'Ánima' at Resolution Gallery
by Cara Snyman
Fernando Maquieira's larger-than-life portraits of primates dominate the gallery. The Spaniard's photographs, together with South African Pasqual Tarazona's ink drawings make up 'Ánima', the latest exhibition to open at the newbie Resolution Gallery, curated by Ricardo Fornoni. Both bodies of work are shown as editioned digital prints, as is the specialisation of the gallery.
Maquieira's primates are imposing presences that force relation. They are shot deadpan with a narrow depth of field: only the eyes are in sharp focus, with everything else in a haze - a literal 'gorillas in the mist'. The flat background stripped of any detail seems artificial, while the apathetic expressions and stillness of the creatures implies captivity. Despite the large format, it is not immediately apparent that these are not live animals, and it takes a keen eye to recognise that they are in fact from a natural history museum. One might easily indulge in the fantasy, as Maurizio Cattelan does when he speaks about The ballad of Trotsky (his taxidermised horse hanging from a stirrup), that the animal is not dead, but 'in a state where it cannot exercises force (or) express energy'. The idea of the catatonic animal, is one way of speaking about taxidermy's power to raise the dead.
Here, the artist is an accomplice in the re-animation; not only in the act of taking the photograph that distances the 'sample' from its museum environment, but also manipulating the image to maintain the illusion of a live animal: on close scrutiny one can spot small water droplets on the surface of the subjects' eyes where Maquieira wet them prior to shooting.
The scale of the photos allows for an intimate examination of the faces, sometimes suffering from poor taxidermy or possibly neglect, such as in the obviously moulded and uneasy grimace of one baby chimpanzee. The realisation of the human hand in these animal faces gives one another perspective on the serious, intent, and even tragic expressions. As Deborah Root, in her book Cannibal Culture, puts it, 'Taxidermy forces animals to speak, but is only ventriloquism'. So too from Maquieira's head and shoulder shots of our closest relatives emerge a very human portrait - one that emphasizes the frailty rather than the supremacy of these large mammals and acknowledges the symbolic: the animal's transmutation into the human studio portrait. This personification or anthropomorphism that takes place in the mind of the taxidermist, the photographer and finally the viewer, could be characteristic of the narcissism that defines the human/animal relation.
Maquieira acknowledges Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Portraits' as inspiration for this 'Ánima' series, in which he photographed gorillas, leopards, bison and other animals, though only the primates are included here. It is an enlightening comparison. For 'Portraits' Sugimoto, commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, revisited the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's Museums that he first explored in the 'Dioramas and Wax Museums' series he began in 1976, which interestingly includes a number of works taken in natural history museums. While Maquieira shot the animals in a museum basement, away from their contextual display, Sugimoto did the exact opposite and his photos of 'wild' animals in their 'natural' habitat read as pure nature photography to the uninitiated. 'Portraits' are studies of leaders of thought and fancy from Napoleon Bonaparte to Lady Diana. With strategic lighting and without the tell-tale museum backdrops, the wax figures seem very real, even hyperreal: they are the definition of Baudrillard's simulacrum.
Selecting only the primates from Maquieira's original series was a good curatorial move as these are by far the most potent, due in part to the metaphorical depth lent by their close relation to the human. Not all of Maquieira's portraits here are equally successful: the cropped faces are far less effective than the head-and-shoulder works, which emphasize the stiffness of the 'sitters', and play with portraiture conventions and the human relation. That said, the series is an engaging and multi-layered body of work.
Pasqual Tarazona's Tadpole series is the second group of work in 'Ánima'. Tarazona, who some might know of through his earlier incarnation as fashion designer, has held a number of exhibitions in Johannesburg and Pretoria, but the Tadpole series is by far the most successful body of work this reviewer has seen.
Tadpole is made up of a series of organic ink shapes, a close sibling to the Rorschach blot. The animal is only directly referred to by the title, which seems a little arbitrary given the scope of the work. One could suggest that the series is a rendering of ánima (soul in Latin), rather than animal, and that the title limits the work, rich in association, unnecessarily.
The organic vertical shapes of dabbled ink are obviously phallic and also reminiscent of a mushroom cloud or smoke column: productive and destructive, a beginning and an end. It could stand for metamorphosis and evolution, as the press release indicates, or more broadly, and particularly in the context of this exhibition, change, as the opposite of stasis or death.
Tarazona's ephemeral ink drawings stand in stark contrast to the gravity and solidity of Maquieira's frozen sitters, creating an interesting visual dialogue. And while both Maquieira and Trazona contribute visually potent work to 'Ánima', the real strength of the exhibition lies in the interaction of their dissimilar series.
Colin Richards in his essay 'Artless Beasts?', considering the human/animal relation in art, says, 'In our live and living interactions and entanglements with animals we double, and mirror ourselves, and in so doing deal with death and suffering as we know it.' This seems particularly true for 'Ánima' that considers the broad themes of life and death, of human mortality, though the image of the animal.
Opens: May 8
Closes: July 5
Resolution Gallery
142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 880 4054
Email: info@resolutiongallery.com
www.resolutiongallery.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 4pm
