(tekst v slovenščini spodaj)
First there was body
By Jana Putrle Srdić
The artworks (sculptures, performances, objects, videos) from the cycle entitled Undefined Body are linked by the most – paradoxically for sculpturing – intangible: the idea, not yet entirely defined thought, invisible body, that is thought as hallowed, as repulsive, that is sloughing from the extraordinary into a conditionally attractive, through a multitude of various media, that the artist utilizes as his expression. This is no insistence at classical sculpturing or per formative ness as a fashionable trend; the means serve the idea, however, the primary fascination over the material and procedure (the cast lard with cracklings; almost invisible hairs, sublimely felted into a shirt) turned over from the artist to the spectator.
The conception of an idea can be traced back to the enthusiasm over some small sculpture from the art museum in Frankfurt am Main from the beginning of the 19th century. A spiritual person holds – in a glass dish – a hair, probably a relic of a saint. When we mention the locks of Elvis Presley’s hair, or a lock of lover’s hair soldiers used to keep, we come close to the notion of fetishism. Fetishes are, amongst other things aesthetic-ised objects and photography has, with its distance towards the object a suitable medium, instantly determining aesthetic view, hence the uneasiness when – in it – we recognize a hair from an urinal, the very same hair that is – next to the photograph – also exhibited, and of course picked from a public urinal – »with no filter«. The aesthetic function is therefore replaced by a documentary, an exploring one, we could say.
Had Duschamp turned/made a commodity into an artistic object and Gober’s urinals are models of public lavatories with no function and represent, as modelled objects the work of a sculptor, then Srdić Janežič is interested in the traces on the commodity that testify of cooled down absence, the body that once was but has gone, its excrement, »impurity«. Before we come to mention the fragility and diminishing, let us mention that added to the work there is always a touch of humour, when we can suspect/sense that it’s a joke of a teasing artist.
A human figure with a pig’s head made from lard and cracklings is cast after the body of the artist and the head of an anonymous pig from a pig farm, while the series should – in its continuation – contain a smaller figure of a pig with the head of the artist made from the artist’s fat (generated by z liposuction). In the latter case there is far less material available. The body’s mould will be made according the 3D scan of a pig and the artist’s head. Srdić Janežič is obviously avoiding expressiveness that is inevitably been imposed on us in the case of modelled sculptures. He does not care for the feeling, but the transmission of the real form; the mould here literally representing the space of the missing body, the method becoming expertise; it could have been serial as what the artist is interested in is the perception of the whole, i.e. the material – lard and human fat – amalgamated with the form and all the connotations it brings along: animal farms and food industry, beauty surgery and its »remnants«, food transformed into an artefact (here we can refer to the artist’s sculptures made from bread), the form of the body as its absence, animate-inanimate material. For some more sensual individuals (gourmands) the material of a human figure with a pig’s head represents something attractive (the subcutaneous fat was – in baroque, and not only then – considered aesthetic, even erotic), for many it may be repulsive, or just a joke.
And where is the body after which the void, the sculpture, the hairs and the shirt remained? Is is a body of a stranger, arising disgust, or an artist that can be praised? It’s left many traces behind, but has yet slipped away; it is undefined, we can label it with various phantasms, we can make it sublime or horrifying, for the unheimliche, the »something«, that returns to us reshaped through horrifying dreams. First there was the Word, we may say the Idea and its temple/foundation is the Body.
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Najprej je bilo Telo
Jana Putrle Srdić
Umetniška dela (kipe, performanse, objekte, video) iz cikla Nedefinirano telo povezuje tisto najbolj – za kiparstvo paradoksalno – neotipljivo: ideja, še ne povsem definirana misel, nevidno telo, ki se misli kot posvečeno, kot gnusno, ki se levi iz nenavadnega v pogojno privlačno, skozi množico različnih medijev, ki se jih umetnik poslužuje za svoj izraz. Tu ne gre za vztrajanje pri klasičnem kiparstvu ali za performativnost kot modno muho, sredstva služijo ideji, vendar pa se prvinska fascinacija nad materialom in postopkom (ulita svinjska mast z ocvirki; skoraj nevidne dlake, sublimno filcane v srajco) prenaša z umetnika na gledalca.
