Caged. Is it a metaphor for life? Are we the jailer and the jailed, caged by our fears and desires? Are we helpless creatures unable to change anything?
The exhibition of machine and video sculpture, Caged, by Debla and Kurt Geissel at HEREArt, poses basic concerns about the human condition with a mixture of humor and seriousness. Sometimes it works and sometimes it fails, ending up with a sight gag or a one-liner.
No Control is a series of eight hanging songbird cages containing large eggs, about a foot in length. Six have small videos inside with varying images: static, Jeopardy, news about the Pope, a silhouette of a bird, etc. The eggs emit a variety of sounds and move around in the cages, some banging violently as if the creature inside was trying to break out of the shell as well as the cage.
The eggs are obviously too large for the cages. Theres been a mistake; the shells inhabitants are meant for broader vistas. The implication here is, were limited and trapped, and from the very beginning we struggle, desperately sometimes, and hopelessly. The piece is a successful combination of technology and art.
They beat me, did not let me sleep and made me sit naked on a bottle of hot sauce is described by the Geissels as a tech mech sculpture. The title comes form a 1990 Kuwaiti POW. The viewer enters a small, curtained-off area containing a chair and the video sculpture. The video comes in and out of focus but the audio is always normal. We see and hear the 1987 press conference called by R. Budd Dwyer, the state treasurer or Pennsylvania, after he had been convicted of bribery. In a horrifying finale, Dwyer pulled out a .357 magnum revolver, put it in his mouth and killed himself. The piece, according to Debla Geissel, was constructed for another show as a comment on Virtual Reality.
I always have a problem when an artist takes a piece of sensational journalism like this or the Rodney King beating and tries to turn it into art. I'm not interested in the art part of the piece, whether its a play on the concept of virtual reality or not. I'm too shocked and horrified by Dwyers suicide.
The piece titled TV Lamps and another piece, Untitled, magnet with miniature monitor, are visually interesting and clever but lacking in substance. TV Lamps seems to be a one liner about the phenomena of lamps for television sets, especially in the early days of TV when some lamps were so hideous. These lamps are quite chic, wall mounted and contain small TV monitors where the light bulb should be. Untitled, magnet with miniature monitor, is a sight gag with speeded up cars crossing a bridge, The magnet surrounding the monitor is, I guess, causing the excess. It resembles a frame from a Charlie Chaplin film, but he would have expanded on the idea.
The major component of The Pig is a complex video organized around the treatment of pigs and cataloging of pig images and associations. All of this is humorously interwoven with a view of the warlike and gluttonous nature of man. In a contest between mans and pigs good qualities, the pig is clearly the winner.