The brilliant Joan Jonas represented the USA at Venice in 2015. The US pavilion galleries were filled with video installations, drawing, sculptures and props, which explore the fragility of nature, whilst taking on some of the qualities of a stage set.
Having seen the work of Helena Almeida first, and being struck by the rigour and economy of the concepts explored, her position as a female artist known in Portugal, but not as well known as some of her American peers, I was apprehensive of the suggestive and bombastic quality of Erik van Lieshout’ title and marketing imagery.
Going into his show the wrong way round, so seeing the second floor work first, also supported this feeling. The walls were plastered irreverently with digital printed imagery, some roughly assembled though functional seating, alongside two projections on freestanding wooden screens. The film is the same, but the subtitled languages differ. This trend in multi-language access, is again evident in other works in the show and must be applauded. The installation called Die Insel (2016) and Die Insel works on paper (2015-16) shows us in the projection, the artist, Erik van Lieshout, pulling up weeds and plants and placing them in a haphazard fashion over wire mesh. He stomps about this island, which he visits by boat every day and planned as part of a four-month residency to document his performance in the space. The artist is loud, his presence is disruptive and the filmography is hand held and abrasive. Behind the screen’s we see collections of drawings, collages, newspaper cut-out of the Brexit or the Bruxit news (as Lieshout labels it) in one corner and in the opposite corner, another collection of images, of islands, utopian and other, surrounded by water. This room is followed by a room with a series of works, called Riot/ After the Riot (2014-2015), a series of Untitled works bar one exception called Pro Russian, (2014). The works are either mixed media, charcoal, or ink and vinyl on paper. The works demonstrate van Lieshout’ ability to draft imagery and draw, whilst also demonstrating his interest in the political currents at play in today’s societal moment. However, this floor feels too much of a loose end and is bitty and leaves me disappointed.
So down the stairs I go. This floor should only take a few minutes to see if floor two is anything to go by. How wrong was I.
Floor 1 is where the magic truly resides. This is where van Lieshout displays both his showmanship and his alter ego, in this case his vulnerable, humane side. Works include Basement, (2014) a built warren of tunnels, leading to rooms with videos and corridors with photocopies, photographs, text and works called Janus (2012),Ministry of Subculture (2012), Sex is Sentimental (2009), Ego, (2013) and other works. The exhibition space is transformed by multi-installed works, in multiple rooms, that architecturally appear both precarious and quickly fabricated to create an interior within the interior of WIELS. As we move through the show we see the behind the scenes, views of the built structure, façades and works beyond, twisted into a landscape of views and vistas. We are invited to walk up a carpeted slope to see the video work Ego, to duck under another structure to see House of Guilt (2013-2014) and walk down tunnels evoking the basement of the Hermitage Museum in Moscow, where he worked to improve the lives of the many cats who reside below, by creating for them a Modernist-inspired environment with scratching poles. The collection of works in this show, which includes many video works, moves from the utterly personal as in Sex is Sentimental (2009), to the political issues of asylum and immigrants in Dog (2015) and the humorous in Basement (2014). In a complete reversal of earlier opinion, this exhibition is ambitious, intriguing and very exciting and I’m blown away by it.
Helena Almeida’s solo exhibition is presented in WIELS alongside the two floor extravaganza from Erik van Lieshout.
Both solo shows, both artists present themselves, in their imagery and content. The contrast otherwise is thought provoking. Almeida’s photographic, video and painting works are presented on stark white walls, whilst van Lieshout presents a built collaged installation of rooms, hill and tunnels.
Almeida’s work is meticulously produced, and in it she questions the action of painting, the body as performer and the space between the spectator, the canvas and the artist gesture. She makes series of works titled, Inhabited Canvas, Inhabited Drawing and Seduce. The works here are nearly all B&W photographs with elements such as acrylic paint, horsehair thread and pen. The Inhabited Canvas series of 1975 – 1976, are fascinating works in that they disrupt your sense of where you are sited as viewer. The use of mirror and reflection and Almeida’s hand with brush, altering through versions, de-stabilises our position in relation to the image, her body as represented by the image and the physical stuff of the paint.
The evolution of the paint itself as the image sequences, in the work, Study for inner Improvement (1976) sees the blue paint applied as if in the air itself, where it becomes form, a form that is consumed through the mouth by the artist portrait. Here the artist as corporeal and photograph is challenged by the real substance of paint. Another Study for Inner improvement (1977), sees the paint become stuff and form that can be picked up and moved from the ether to being placed in the artist’s pocket.
Inhabited drawings, (1977), B&W Photograph, Horsehair (6 elements), is a narration of the making process. Image 1, a line is drawn on a photograph of paper, the shadow hand and pen is visible, a black line-pen is evident. The shadow hand begins in Image 2 to adjust the line. In 3 – the line is puckered. In 4 the line is made three dimensional and physical as a protruding element. 5. The pen break through the film that is the paper and we see the nib as breaking the surface between the images world and our physical space and reality. The thread-line protrudes even more. 6. The pen, the line and the artists finger moves further into the space between one world and another. The veil between worlds is absolutely transgressed.
Illusion made physical is an inherent part of Helena Almeida’s work as is performance. The performative act as a way to test ideas to do with the act of being an artist, a woman and politically minded are demonstrate in this exhibition. The act of artist as painter is more fully explored in the earlier 1970’s works and the later more recent pieces delve more substantially into the artist’s body as tool. In a series of large photographs titled, Inside Me (18 elements) 1998, we see the artist dressed in black in a number of incumbent positions on the floor. It’s as if at moments she is documenting her own death. ‘This is what I could look like dead’, is almost what she shouts at us to acknowledge. Maybe this work represents some form of death or collapse. Some of the images seem more hopeless than others and are better images for it. When her legs are upright or falling down, there is the suggestion of some life, but maybe we are seeing a lingering evolution, paused, re-winded, forwarded, paused. This sequence of images, test the best version, the ideal image of collapse. The fact that we are looking at a performance for camera, is strategically suggested by the curatorial decision to place opposite the work Seduce, B &W Photographs, 2 elements (2002). This work shows the artist standing, her back to us, and leaning to the left in one and the right in the other. This suggests the limbering up process for getting the body warm before the photo –shoot, work begins. Im still unsure as to whether this is a good decision. It reinforces the liveness and action of the performer, and perhaps as such could be seen to undermine the poignancy of the artist auto-documentation of her inevitable demise, and her ability to control that image. Almeida’s, desire to do this is evident in her enthusiasm for her face to be seen in the earlier works, a fact that is no longer made visible to us in the more recent works, now she is older. Now her focus is on the clothed and articulated body, hair covers the facial expression.
There are many works, worth mentioning in this show, but the one other that stands out is Study for the work Seduce, Video Projection, B&W. This is a sequence of video chapters, of the artist trying to balance on one leg wearing a high heel shoe. The continuing performance, shows us the many attempts to balance successfully on one leg, but the failure is evident. She uses a stool, she swops feet, in order to give each a rest, and as time goes on it is clear that the high heel hurts her and she makes sounds to that effect against the backdrop of classical music. The work explodes the convention of the necessity for women to be a certain type of femininity in society and the difficulty in reality of achieving these ideals.
