13/10/2006
Ryan Gander
Store, London
Is this guilt in you too— (Cinema Verso). On view Roman Wolgin: Hell is others
Is this guilt in you too— (Cinema Verso)
Hosted by the Whitechapel's East Wing
The former Whitechapel Library plays host to Ryan Gander’s installation 'Is this the guilt in you too— (Cinema Verso)', a poetic meditation on disorientation and loss. The work locates the viewer in an imaginary backspace behind a cinema screen: on the transluscent screen a film flickers, but in reverse, while beyond it we glimpse but cannot access a ghostly, empty auditorium.
To enter Ryan Gander's 'Cinema Verso' the viewer passes through a drab, institutional corridor. A door at the end of that short corridor opens up into a large, dark room that has a few odd objects dotted about it. The room seems to be some sort of barely-used storeroom - a non-space cut off from whatever the main function of this building might be. The only light comes from a cinema screen, but looking at the screen, it becomes clear that we are standing behind it.
A feature film is being projected onto the other side of the cinema screen and to the left, as we see it, is a door which the viewer might expect to lead to the actual cinema. This is not the case - a corridor behind the door is a dead-end. The viewer is forced to turn back and re-enter the non-space of the cinema's backroom. Going back in, it seems that the soundtrack is too muffled to make out the film's narrative but as one draws closer to the screen it becomes much clearer. And then, in one particular place, close up to screen to its right-hand side, the sound is crystal clear. There is a directional speaker pointed at this one spot. By coincidence or design, directly in front of this position a part of the screen is scratched, and through that scratch it is possible to see the cinema - the place where we ought to be. The small cinema is totally empty.
Drawing back from the screen allows the viewer to return to the one position where the sound is clear - but this position is so close to the screen that it is impossible to take in what is happening on the screen above. It's like sitting in the most unaccommodating front row seat possible, craning one's neck in a doomed attempt to see the whole film. The choice is clear: hear, but don't see or move away from the screen and as a consequence see, but don't hear.
'Is this guilt in you too— (Cinema Verso)' is presented by STORE with the generous support of Outset and Arts Council England.
The exhibition is hosted by the Whitechapel in what will become its new Commissions Gallery, after a £10 milion pound expansion that will double the Whitechapel’s exhibition space and treble its training and education facilities.
The expanded Whitechapel will open in Summer 2008. To support the Gallery contact Louise McKinney on 020 7522 7874, louisemckinney@whitechapel.org
*****
Roman Wolgin
Hell is others
29 Sep—4 Nov 2006
Roman Wolgin’s graduation show at the Rijksakademie in 2004, presented a series of paintings with the collective title, ‘Seraphim Rose Before Becoming a Monk’(2004). These paintings depicted scenes from the life of the highly-venerated monk, Seraphim Rose, a leading figure in the Russian Orthodox Church despite living on the West Coast of America. Born Eugene Denis Rose, the monk was a sometime San Francisco beatnik and Buddhist before going on to found a religious community and printing press in the wilds of Northern California. Wolgin’s paintings included intricately composed portraits of Rose both pre and post-conversion, sometimes with text from his substantial body of writing laid over the figure. The series is, like all of Wolgin’s work, steeped in ambiguity. It is not clear what position the artist takes with respect to Rose’s conversion. Instead it seems that it is the act of transformation that preoccupies Wolgin.
Transformation might take one of two forms. We either deliberately choose to change identity and become someone completely different, or occasionally, the consequences of mistaken identity are thrust upon us. At the Voltashow, Basel 2006, STORE presented Wolgin’s work, ‘Someone Else’, a series of seven paintings presented as one work. Each painting was a portrait of a single figure looking directly at the viewer. The figures included Martin Kippenberger, Kate Moss, Slobodan Milosevic and Wolgin himself but scrawled across each painting was a text denying that particular identity.
Again the theme is personal transformation, but the intimacy of this act means that no conclusions are offered. Instead the figures in the paintings seem to have an understanding with each other - a shared secret history of what happens when your identity changes into something quite unexpected. Wolgin’s debut solo exhibition at Diana Stigter Gallery, Amsterdam, also referenced transformation but through a different conceptual axis, representing female figures from cultural history, including Salome and Manet’s Olympia re-presented as dark, gothic monstrosities. In other paintings the earlier imagery of the Russian Orthodox church morphed into swastikas. The entirely monochrome show was entitled ‘Misunderstanding II’, again foregrounding ambiguity.
Private view 14 October 2006, 6 - 8.30pm
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