Mankind, immersed as he is in a condition of constant precarity and contingency, could hardly survive without the refuge of the irrational: psychological protection in the face of the adversities of everyday life. This phenomenon has occurred throughout history and, indeed, throughout metahistory (or the writing of history), wavering between the rational and the irrational, between modernity and pre-modernity, between every iteration and reformulation of history-- moving from the world of politics to that of mysticism, from bygone histories to visionary futures. The sheer porosity of metahistory encompasses both imagination and madness, thus revitalizing what rationality has historically classified as strange, grotesque, monstrous, unheimlich, uncanny, or weird.

It is within this aesthetic dimension that we find the work of Tom Volkaert (born 1989 in Antwerp, where he lives and works today). The traditional techniques and materials used by the artist produce an extraordinary and rather perturbing result, almost as if his work were a means of resistance against meaning. Indeed, the forms of Volkaert’s sculptures, with their unusual shapes and the surprising sensations they emanate, seem to embody an expression of a collective impulse towards absolute liberty, free from every convention. In the strangeness of their thingness, they recall Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), in which the “Thing Theory” finally escapes its usual imprisonment in the binary hierarchy of subject/object, animate/inanimate, natural/artificial, and instead embraces materiality, the thing, and even the remake of the thing.

Steering Wheel (Attila), 2017, for example, can be read as a kind of archeology of ceramic matter. The clay, revisited in a technical and formal way, reproduces a certain viscosity and irregularity, creating shapes that simultaneously repel and invite the viewer. The forms are estranged, shapeless, emanating an aura of soft monstrosity, a weirdness in the mold of B-Horror movies. In fact, this “weirdness,” defined by Lovecraftian horror and 80s sci-fi movies, is back in vogue. It is the weird and the eerie, two categories to which the theorist Mark Fisher has dedicated a book, referencing in particular certain strands of music (e.g. Brian Eno) or cinema (e.g. David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, and Andrei Tarkovsky). The weird also represents a dimension far from reality, an escape. Along with the categories of sci-fi, folklore, and pulp fiction, the weird shares a fascination with organic and inorganic forms, often tied to the body.

These specific elements-- of the archaic and the folk, juxtaposed with the weird and the weirdness of the thing-- are the foundation of Tom Volkaert’s work. The simple object is reconfigured, in both the position and composition of its elements, resulting in a new visual and perceptual status of the object. Case in point: the strangeness present in the works Presentation Stand of Ashtray + Study on a Functional Object, 2017, or (Yung Brancuzi) Only Tears of Joy, 2017. Ambiguous and formally paradoxical, these primitive and symbolic forms suggest worlds of mythologies and archetypes, increasingly relevant in a society like ours, which has suddenly become hungry for myths. The series (Yanni-Bebi V.G) ‘Uzi Twin-Uzi Twin,’ 2018, recalls familiar figures such as that of the Star Trek blob or the golem according to Jewish tradition: figures that, from clay to object to viscous stuff, provide a new materiality that addresses, first, the body and then, perhaps, the beginning of the toppling of the “after” anthropocentric age.

CODE South Way #6 

was at Artissima 2018 in Turin !

CODE South Way #6 

Hello!

You can read the new issue of CODE! 

We are proud to annonce CODE South Way participation at Liste Fair. 

How do you use a language to communicate different ideas, if the language itself limits the very structure of what we say? Take the matter of authorship, for example; it can even be difficult to untangle the claim to one’s own authorship—does it belong to me, or have I merely inherited it? It is an undeniable fact that we are obligated to remain within the structural and intellectual limits of convention: traditional ways of thinking, of expression, of behavior. The world around us and the point of view that we assume in observing it depend, therefore, upon pre-existing structures and a certain syntax of signification. Therefore, the mechanism that drives conceptual metaphors is not only the construction of language, but also the implicit language of thought and action. Like all languages, even painting can be included in this category as a kind of metanomic machine, one that contributes to symbolic activity characteristic to humankind. For Justin Fitzpatrick, painting is—above all—an instrument to circumvent the process of constructing a metaphor, in order to observe linguistic mechanisms, its conventions, and the syntax of narrative language.

