New show at the PinchukArtCentre is the best to date
The full title of the exhibit now showing at the PinchukArtCentre is “The Rhine on the Dnipro: the Julia Stoschek/Andreas Gursky Collection.” To be more precise, this show consists of three markedly different parts and one concert.
The Rhine project showcases the work of the German photographer Andreas Gursky, who commands some of the highest fees in the world. Critics call him the “eye of God.” Gursky photographs multiple objects that consist of certain identical elements, such as isles in the sea (Dubai II), columns of letters and figures on an airport billboard (Frankfurt), a huge beehive-like wall of a nightclub (Untitled), hundreds of Arab clerks wearing the same type of white clothing at a Middle Eastern stock exchange, a crowd of spectators and racing personnel during a Formula One race, and a row of windows in an ancient cathedral.
His photographs are blown up to giant size, and one picture can occupy an entire wall. Individuality means nothing here. This is a world of standards, without either pictorial or philosophical depth, without ideas — just a formal play with composition, identical images, and repetitive layers. His work is a kind of photographic pop art: cold, monotonous, and calculated.
Ukraine is represented by the works of the well-known Kyiv art group called R.E.P., an acronym for Revolutionary Experimental Space. The show is called “Patriotism: Art as a Gift.” It is displayed in the Project Room, which showcases young artists’ projects.
The R.E.P. artists have worked in various genres. Unexpectedly this time, they put on a minimalist project. Its main element is a pictogram, or logo, as it is called today, something that you would see on a product wrapper. This kind of alphabet decorates the entire room, and it may be interpreted as a perfectly concrete cultural and political message relayed by the meager black and white palette. The basic images are subordinated to an internal rhythm. The “Patriotism” exhibit is an unexpectedly restrained counterpoint to the visually oversaturated “Rhine on the Dnipro.”
The visual focus of the new show at the gallery of the PinchukArtCentre is a selection of videos from Julia Stoschek’s collection of 18 films, which are grouped under the title “Destroy, She Said,” the title of the longest film by the artist Monica Bonvicini.
The videos are divided into two categories. The first group, which is more attractive to visitors, consists of videos created with computer graphics. These are spectacularly made and edited. The second, smaller, group consists of motion pictures of a more radical kind, which record an artist’s actions. This is documentation of a creative gesture that has become a work of art unto itself.
One of the best-known but most superficial works is Robert Boyd’s Xanadu. This is a rapid-fire series of television scenes filled with violence and political provocations to the accompaniment of energetic pop music. Everything flashes and thunders on four screens, and a shiny disco ball spins overhead. However, there is no new message here, just another repetition of antiglobalist cliches.
In Christian Jankowski’s 16mm Mystery the filmmaker places a camera and a black screen on top of a building; a neighboring skyscraper collapses. It is not clear what other sense this work makes except the need to use more expensive filmmaking equipment to make this act of destruction appear more natural.
The works of Doug Aitken and the creative duo of Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley are more complex and sophisticated. Aitken’s 30-minute film from 2000 is a fantasy about a strange tribe of naked people, who gradually join civilization. After traveling across deserts, ruins, and industrial zones, two aboriginals finally reach a comfortable home, but then nature takes its toll. The pair is engulfed by sand and both of them turn into sand, whereupon the destroyed interior reverts to its original appearance, as though nothing ever happened. There are no traces of people. Clearly, savage nature is friendlier than the civilized landscape.
Reynolds and Jolley’s film Burn (2002) does not end so dramatically. Everything is burning, starting with the most unexpected objects, like a refrigerator and walls. A married couple sits on a couch reading newspapers amid a blazing fire that is gaining in strength. Everything ends with a big artificial snowfall that covers the smoking debris: here civilization destroys itself.
The video Destroy, She Said is more of a confession of love for prewar European cinema. Monica Bonvicini puts together scenes with women’s faces from well-known Italian, French, and American films of the 1950s and 1960s and projects them onto two screens.
A few comic films are among those that feature some action. In Kate Gilmore’s Main Squeeze a plump girl is trying to squeeze her way through a narrow box. In one part of the screen we see her feet, which are slowing moving away. In the other part of the screen, her face is flushed with exertion as she approaches the exit.
The well thought out and elegantly minimalist design of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect (1974) is impressive. This is the meticulous documentation of how a team of artists cuts a perfectly equilateral sophisticated shape out of an old building, carefully keeping all the proportions. The building turns into a huge canvas frame, whereas the work is just empty space within this frame. It is thrilling to watch them work, the passersby’s reactions, and the end result.
But the real hero of the entire collection is Marina Abramovic, who is a living legend of performance art. This Yugoslav artist made her name in the 1960s owing to her brutal, self-destructive projects in which she turns her body into an experimental, creative lab. Over the years she has retained her inventiveness and nonconformism, as evidenced by the Onion. There are no special effects here or editing and film tricks, just a close-up of a pretty woman, who is slowly eating an enormous unpeeled onion for 20 minutes.
The women’s eyes are running, her makeup is smearing, and she groans with pain, while the artist’s emotionless voice reads a text off-screen, every phrase starting with “I want...” Abramovic is more than a performance artist: she has dramatic talent, and all those transformations on her face are reflected with simply physiological conviction. In this example of video art there is nothing superfluous, and it is extraordinarily moving.
This performance piece can be interpreted in a variety of ways: as a metaphor of an artist’s self-sacrifice, a statement on the status of women in contemporary society, or a bitterly ironic comment on people’s intentions that, as we know, often lead straight to hell. If there had been some sort of competition, Onion would have captured first prize.
Without exaggeration, the concert by the German group Kraftwerk, which performed during the opening of the show at the PinchukArtCentre, was a sensation. Their performance is the subject of an article that will be published in an upcoming issue of The Day.
“The Rhine on the Dnipro” show may be regarded as the most successful project ever organized by the PinchukArtCentre.
