ART
Chris Roper
Interesting exhibition this, a mixture of disposable pop philosophy and nuggets of theoretical insight, grafted on to digital art of varying quality. Hard to tell what to make of it, sometimes. Hard to tell, at least initially, whether it’s worth the effort. There is ample evidence of some of the Warning Signs of Bad Art, so let’s get right into the icky stuff.
First, there’s the tired literary device of the artist who creates a secondary persona to stand in for himself, thereby allowing his primary persona the space to comment on the work. And so Ian Kerkhof, hotshot filmmaker, becomes Aryan Kaganof, digital artist.
Then there’s the awful press release, where the work is given spurious authority by the hauling out of potted philosophical jargon (new-generation purveyors of postmodern metaphysics always seem to confuse the Logos with the plural for logo), and overblown metaphysical claims. “Kaganof’s struggle is for life; not human life, but life itself. Kaganof’s paintings are TRUE. Can you handle that?”. Oh, I think I can. After all, I once watched an entire episode of Carte Blanche.
And finally, there’s “War is menstrual envy”, a faux-Blakean work in angry red and black, featuring the obligatory cowering woman and a man wielding his penis like a club. Primitive feminism or creative misogyny? It’s not even an interesting question.
So much for the irritating bits. If that was all there was to it, I wouldn’t bother writing this review. But there are several extremely worthwhile aspects to the works. As digital art, several of the images are beautiful. In most cases, however, this concatenation of lines and flow doesn’t translate well to the walls of the AVA gallery.
It’s almost as if digital art has been rendered shabby, and I suspect this is an intended effect. It certainly gives the digital world a patina of nostalgia, which is a welcome advance on the shrieking 90s kitsch that seems to be its most common manifestation.
A work like “Queen of Hearts”, a reproduction of a pornographic playing card with a warning sticker on it saying “Kaganof is addictive”, as well as several pieces that pay homage to psychedelia, would seem to point to this use of nostalgia to present digital art as dangerously timebound.
Also, despite the profligate use of philosophy soundbites in the works themselves, which normally suggests the lucky-dip approach adopted by artists desperately trying to legitimate overwrought conceptual pieces, Kerkhof seems to have a very sound theoretical grounding.
Ultimately, though, the show is let down by its overblown presentation, by the fact that the execution doesn’t match the marketing. It’s not transgressive art, certainly not in the way Kerkhof’s films are. What it is, though, is a brave attempt to try something new, to present multimedia as medium, rather than as competing media forced into an uneasy amalgamation.