish. Green’s mythology has its share of regenerating utopia, evidenced by his will to colonise a South Pacific desert island to establish a free state there – for which the Aeroplastics gallery is in fact an embassy (see the plaque at the entrance and the flag floating over the façade). The artist, who is an American citizen, criticises the many infringements of public liberties by the Bush administration with the page of an Arabic manuscript marked with the seal “US Customs”. Religion is also at the core of the work presented by Margi Geerlinks, depicting young children bearing the Ten Commandments like tattoos on their skin: childhood seen as a potential catalyst for all future sins… The images are ambiguous: remember the trials of Sally Mann, and the American censor which had taken umbrage at the photos of her own children. In an era marked by new witch hunts and the return of political correctness, Margi Geerlinks’ photographs of naked children are not without ambiguity: are the Commandments not addressed more to the onlooker? Robert Gligorov’s mystical and symbolic dove hovers over the debate…
Shadi Ghadirian, for whom this is the first exhibition in a European gallery, illustrates the telescoping of tradition and modernity in a fast-changing Iranian society. The “Qajar” series evokes the photographic portraits of the start of the 19th century: veiled women pose beside symbols of contemporary consumerist mythology (a bicycle, a radio, etc.). In the “Like every day” photos, the women’s faces disappear behind a household utensil. Interpreted rather erroneously as a criticism of the Islamic veil, this series tackles the unfortunately universal theme of the woman as a sex object. Both are found, separated, in Paul M. Smith’s montages in which the star, Robbie Williams, embodies (in addition to his own fame) both the players in a victorious football team and the latter’s wild fans. The views of the inside of vehicles (private jets and limousines) by Michael Van den Besselaar evoke in a sterile way, the last element of his holy trinity: money, without which celebrity would hardly have any meaning. The hyper-realist paintings of Istvan Nyari – GI-Joe’s and Me, and Blade Runner – evoke the popular cult of the super-hero and science-fiction, while the strange image by Gerald Van der Kaap evokes a world in which the body is not subject to gravity, but in a curiously familiar setting.
It sometimes happens that dreamt-of reality dispenses with the possible: that is the subject of the video by Sarah Baker on Bill May, who is an excellent synchronised swimmer, but who finds the window of fame closed to him in an exclusively female discipline… Other aspirations seem to be fated to come to nothing, as suggested by Carlos and Jason Sanchez, who very meticulously construct domestic areas taking care to conceal any traces of scene-setting; one unusual detail disrupts the “natural” look of the situation, yet the protagonists pay no attention to it – the holy water turns into blood as the newborn is being baptised. The man seated at his worktable (an amateur taxidermist?) appears to be out of his depth when it comes to completing his task. Nothing of the sort in the work of Norbert Briar, whose models, young naked girls with a little too much makeup, play unconcernedly amongst art magazines. Daniele Buetti’s lighted crates underline the fragility and ephemeral beauty of fashion models, still his preferred material. Despite its mass – or rather because of it – John Isaacs’ creature, devoured by its obesity, is just as fragile. This is the new version of a creature designed by the artist as a metaphorical self-portrait – it refers to the Portrait of Dorian Grey: the excess fat echoes the stress and emotions with which contemporary society saturates us, with no possible escape route.
The self-portrait, not surprisingly, occupies a choice position in the exhibition: ambiguous in the case Cindy Sherman, strangely shifted back in time in the case of Ixone Sabada, and quite frankly baroque for Cédric Tanguy and his reverse depiction of the myth of Romulus and Remus. The same legend is re-examined by Harma Heikens, who shows us the founders of Rome sucking … a sow. “Baroque” could also apply to the pieces by Ivan Witenstein, charged with a number of references, which reveal the tension between myth and reason. The sculptures of Petroc Dragon Sesti do not provide an unequivocal message either, whether it is a domestic mini-tornado (Fluid Icon), or a body made from wax, at once serene and irremediably mutilated. Mutilations which evoke in some way the chocolates of Stephen J. Shanabrook, moulded to injured bodies in Russian and American morgues. These deadly signs temporarily take their place in the world of the living, enjoy the pleasure of life before disappearing once again via the digestion cycle. Many of these wounds appear to have been caused by a bullet: there is a striking contrast with the cold stylisation of the revolver barrel photographed by Andres Serrano. With his video Rinoplastia, the Mexican Yoshua Okon gives us a different view of everyday violence, a world where social discrimination, money and misogyny rule the roost. The camera follows the frenzied, cocaine-fuelled odyssey of teenage sons of millionaires, at the wheels of their cars, through the streets of Mexico. The same bitter observation comes from Dominic Mc Gill for whom the cult of progress is reflected above all in the gradual loss of all humanity: the well-groomed poodle – free to do as he wants despite his diamond leash – has already won the fight to the death with the wolf, caught in a trap. “I’ll tell you something I am a wolf but I like to wear sheep’s clothing” (Garbage): perhaps his Vampire Killing Kit is available to ward off bad fortune?
Pierre-Yves Desaive
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