If the previous review examined two very different ways that the “haunted” was presented, this time around is another way of presenting “spirit.” In both of those instances, the mediation of spirit and the performative spiritualization of this mediation were central. And in one of those exhibitions, the hunt for the spirit was expressed largely through a parody of generic church forms, a use of the supposed spiritual significance of monochromes, and the mystique of tourist imagery. In Jeremy Shaw’s Localize Affect at Bradley|Ertaskiran, something close to this is played out more directly and, importantly, not filtered through romantic mystique but a sense of the demonstrative.
Atypically for the gallery, this exhibition spans both of its floors. At the entrance is a series of photos of stuttered bodies which have been manipulated by processes to convey the impression of intense experience. They are rendered in a fashion familiar from high modernist and fashion photography from a century ago.
The main gallery space covers up its usually exposed metallic supports, setting low, nondescript benches among them. The photos are set in deep mirrored frames with a cut prism superimposed on them. These photo-sculptures run along most of the walls, except for one left strangely bare, a choice that does not seem to serve any visual purpose and comes off as a gap.
It is one of those exhibitions that looks far better represented on social media than in person. As a series of static objects in white space, given a vague sense of human scale by the clunky inclusion of a “viewer” among the works, they attract a degree of curiosity sustained far beyond what they elicit when encountered directly. This is largely because the photographic representation of the artworks makes them more mystical than they are. In situ, the opposite effect comes across.
Positioned in their oddly shaped prismatic domes, they first strike the viewer with their novelty. This grows thin pretty fast. When looking at the image, you pivot around it, interacting with it as the seemingly arbitrary object of the visual contraption superimposed over it. Although there are variations in how these prisms have been formed, the overall impression is fairly uniform. Moving from one image to the next becomes an exercise in over-familiarity that progressively makes the images register less as anything singular.
The “kaleidoscope” effect intended to convey the strong affects supposedly captured by the images reads like a badly concocted “acid trip” sequence from a 60s psychedelic exploitation film. What ends up being stressed, apparently unintentionally, is the extent to which affect and effects are blurred together. It is not the “content” that matters here, but the gimmickry, which seems cheap.
Perhaps the sense of midness this creates is intended to suggest the universal or holy in the banal or its transcendence, but visually a pervasive dullness overwhelms it all. Depending on your mood, this might serve a meditative purpose.
Stepping away from these prisms, the general purposing of the space becomes more apparent. Concentrated in symmetrical arrangement on the far wall are three works in stained glass. The exhibition text highlights them as the centrepiece.
In the gallery’s Main Space, Shaw’s bespoke stained-glass sculptures (Maximum Horizon) meld precision and logic with the spiritual and the profane. Made using traditional techniques of mouth-blown glass and lead combined with vibrant color gradients, the artworks and their shadow play replicate the awe and majesty of religious iconography. Historical stained-glass windows were often seen from a distance, out of reach but in elevated proximity to godliness. Shaw’s work is made according to the same divine and transformative principles of light, but experienced up close, not unlike staring into a screen. The works’ single-point perspective designs recall ubiquitous representations of vortexes, portals, and digital horizons, found in science fiction, pop culture, and spiritual imagery alike to suggest the transition from one state, one reality, or one existence, to another. They beckon the viewer forward towards the unknown, the infinite.
The lead is cast in a uniform way that shows little sign of the intricacies of handiwork and seems mechanical. These “windows” are divorced from natural light and only cast the soft light reflections of the white cube on the wall. Traditionally, stained glass work was a highly animated form of light art that shifted dramatically in time as a kind of proto-cinematic device for superimpositions. But here it is flat, sterile, and de-animated.
Lacking the use of iconography common to stained glass, they are more soft colour washes, like the vague and de-fanged “religiosity” that is the purported theme of the exhibition. Here, it reads as pastel “spirituality” that does not even amount to the asinine variety of the cut glass healing crystals in the little boutique down the street from me or some doodad from a Winners clearance sale.This aspect is even more obvious given what the basement bunker room contains. Once you exit this big blank space, you walk down the stairs and travel the dark, low corridor that could have suggested a catacomb. You enter the high-ceilinged bunker room, nearly dark. This contains the work Untitled (There In Spirit). Only one object is placed in there. It is a mock station of votive candles. Each “flame” is reminiscent of the plastic lights that some restaurants put out after dark. Starting with only a few lighted ones, they all gradually come up. The lights flash in patterns like the lights on a Christmas tree. Some ambient music builds and plays. It goes dark again and then mechanically cranks through another repetition.
The most interesting aspect of this little automated performance is that the heating unit in the ceiling would randomly and almost violently clank on, creating a din that overwhelmed the rest. This seems to be more a sign of failure than rigorous and concise planning. Or maybe the seemingly aleatoric superimposition of these two mechanical series (that of the space and its object) was the point.
Returning to my initial suggestion: the basic aesthetic operation carried out by the work is demonstrative. To the extent to which it is a documentation of affect, as the set of images at the entrance suggests, “documentation” is the affecting of a series of highly aestheticized mechanical gestures applied to found material. Each strategy the artist employs suggests far more about the logic of display than it does about the ostensible content. The results are a kind of op-art that ends up testifying to the poverty of its mechanisms and the absence of affect in art.