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4/4/2006

Andres Serrano

Gimpel Fils, London

Baroque

17th Century Baroque has been described as an art style that combines direct truth to appearance, with overwrought expression and gesture, to create a balanced and harmonious composition. Although usually applied to a historical period, in her 1999 book, Quoting Caravaggio, Mieke Bal has suggested that the term “baroque", can be described more generally in art as identifying a set of formal characteristics and emotional aspirations which transgress the limits of the past. Including works from the past twenty years, this exhibition is a consideration of Serrano’s photography as contemporary baroque.

The works in this exhibition recall 17th Century baroque art, encompassing themes of violence and sacrifice, mortality and religion. Mieke Bal has suggested that a baroque visual composition and sensibility infuses Andres Serrano’s art; The photographs included here demonstrate Serrano’s interest in colour, balance, lighting and the depiction of high drama. Looking at Serrano’s work through the baroque, it is clear that his imagery bears the traces of past visual languages and motifs.

Like many baroque painters from the 17th Century, Serrano’s art is intensely physical. Achieving a hyper-realistic quality through the clarity of his images, the body has an overwhelming presence in his photography. It is possible to see individual eyelashes, goosebumps, and raw flesh. Challenging the viewer’s expectation of how death is depicted, Serrano engineers not only an emotional but also a physical response to the image.

Touch and texture are emphasised by the use of pristine and luxurious materials and draperies. Juxtaposing textures and surfaces, combining mortal flesh with clean fabric, Serrano captures the violence suffered by the body in sensuous and beautiful terms. In works such as The Morgue (Homicide), 1992, the death of this murder victim is concealed by the use of a deep red velvet shroud covering the face. The tactile quality of the fabric contrasts with the viewer’s withdrawal from the body. The whiteness of the sheet engulfing the picture plane in The Morgue (Child Abuse), 1992, is used to emphasise the angelic face of the child so horrifically killed. The bright white shroud accentuates shock of the image.

In his use of chiaroscuro, the juxtaposition of strong colours, the contrast of mass and void, Serrano gives his work a painterly quality. Insisting upon the substances, colours and textures of his subject matter, Serrano creates a scenario in which the subject and spectator are united within a dramatic but contemplative moment. Spaces for reflection and meditation are literally depicted in Serrano’s church interiors, while images depicting religious statuary immersed in body fluids celebrate the spiritual, and expand upon the high religiosity found in much baroque painting and sculpture. In the late 1980s these emersion works were at the centre of vigorous debate regarding religious blasphemy, but they cannot be dismissed as sacrilegious. Rooted within a baroque sensibility of scandal and tradition, Andres Serrano has created a body of work that is rich in emotional content and haunting beauty.


LOWER GALLERY

Aileen Campbell

“...our hearing is historically decided upon. What we hear is not what we choose to hear, but how we have been instructed to hear..." Aileen Campbell

Gimpel Fils is pleased to present Aileen Campbell’s first solo show in London. Her split screen video installation, As Jane Edwards and Geoffrey Rush, is an uncanny work exploring the relationship between body and voice.

As Jane Edwards and Geoffrey Rush is a performed recording undertaken by Campbell in which she sang a Vivaldi aria, Nulla in mundo, pax sincera, whilst trampolining for 20 minutes. The repetitive bounce of Campbell’s body, seen on one screen, acts as a metronome; an uninterrupted timepiece accompanying her singing providing a viewpoint unavailable during the performance. The other screen shows the singer and a string quartet performing. The physical exertion of this constant movement challenges Campbell’s vocal control and disrupts the possibility of enjoying a polished musical performance.

Aileen Campbell is interested in the place of the female voice, and the disassociation of the voice from the body, which has taken place in Western society. Campbell has noticed how the separation of the female voice from the body has a historical precedent, whereby, the angelic female voice within music has been ascribed sublime attributes. The location of the voice within some heavenly situation is undermined in Campbell’s work in which the viewer is confronted with the fallibility of the voice through the body. The perfect musical rendition is denied due to the contradictory breathing required for the physical motion.

In this work, Campbell endeavours to reunite the voice and body. Breaking down the separation of the voice and body, and attempting to present them as a unity does not, however, mean that they have to be in compliance with each other. Rather, this work is challenging audiences to recognise that the voice is from the body, of the body and informed by the body. As such, the unrehearsed and accidental sounds created by the body during Campbell’s trampolining are incorporated into the rehearsed singing, so that within the musical performance the trace of the body can also be heard. Bringing the body and the voice into closer proximity, Campbell is battling any simple reductivism; Her work is not simply a dialogue between the voice and the body, but rather, a consideration of a voice with a body and a body with a voice.

Aileen Campbell completed an MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2005, and has exhibited widely including group exhibitions at Tramway, Glasgow; Dangerous Curve, Los Angeles; Swell Gallery, San Francisco. She has also worked closely with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra.

Image: ANDRES SERRANO The Morgue (Homicide)

Gimpel Fils
30 Davies Street London W1K 4NB UK
Monday - Friday 10.00 am - 5.30 pm
Saturday 11.00 am - 4.00 pm
(Gallery closed on Saturdays during August)

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