#laf2014

Above: Jeff Robb - Unnatural Causes 2.  Lenticular photograph

On my wanders through the London Art Fair earlier this year, I couldn’t help but notice there was quite the craze for lenticular photography- a kitsch relic of point of sale advertisements, 80s film posters, and cheap children's toys (remember Pogs?).  So much so, Damien Hirst had a lenticular photographic version of his shark in a vat (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - Paul Stolper Gallery). 

For those who aren't aware of what a lenticular is - though you've probably seen one at your local fish and chip shop - it is a form of 3D printing where a minimum of two images are interwoven, and overlaid with a regularly ridged plastic screen to either give the effect of animation or depth.  Almost like a physical forerunner of the GIF.

There are several artists who employ this technique to varying degrees of success, however I think it was most effectively used by Jeff Robb in his work Unnatural Causes 2 (represented by Mauger Modern Art stand G4).  In this work, the lenticular adds both movement and depth, as we are presented with a black and white photograph of naked women contained within hexagons and contorted into an uncomfortable position within the geometry of the space - reminiscent of a beehive.  The unnaturalness of this human apery is given a certain patina by the use of the lenticular, recalling a science fiction based dystopia.

Dr Viktor Schroeder Pertwee, Anderson and Gold - stand 2

The story of Schroeder reads like an extract from an existentialist novel. Born in Germany in 1946, Schroeder was the GP in a small rural village, until suffering a breakdown due to the misdiagnosis and death of Anja Roth, a young patient. He then became a patient himself of unorthodox cult psychiatrist R D Laing at Kingsley Hall.

He was encouraged to explore and discharge the ghost of Anja through art therapy and the medium of painting. This approach to Schroeder’s treatment was not successful, precipitating instead, a growing obsession with mortality and the inevitability if death.

As well as his assemblage vitrines on display at the LAF, Schroeder is an obsessive collector of Memento Mori, reliquaries, and Vanitas paintings. His works are simultaneously macabre and beautiful objects, calling to mind the embellished relics stored in the crypts of cathedrals, and medical specimens of the Victorian age. Personally, being someone who has studied the history of pain and death within art, I find these objects extremely touching as I see them as an attempt to contain an abject, fractured mind using the symbology of Christian art. Schroeder is distilling obsession into objects, which in turn are becoming beautifully constructed dioramas of his psyche.

Similarly, when I look upon these vitrines I see a scientific mind recording, archiving, and categorising the world. However in the case of Schroeder, the tropes of Jungian psychoanalysis are presented through the skulls, taxidermied animals, medical equipment, pocket watches, and bibles.