In the final weeks of this brilliant show, I went again to the Serpentine Gallery and asked myself: is this a new era of exhibitions?
Entering the gallery I am hit by a sense of bewilderment. There is nothing happening. The house lights are on and all I can hear is music from another room. A gallery assistant asks me if I need help – I decline, enjoying the confusion. She tells me that dog-walkers in Hyde Park often confuse the Serpentine for a public toilet. I smile politely and go in search of the sounds.
In a room at the end, there’s a film about a Chinese boy who encounters imaginary monsters. It’s Parreno’s latest video, InvisibleBoy. But just as I’m getting stuck in, the film stops and the automatic blinds open to reveal a grey afternoon. I stay for a moment as I become increasing unnerved by the distant chants of young children. I go in search of these sounds and find myself again at the entrance of the gallery where I can see pixelated footage of these young protestors.
The cycle is continues. I am herded from room to room. A film ends, lights go on and disembodied sounds are thrown into another room. I can only follow.
The four films span from almost two decades of Parreno’s career. But the aim here is not for a retrospective or to demonstrate an artistic development. Instead, the exhibition subsumes the works into a single event wherein the exhibition itself becomes the objective. It seeks to expose the subliminal routes and connections we are forced to make within art galleries. We become conscious of the technical make-up: the electrical plugs that run through the rooms or the lighting which is teasingly turned on and off like Creed’s Turner Prize winner. Artworks are no longer contained by spaces but disconnect and jump away from us. Without a doubt, Parreno has succeeded in making an exciting new form. Grasp it before 13th February.
Is this a review of 'Four Lions'?
ReplyDeleteinadvertently, yes
ReplyDeleteYes George, a startlingly deft act of installation and curation - i'd also congratulate the nicely mediocre (fake) snow machine just outside one window - but perhaps more could be said about the relations of the exhibition to the films, and the films themselves (which I found astonishingly beautiful).
ReplyDeleteFor instance, the rhetorics of the three more recent films seem, variously, to cultivate an intensity strongly narrative and teleological: the train line in 'June 8th, 1968', the Aronofsky-esque hyperbole of InvisibleBoy's soundtrack, the quietly growing illumination of the vespertine scene in The Boy from Mars. In each case, an impending epistemic satisfaction (where is the cartoon monster leading the boy? who or what is the train's cargo, so reverently greeted?) is implied only to be denied; it is this exhibition's peculiar wit to lead us on in its pursuit in the ludic manner you describe.
I commend your careful attention to the objectile quality Parreno has granted the exhibition, but what of the haecceitas of the artworks from which this somewhat abstracted 'event' arises?
On Saturday June 8th, 1968 the body of Robert F Kennedy was carried by a special Funeral Train from Penn Station in New York City to Union Station in Washington DC.
ReplyDeleteBobby Kennedy’s last words before he lapsed into unconsciousness after he was shot in Los Angeles on the night of June 5th, 1968 were: “Is everybody alright?”
interesting. I agree there is a huge amount to be said about the films. I think Laura Cumming does a good job of this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/dec/05/philippe-parreno-serpentine-gallery-review).
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to properly understand the thematic dependency between the works and their framework. There was something very intriguing about the way the train in June 8th spoke about the way we were shuttled about the exhibition. Overall I think I precisely wanted to focus on this very compelling and bewildering framework...