FINE ART: Hazel Friedman
CARL GIETL’S exhibition 1996 is and is not what it seems. The paradoxical seductiveness of his work is that while it has been conceptualised with such obvious – almost simplistic – clarity of purpose, in the eyes of the beholder it takes on a metaphoric life (or in this case, death) of its own.
A more detached sequel to Gietl’s overtly personalised suit series – the bone-plastic, broken glass-painted soldier nailed-to-board suits – this work is a conscious effort to put dem bones of previous concerns to rest. Consisting of 1 996 plaster casts of a sheep’s jawbone – a reference to the here and nowness of the piece, as well as the actual number of reproduced casts – it straddles the realms of installation and participatory performance piece.
The latter comes into play because on opening night the audience is encouraged to stomp over the casts, crushing them underfoot. As the artist himself confirms, the public, collective act of destroying the works serves as a form of individual catharsis or exorcism for Gietl.
Simultaneously, this rite of destruction represents a more cerebral statement on the impermanence of contemporary art. And it is the latter function that leaves its mark, even while the artist attempts to remove the physical traces of his artistry.
For in committing the act of object annihilation, Gietl is replacing the tarnished aura and compromised autonomy of the artwork with his own charismatic value. The elimination of art’s material presence does not negate the pre-eminence of the artist.
But the work transcends a simple narcissistic reading. On seeing the installation, one gallery-goer remarked that it reminded him of the “organised destruction” of war. Indeed, in its unadorned, banal bleakness and eerie silence, 1996 becomes a killing field, the recently excavated gravesite of an ancient massacre.
Even without the facility of a jawbone count or the knowledge that the bones belong to a sheep, one has an almost instant sense of decay, death and wholesale destruction. And if the word jaw is translated into a metaphor for consumption, and the term sheep denotes followers, the work becomes a commentary on the late 20th century’s obsession with mass consumption.
If one extends the comtemporaneity of the piece into a more prophetic sphere, 1996 becomes a bleak portent of a world without spiritual value. Christ’s lamb has become a member of the comsumption-driven lifeless flock. Gone are the supposedly universal truths used to legitimise ways of life. All that remains are scepticism and the desiccating jaws of death.