FINE ART: Hazel Freidman
WAS it a balloon or a bomb? At the opening of Unplugged, at the Market’s Rembrandt Gallery, opinion was divided as to whether the big bang resounding from the gallery rafters approximately 45 minutes into the exhibition was the consequence of faulty wiring or an audio installation by exhibition ”curator” Kendell Geers. The fact that Geers — the ”art terrorist” who recently produced a work in London that consisted of a written bomb warning — wasn’t at the scene of the crime served to augment the confusion.
And if obfuscation was its aim, Unplugged has succeeded admirably. To quote a song from Eric Clapton’s album by the same name, the show is clearly ”running on faith”, laudable intentions — and precious little else. Proposed by Geers as a riposte to the traditional curatorial process — whereby the curator determines content and presentation — Unplugged sets itself up as a democratic, transparent event with the artists determining process and product via a nomination system.
But the idea loses itself in the translation, and Unplugged seems less an example of transparent curatorship than a conspiracy of confusion.
Most of the 13 exhibiting artists are the progeny of Fig I, II and Fig Again. In the main, they are articulate artists who sometimes stash their individualism inside conceptual baggage in the interests of a creative ”buddy system”. And with the exception of Wayne Barker and Carl Gietl, whose quaint but trite installations on identity and bodily excretions indicate some effort at mutual engagement, most of the artists on show seem unable or unwilling to articulate anything except conceptual befuddlement.
Ian Waldeck’s ”installation”, while doing a street sweeper proud, bears no relationship to anything other than the artist’s own ”messconceptions”. Challenging the notion of ”documented” reality, Minette Vari has superimposed her features on to the faces of subjects in newspaper pictures. But her digitally altered images are so subtly articulated that her point is lost completely.
Even Moshekwa Langa’s jigsaw critique of the new South Africa does not transcend the status of one-liner. The only works which communicate something other than the divide between intention and execution are by Luan Nel — quaint landscapes painted on found objects — – and Hentie van der Merwe.
Admittedly, it is difficult to reflect the value of the curatorial process without some form of intervention, which would obviously defeat the aim of Unplugged. To his credit, Geers has left the artists to do their thing. But he and the participants have relied too heavily on process to legitimise product. And without a coherent conceptual peg on which to hang the former, Unplugged is reduced to an exercise in creative implosion.
Which adds credence to the ”big bang” theory on opening night.
Unplugged is at the Rembrandt Gallery until April 6