Realism, dissolution, illogical movements, desire, and hyperbolic hallucinations are some of the themes that make up Fitzpatrick’s work. The metaphor becomes metamorphosis. The image doubles upon itself, upon looking and upon its own symmetry, turning upside-down and unveiling itself. The surface and its contents interbreed promiscuously, and the resulting visual contagions multiply like tentacles. The artist uses this fluctuation of meaning as a strategy, through which to generate new models—firstly, starting with the body. Aquarius Cat (Toilette), 2017, shows a cat drinking, the ingested water accumulating into a puddle under its tail; in Urinary Tract Infection, 2017, two crows are perched, ruminating and communicating through a strange tubular system that ends in a seashell-ashtray; in From Nest to Nation: A Cloacal Allegory, 2018, the digestive apparatus of a bird becomes an inundated village, the nerves of a leg morphing into calligraphic flourished. The metamorphoses here occur as a reciprocal exchange, between the internal and external, almost in allegorical play with the tension between the interiorization of guilt and shame, and the exterior forces of social influence. Furthermore, whether it is the physical presence of the objects, or the subsequent behavior that takes place throughout the piece—both aspects contribute either a psychological or moral.

The sculpture from the Underworld series, on display at Kevin Space in Vienna, embodies the figure of Thomas Aquinas; four legs of an Art Nouveau, with brushes attached. Thomas Aquinas had catalogued a sort of taxonomy of sexual sins; these sculptures function as allegorical representations of these sins: pulling-out, masturbation, and sodomy. Fitzpatrick adopts the body as a metaphor for social and sexual structures, upon which to verify mechanisms of thought, whether societal or economical. Consider that one of the first regulations of capitalism was to repurpose the body as a machine. During the transition from feudalism to capitalism, social reforms had rationalized the body according to the new bourgeois spirit, abolishing all superstition in favor of greater civil obedience. Indeed, the politicization of sexuality was present even from the Middle Ages, evidenced by religious legislation; however, it has been multiplied manifold in the advent of the modern era. The medieval body, with its magical powers, has been suppressed. This incompatibility between magic and capitalism was concretized in Descartes’ mechanic philosophy. Magic destroys industry, complained the philosopher Bacon. The process of modernization is described by Bruno Latour as a progressive “purification process”—of separating and cataloging, generally separating the things from their symbols from their meaning. Pre-modern times, on the other hand, combined all of them in a conception of the entire unit as a marriage between internal and external. It is not surprising, then, that Fitzpatrick refers precisely to this era of medieval iconography, to its tendency towards mutability with hazy borders. Like a retinal or electronic click, that activates and extinguishes in turn in an infinite visual loop of an Ouroboros, the work itself never emerges three-dimensionally; instead, it crystallizes into an impermanence that cannot be classified as neither abstract nor figurative, favoring neither the gesture nor the process. What is of interest to Fitzpatrick are the structures of signification that have the potential to be porous and open up. As follows, subjects that carry with them a blurry semiotic value reoccur often. Town Planners (Demi-Urges), 2017, takes the figure of the worker in the social imaginary of Socialism Realism, with its strong socialist and communist connotations, and re-interprets him through a homosexual lens, thus recasting the figure in an ambiguous role, becoming an archetypal symbol of masculinity and virility. Animals, too, are often found in his work. They function as receptors of meaning, reflecting their unique position between identity and form. The cat, for instance, in Cat Infected with Daisies, 2017, and Libra Cat, Inner City, 2017, is often used in the artist’s iconographic vocabulary. The trope allows him to reference Art Nouveau, and its famous Parisian Le Chat Noir cabaret poster—and thus, along with Art Nouveau, comes the visual allegory of modernity. The artist shows a particular interest in Art Nouveau as a tool to analyze the relationship between ornamentation and excess. In the famous text by Adolf Loos, ornament was considered a crime. A new decree was issued: modernist, normative, and censorial. New rules were in place, after those that had ushered in the elaborate feet of the furniture, so popular across Victorian salons! The ornamentation of Art Nouveau signaled a new threshold between the inside and outside, with its serpentine iron lines winding its way to the entrance of buildings, doors, and subways. The metaphor becomes metamorphosis, in this case, in terms of its interchangeable physicality; here, one body flows into another, sinuously. This serpentine motif is also present in Self-Digestion Sigil, 2017, though taken from medieval heraldry, used in terms of its physiological function. The work connects to the idea that the modern era has developed an obsession with excrement, reflecting the disgust of the capitalist bourgeoisie for non-productive parts of the human body; indeed, for the Puritans, excrement was the symbol of human corruption. Additionally, in his text Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin refers to the “grotesque” as a typically medieval state, in which the conception of the body is more communal, without any sort of physiological repression. In his interpretation, the inside and the outside are both allowed, without any reservations whatsoever. There, the land of Cockaigne still exists, the precursor to the modern Utopia. Fitzpatrick’s work presents an extravaganza, composed of floral and zoomorphic motifs that interchangeably stand in for ideas of triviality or offence. He composes, in effect, a subtle satire—based on the idea of the double—that does not allow for any hierarchy nor censorship often found within modernist dogma and the social regulation of the body. The colors used in his paintings refer to paintings much prior, particularly the pinks and blues that often formed the architectural background to frescoes—tracing back to the subdued tones of Fra Angelico, to the same shades taken by De Chirico, and even to the magazine cover of the 70s and 80s. Fitzpatrick’s porous images attempt to reveal the relationship between history and images, between legibility and visibility. In his work, the image does not shy away from contamination of excess, nor of decorative layering. Art Nouveau, the simultaneous language of medieval iconography, aesthetics associated with academic and stereotypical Socialist Realism, and queer references all come together in an indistinguishable mix, with an elegant openness that turns the human mechanics of making meaning upside-down.    