Zametku ideje se lahko sledi nazaj do navdušenja ob nekem malem kipcu iz muzeja umetnosti v Frankfurtu na Maini z začetka 19. stoletja. Duhovna oseba drži v stekleni posodici dlako, verjetno relikvijo svetnika. Če omenimo pramene las Elvisa Presleyja ali pramen las ljubice, ki so ga hranili vojaki, se približamo pojmu fetišizacije. Fetiši so med drugim estetizirani predmeti in fotografija je s svojo distanco do objekta primeren medij, ki že takoj določi estetski pogled, zato pa je neugodje – ko na njej prepoznamo dlako s pisoarja, isto dlako, ki je ob fotografiji tudi razstavljena in seveda pobrana z javnih moških stranišč – »brez filtra«. Estetsko funkcijo torej zamenja dokumentarna, spoznavna, bi lahko rekli.
Če je Duschamp uporabni predmet naredil za umetniški in so Goberjevi pisoarji makete sanitarij, ki nimajo funkcije ter so kot zmodelirani objekti delo kiparja, pa Srdić Janežiča zanimajo sledi na uporabnem predmetu, ki pričajo o ohlajeni odsotnosti, telesu, ki je bilo in ga ni več, njegovih izločkih, »nečistosti«. In še preden omenimo krhkost in minevanje, povejmo, da je delu vedno dodan humorni element, ob katerem posumimo, da gre za šalo zafrkljivega umetnika.
Človeška figura s prašičjo glavo iz svinjske masti in ocvirkov je ulita po telesu umetnika in glavi (anonimnega) prašiča s prašičje farme, medtem ko naj bi bil cikel v nadaljevanju dopolnjen z manjšo figuro prašiča z glavo umetnika iz umetnikovega sala (pridobljenega z liposukcijo), materiala je tu seveda precej manj, kalup telesa pa bo izdelan po 3D skenu prašiča ter umetnikove glave. Očitno se Srdić Janežič izogiba ekspresivnosti, ki se nam nujno vsiljuje ob modeliranih kipih. Ne gre mu za občutek, temveč za prenos resnične oblike, kalup je tu dobesedno prostor manjkajočega telesa, metoda postane strokovna, lahko bi bila serijska, kar umetnika zanima je percepcija celote se pravi materiala – svinjske in človeške masti – spojenega z obliko in vse konotacije, ki jih ta prinaša: živalske farme in prehrambena industrija, lepotna kirurgija in njeni »ostanki«, hrana transformirana v umetniški objekt (tu se lahko navežemo na pretekle umetnikove kipe iz kruha), oblika telesa kot njegova odsotnost, živost-neživost materiala. Za nekoliko bolj čutne posameznike (gurmane?) je material človeške figure s prašičjo glavo nekaj privlačnega (podkožna maščoba je v baroku – pa ne le tedaj – veljala za estetsko, erotično), za mnoge morda odbijajoč ali pa zgolj šala.
In kje je telo, po katerem je ostala praznina, kip, dlake in srajca? Je to telo neznanca, ki vzbuja odpor ali umetnika, ki ga lahko povzdigujemo? Za sabo je pustilo sledi, a se je že izmaknilo, nedefinirano je, nanj lahko prilepimo poljubne fantazme, lahko ga napravimo za sublimnega ali grozljivega, za unheimliche, tisto »nekaj«, kar se nam vrača preoblikovano skozi grozljive sanje. Najprej je bila Beseda, lahko bi rekli Ideja in njen tem(p)elj je Telo.
Genre: performance / body art / exhibition
Where: Gallery Alkatraz
When: 7. December 2010 – 7. January 2011
Producer: Gallery Alkatraz
Coproducer: The Gulag Institute for Contemporary Arts
Author: Zoran Srdić Janežič
Making of mould: Atelier Jernej Mali
Photo: Sunčan Stone
