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WAIST UP WAIST DOWN
Anna Mields
Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir
Loft 63
Berlin 2006
In the hands of Anna Mields, the objects of everyday life engage in a complex, multilayered dialectic that can be characterized as the tension between organic and inorganic, real-time and suspension, the signifier and the signified, and even the body and the other. In her recent work, Mields, a German born, Glasgow-based artist, juxtaposes—and often superimposes—video projections with cast or found objects whose sculptural status is questioned and given new meaning by their presence in the videos themselves.
Consider a video projection depicting objects flying out of a high-rise apartment building, shown alongside cast objects like chicory, an apple, asparagus, leaves, detached desk drawers, and stones. Though what initially comes to mind may be that the video merely depicts the ejection of these objects—serving only as support for what may seem like a predominantly sculptural endeavor—the relationship between the video and the sculptures is far more subtle. The ensuing dialectic is meant to provoke the viewer into discovering an interstice in which lies the possibility of exploring how these everyday objects take on new meaning.
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What is this interstice? If the objects ejected from the building were presented in their original state—as organic objects capable of decaying—the distance between the video and the sculpture could easily be described as point A to point B. Yet it is clear that as cast objects, an intervention has taken place, to the extent that these everyday items take on the status of fetish objects—not simply cast, but also given nearly reverential treatment (the chicory is given a form-fitting fabric sheath, an apple rests inside a jewelry box-like container). The act of fetishizing these objects makes the journey from video to object not so much point A to point B, but point A to something/somewhere, and then to point B. This "something/somewhere" is the interstice so adeptly created by the artist.
The rhythmic quality of the video (think heartbeat), as well as the open window itself (think mouth), alludes to a metaphor of the body, a metaphor in which ejection becomes enunciation, object becomes word. That these objects are often edible (fruits and vegetables) only emphasize this allusion to the body. If it is possible to look at her work as, in part, an exploration of the body as both metaphor and locus of meaning/object production/expulsion, one could say that Mields creates a kind of perverse semiotic mechanism in which signification or definition is never quite stable, but rather in constant flux. Can the objects be "deciphered" in relation to each other, or as fetish objects, are they in and of themselves sites of meaning? Do these objects take on meaning only in relation to their animated counterparts in the video, or is the video an outside narrator that prods the viewer into interrogating the objects? Call it a kind of semiotic purgatory.
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Whereas Mields offers a kind of perverse formalism/semiotics that interrogates the status of seemingly ordinary objects, Jona Hlif Halldorsdottir, an Icelandic artist based in Glasgow creates unordinary, almost perverse objects whose colors, shapes, and recontextualization among found images/objects suggest a kind of humorous violence—perhaps best described by one of the artist's favorite sayings, "I love you but I ate you." (Yes, "ate.") Her recent sculptures suggest a kind of eating, albeit of the cannibalistic kind. These white sculptures resemble unfinished, or even deformed bodies, with "heads" dominated by mouths, no appendages, and most bizarrely, a similar, smaller scale figure emerging from the sculpture's "torso." The sculptures are deliberately primitive, and adding to the violence to which this alludes (violence in the sense of the object's making) is the fact that all of the heads are spray painted red, splattered in the manner one would expect if one's jugular had been severed in a B-movie.
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These sculptures, however, cannot simply be read as violent objects; due to their scale and number, they can also seem rather endearing, if a bit eerie. Added to this, however, is the fact the sculptures/figures themselves seem to be in a state of ecstasy. Their "heads" are upturned, "mouths" open, as if singing. Halldorsdottir captures the sentiment vividly in a lurid photograph depicting these sculptures in front of a found image of a waterfall. The colors are vulgar, and the kitsch value of the waterfall image in such a context is heightened to a degree of absurdity that reveals its bald motives to create an utterly ersatz experience. In this image, the sculptures seem even more perversely joyous. Halldorsdottir creates a visual dichotomy that is less interested in the interstices that it may engender than in its ability to make the viewer aware of the audacity that is, very often, everyday life. This is perhaps most clear in her found object sculpture from which the waterfall came: bared of its illusions, the viewer is confronted with the inner workings of a machine intended to replicate the soothing visuals of a waterfall. In a single deft move, Halldorsdottir finds a way to create something funny and pitiful, grotesque and beautiful, disturbing and yet oddly meditative.
Halldorsdottir's interest in this kind of dichotomy translates as well to her other installation and text-based work. Gegnum-Through employs clear strips of plastic hanging from the ceiling to artificially divide a given space (the work is site-specific). Visitors must pass through this artificial barrier to go from one space to another, and are asked in the process to acknowledge the utter pretension and absurdity of such a division. In White Man born With Black Dick, Halldorsdottir again uses the photograph to depict a dichotomy on multiple levels: the photograph is shown on the floor, rather than on the wall; the image is literally as the title suggests; and most subtly, the photograph is really in service of the title, making this as much if not more a text piece than a photograph. The effect of these kinds of works is to force the viewer to acknowledge the strangeness within everyday life—which the artist illustrates with a beguiling naivete—as well as the perceptions, judgments, and values inherent in each viewer.
WAIST UP WAIST DOWN
I dream of a man
dressed in an Icelandic
wool sweater and naked
from the waist down
playing the accordion
while I beat him with
a dry fish.
The exhibition title, WAIST UP WAIST DOWN may suggest that Mields and Halldorsdottir are one or the other, and the above excerpt from Halldorsdottir's text piece Dream of a Man may point to her as the "waist down" half of this two-person show. However tempting it may be to categorize, the title of the exhibition in its entirety is in some ways more apt as a metaphor for both artists. Mields is neither waist up nor waist down, but perhaps more interested in the space in between this opposition. Halldorsdottir is perhaps both—each to highlight the absurdity of the other. In whatever way the title is interpreted, it is clear that Mields and Halldorsdottir are onto something.
text; Eugene Jho
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