CODE South Way is proud to announce the #5 launch and fair stand at ArtBrussels 

-19-22 April, Brussels, 2018-

Celebrating together the 50th years!!

stay tuned 

To attempt to write about the work of Tiziana La Melia —an artist whose practice is largely founded on writing— is to risk throwing oneself into a form of art criticism equivalent to a “yaourt” singing performance.  In pausing on just a few words and concentrating on their rhythm, form, and emotion, one is able to attempt a transcription of the heart of the work.  We’ve all practiced singing in “yaourt” in the shower, an act which is, before anything else, an intuitive movement toward abstraction through which the precision of words and sense is no longer relevant.  Words become a sonorous material; they bounce about, pause on a melody, achieve fluidity and are then amalgamated.  Sense is no longer fixed, and we are left with the pleasure of flow.  Albeit a tad butchered, this genre of joyous reprisal is a far cry from literary criticism or the precious, rigorous analyses of art history.  Yet, it is precisely in this zone of subjective irresolution that Tiziana La Melia situates her artistic practice, in the spaces that generate relations between things, that bring forms and ideas into being prior to the clarifying act of definition.

This linguistic malleability, with all of its possibilities for phonological sliding, for countersense-making, for auspicious coincidence and incomprehensibilities, is what nourished La Melia, who arrived in Canada as a young child.  Growing up in a newly bilingual Italian family facilitated her cultivation of a necessary and quotidian creativity. The plasticity that results from this type of experience inheres in her practice, which strives to maintain an improvised and constant indetermination as she moves between mediums.  This agility of meaning and perspective is the work of imagination and wonderment.  It is that moment in which we see a bird perched on a branch and imagine that its cries are directed toward us; where we begin to imagine the world from the height and through the eyes of such an animal.  It’s equally the inversion of the world such that it might be observable from a pool of water.  The works of Tiziana La Melia, whether in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, or performance, enter into a dialogue in the midst of transformation. The materials, objects, images and subjects become interdependent, interchangeable even, to the point that each element might be compared to a word or a letter of a concrete poem.

