Recently, at an exhibition opening, an artist with two young children drunkenly told me over a glass of wine that the most unexpected and transformative outcome of childbirth was the sense of purpose it gave her. She posed childbirth as an existentialist project, one with the potential to offer meaning to the lives of artsy drifters and bored socialites; anyone lost and without a cause. This was news to me, since I always assumed that people who consciously plan to have children do so because they have their shit together. ‘Not at all, and that’s why you’ve never wanted children,’ she told me, ‘you’ve always gone about life with some sort of purpose.’ This was news to me, too.
This exhibition, Vampire Problem? is based on an academic book titled Transformative Experience by philosopher L.A Paul. I haven’t read it, but according to one Amazon reviewer—our modern critics—the book is ‘a nice size.’ The blurb outlines the main argument: ‘Transformative Experience analyses decision-making in circumstances where one of the possible options offers a radically new experience that cannot be assessed in advance.’ Becoming a parent is used as a primary case study, a classic route to fortuitous wisdom, as shown by my anecdote. This group exhibition is organised by Freddie Powell of Ginny on Frederick; he wants two children and already has a list of their potential names. But why vampires?
I do not know any vampires personally, but much can be gathered from the movies; they never ‘go back.’ In George A. Romero's pulp classic Martin (1977), an angsty youth is convinced he’s an 84 year-old vampire. We’ve all been there, but it turns out that Martin does, in-fact, have a genuine thirst for blood, particularly from the sexy women who he kills. Coming-of-age is thus equated with death, both are irreversible. (Thesis: if any male vampire in the history of cinema had just discovered the phenomena of female menstruation, there would have been no need for all the murders; they could have just given women head).
There are no vampires included in the exhibition, however all of the artworks grapple with a material notion of transformation, using a variety of methods and mediums. Kira Freije, Irina Lotarevich, Sophie Giraux and Bea Fremderman have creative approaches to metalwork and material. They experiment and in some cases subvert conventional craft-based techniques through the manipulation of steel, brass, rubber and cast bronze. The figurative and wall-based works of Alex Margo Arden, Hyeonbeen Shimand Kiki Xuebing Wang dislocate and disfigure images of the body, or natural world, challenging its representation. In each case, the use of the form itself upends and transforms the traditional use of the material.
L.A. Paul’s definition of a ‘transformative experience’ underpins the very nature of contemporary art, where experimental applications to materials often offer unexpected outcomes. This is a method of play, chance and the subconscious, resulting in gestures that can offer possibilities even far beyond any initial artistic intentions. Works by Alexandra Metcalf, Jin Han Lee and Justin Chance involve blurring, smearing and rubbing; performative gestures which could not have been precisely envisioned at the stage of the blank canvas. Steve Bishop sculpts an image of an abandoned scene, where the ghost of a half-eaten cake emulates the unexpectedness of a found object. Lewis Teague Wright’s photographic triptych offer the opening credits to a film that will never been made and Mira Mann has built a musical instrument, but with a transgressive use; to be seen and not played.
Here, a point of no return. — Róisín Tapponi
