"Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute--but that was all."
H.P. Lovecraft, 'The Dreams in the Witch House'
Though merely, inimitably hinted at, the incomprehensible, often fearsome processes of life are given uncannily palpable figure and weight in the science-fiction writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and it's no wonder his phantasmagoric literary creations have inspired artists over generations to try to illustrate his menagerie of dark subterranean characters, to try to give shape to some of his words' spookiness. Often Lovecraft-tinged art tends toward standard science-fiction imagery and all its gothic gory cliches, but 'The ecstatic truth', a new show at super bien! in Berlin presents two contemporary artists' less obvious tributes to the writer and his concern with the 'weird' in nature, on the 70th anniversary of his death.
Work by Dean Kenning.
Work by Dean Kenning (foreground) and Charlotte McGowan-Griffin, installation view.
Installation view.
'...and all agreed that plants of that kind ought never to sprout in a healthy world'
H.P. Lovecraft, 'The Colour Out Of Space', 1927
Extrapolating from Lovecraft's concern with the organic world and its forces, Dean Kenning and Charlotte McGowan-Griffin present two very different works echoing a similar fascination with the unpredictable, dissembling character of nature. The gallery space is a small garden greenhouse, the perfect site for a project dealing with humanity's desire to observe and failure to ultimately control its environment. For his project, Kenning has set up a number of articulated rubber 'plants', their multiple parts loosely held together by wires and pinned vertically onto polystyrene plinths; light and fragile despite their robust plasticine looks, the sculptures flap about jerkily in random patterns. McGowan-Griffin's work consists of highly detailed two-dimensional paper cutouts of plant-like designs, attached to the end of LED-illuminated tubes; their colour changes progressively but very slowly, giving the piece a life-like pulsating rhythm, which in turn, as darkness falls, illuminates Kenning's at turns humorous and obliquely frightening mimicries, looking as if hinting to spread. Makes me think Lovecraft would have been slightly perturbed by both of their takes on his fungal monster world, the non-literal, strong sense of the uncanny permeating through and through these weirdly living, exposed things.
According to the gallery notes, the exhibition title refers to the film-maker Werner Herzog, whose own work is often concerned with the strangeness inherent in nature itself - he once said 'I love nature, but against my better judgement'. "His conception of what he terms 'The ecstatic truth' suggests a path to a more intuitive understanding of the world through the interweaving of the imaginative and fabricated with the objective - being in this case the forms of nature as we perceive them".
Dean Kenning's art is made according to what he calls an 'idiotic' or 'compulsive' aesthetic, in contrast to both formalist aesthetics and 'ideas' art. His work has been included in group shows at Sandroni Rey, LA, Maschenmode, Berlin, and the London Zoo Art Fair, and he recently had a solo exhibition at Flaca Gallery, London. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, Modern Painters, and Art Review, and is currently in the finishing stages of a PhD on 'The Political Nature of Art Today'. He also teaches Critical Theory at University College for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK.
Charlotte McGowan-Griffin's paper cuts and light installations draw primarily on the visual language of Symbolism, forming unique conjunctions which bring together familiar symbols of the mare nostro with natural and man-made forms both imagined and observed. She has undertaken various artist residencies - in Delhi with a UNESCO-Aschberg bursary, Sacatar Foundation, Brazil, and Bemis Center, Nebraska USA in 2003, and at KAIR Japan in 2004. Her work featured in last year's Convocatoria at Luis Adelantado Valencia, and in the 2005 group exhibition Paper Beats Rock at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. Both artists graduated from Goldsmiths College, London, in 1997.
Super bien! is artist run operating with a team of three. Current members are Anne Katrin Stork, Carlos Silva and David Keating. The project will bring together emerging as well as established artists and curators from Germany and abroad. The super bien! greenhouse gallery opened in September 2006 with a work by Anne Katrin Stork followed by 'Groupwedding', which had been curated by the super bien! team. As well as running the exhibition in three weeks rotation periods, the super bien! project will host artists' talks and one-off performances which will all be archived on their website.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
DEAN KENNING AND CHARLOTTE MCGOWAN-GRIFFIN, 'THE ECSTATIC TRUTH'
To 21 April 2007
super bien! Greenhouse for Contemporary Art
Schwedterstr.232 - 234
D 10435 Berlin
superbien@gmx.de
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