La Melia’s resistance to fixing things has been present from the beginning of her practice. The work The Hands of V & U (2010), which was produced when the artist was still a student, might be thought of as an experiment in describing the particularities and challenges that she has faced in her practice, notably her desire to reconcile polymorphous work within a whole.  This oeuvre opens in the form of a poem—which itself has been constructed in part from the structure of a theatre piece—that enters into a conversation with a series of paintings presented as character sketches (Character Study of Bibs, 2011).  By including a multiplicity of voices without neglecting the question of style, each painting is irreverently made like an imaginary citation that could be signed by another artist.  The text consists of dialogues and citations, some of which evoke questions that are essential for La Melia.  One character says to another, for example: “I'm thinking of myself as a faun” and the other responds: “Think of yourself as a barrel”.  This dialogue is a direct reference to the American dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer, more specifically to the famed arguments that took place during the rehearsals of The Mind is a Muscle, Part 1, in 1968. In one particular incident, David Gordon, one of three dancers, experimented with movements that Rainer found peculiar.  When Gordon explained that he was attempting to channel mythological imagery, Rainer retorted, “think of yourself more as barrel.” This reference underlines a significant element in La Melia’s work: the importance of preserving a tension between the lyrical and the utilitarian, that is to say, on the one hand, the strong desire to surrender to the imagination, to hybridity, to magic and the mythic, and on the other hand to not abandon the real and the banal.  Here Rainer calls for an investment in the quotidian, and in sentimental detachment.  From a formal perspective, the creation of a rational imaginary space and time materializes in La Melia’s work through a diffusion, through colors that radiate and mix, through traces of the brush that, for her character sketches, she deliberately applies to linen that is wet and un-stretched. She makes use of spatial disorganization to formally translate emotional tonalities.  For her, however, this lingering within the imagination does not indicate a defeat of reason.  It is instead a necessary state within the studio work process, a way of inhabiting the irreconcilable within the realm of the quotidian, the common, the ugly.  In The Hands of V&U, objects, texts, and paintings are each granted equal status in a circular relational movement that evokes the artist’s interest in the expressionist dance of Mary Wigman. Like impulsive teenagers, the oeuvres and objects search for their purpose and identities.  

La Melia compares this process of anti-composition to Jean Arp’s evocation of the “constellation” that describes the internal and external links of works to natural cycles of dissolution and regeneration.  Collage is equally a method that allows for the meeting of sense and nonsense.  As the surrealists would later emphasize, it is in the interstitial zones between difference and similitude that instances of poetry emerge.  These moments are also those of destabilisation, like when the quotidian, an image, or an instant unexpectedly surprises and then refuses to leave, though, objectively, these refractions of the everyday appear unremarkable.  ‘Being a barrel’ is not simply about being rational, it is also about being open to one’s environment and being capable of receiving and producing emotional intensity.  For La Melia, digression constitutes the imaginative propeller as well as the point of departure for numerous textual and visual works.  The stylistic figure of digression is elsewhere found as the object of her quinquennial art publication Page of Vapours, in reference to feminine “vapours” as well as melancholia.  Using digression as artistic subject and creative motor, La Melia invites artists and writers to contribute poems, jokes, fiction and essays. In the preamble of her call for submissions, La Melia cites W.G. Sebald, writing, “when you release a dog into a field, it never goes in a straight line”.

The characters that populate La Melia’s oeuvre— young girls, schools of fish, losers, the marginal, the unattached— also make use of the tangential.  They share a relationship to the works themselves, which are often precariously hung, not to the wall but rather by magnetic fastening to a metal rod leaning against a wall.  They seem ready to detach and drift away at any moment.  In the work of La Melia, identity, sound, and form are psychedelic; they come to play in spaces that marble, away from fixed scripts.  In her paintings, figure and ground take pleasure in a blurred relation, as if captured while in motion.  The absence of a separation between the psychology of object, figure, and landscape is particularly notable.  Everything is a question of proximity.  And thus we find The Hands of V&U, a text originally written for six characters but read by three actors with a changed title, thereby transformed into Script for Three Voices (2010).  In it, the three actors spin in a circle, back to back, wearing temporary costumes that, once removed, become sculptures.  It is equally a performance of painting, sculpture, and drawing as it is a spiral sweeping of things. The cycle —which we can see in this period as a reoccurring Mobius strip in her works— intervenes as the formal image of the movement of abstraction between the mediums that La Melia researches.  Characters and objects are themselves searching: what to do and who to be… and why stabilize?  The circle represents precisely the temporal space of a rationality of the imaginary, in which forms are produced from moments in dance and relations between all elements.  The movement maintains the indistinction as well as the fragile condition of the performers and objects.  For its part, the text furnishes a scene, the breath and the batting of lashes (which she sometimes compares to the clicking of the cursor) necessary for the exploration of the affects.  The way in which La Melia brings her polymorphous practice to life might be compared to a conscious and voluntary crisis of adolescence.  That which might be perceived as accessory often offers emotional, and even physical, support for the characters, and vice versa.

ART FAIR with CODE South Way participation 

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#Fiac, Paris

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