for your consideration: October 2009

21.10.09

gehard dementz

My Headphones Save My Life
158 x 38 x 35 cm

Your Monsters Are Just Like Mine
168.5 x 38 x 35 cm

Everything He Lied Was True
166 x 37.5 x 50 cm

You Have Stolen My Silence
167.5 x 55 x 38 cm

You Have Stolen My Silence (Detail)
167.5 x 55 x 38 cm

The Mouth Full Of Stars
166 x 50 x 40 cm

The Dark Celebration of Gehard Demetz

Gehard Demetz is a mystery artist, the only thing that we know about him is that he was born in 1972, Italy, and that he currently lives in the mountains of Selva Gardena. Maybe this is the only thing that matters when you set an eye on his absolutely marvelous wooden sculptures, since you forget everything you may have in your mind. Why lie, this is not wood, this is the material of the dreams. And dreams are the perfect place for dark surrealism to rise. What are those lost children looking for? What’s the story that they hide? They look at you and it seems that they are inviting you to torture them. Or to pay for having tortured them in the past, as if they were the habitants of a forgotten orphanage where bad things were happening.

Their sad expressions come as a contrast to the almost porcelain aspect of the wood. It seems that innocence was interrupted there and now it’s time for justice, for the revenge of the good. The missing wooden parts of the sculptures reveal the aching truth. That life may be at moments superficial and seemingly happy-go -lucky, but nobody can hide from the past, nobody can escape his ghosts. Gerald Demetz’s sculptures leave you defenseless. Addicted to darkness, you keep begging for more.

Apostolos Mitsios
Yatzer

16.10.09

the shock tactic

Artist Apes Crucifixion in London

Two controversial works by the artist Paul Fryer––a crucified ape and a black Jesus sitting on an electric chair––are on view in a former church in London, reports Andrew Hough for the Daily Telegraph. The pieces are part of a wider exhibition of sixty works that are being shown for two weeks at the former Holy Trinity Church, now known as One Marylebone. The show features sixteen artists and is titled “The Age of Marvelous”; it coincides with the Frieze Art Fair in nearby Regent’s Park.

Organizers say the exhibition is designed to “integrate areas of human knowledge that exist outside the boundaries of traditional art making.” Fryer noted that the gorilla artwork “is a reminder of our collective responsibility to protect those who are least able to protect themselves,” he said. “It features an image which I obviously realize is provocative but which I hope may evoke sadness and compassion as well as outrage.”

Joe La Placa, the curator, defended the exhibition, saying it was designed to inspire people to think and understand “deeper meanings.” The director of All Visual Arts admitted some people would be shocked by the exhibition but rejected suggestions it was designed purely to shock.

Artforum.com

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When does the shock tactic fail? At what point does it push more people away than it pulls in? Is it ever too much?