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Galerija Skuc : THE PLEASURE IS MINE - 7 Mar 2013 to 29 Mar 2013 Current Exhibition |
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Polona Tratnik, Monologues, 2000-2006
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THE PLEASURE IS MINE 7.3. - 29.3.2013 Caroline Heider, Natalia LL, Mladen Stropnik, Polona Tratnik, Joyce Wieland »The moment we try to provide a clear definition of what sexual activity is, we get into trouble. We get into trouble because human sexuality is ridden with this paradox: The further the sex departs from the “pure” copulating movement (i.e., the wider the range of elements it includes in its activity), the more “sexual” it can become. Sexuality gets sexualized precisely in this constitutive interval that separates it from itself«. Let this thought of the Slovene philosopher Alenka Zupancic serve as a starting point in the reflection of the key endeavours of the show entitled The pleasure is mine. How are we to reflect on the sexual? The last couple of decades saw this question arise mostly in the context of gender studies and its discourse, which sees the sexual in the multitude of sexual practices and the fluid identities which spring from »gender performativity«. But it seems that the emphasis here is somewhat different. The reflection has evidently turned from the question what the sexual is, toward the investigation into the emancipatory dimensions of gender. The discourse on the practices has left the question of what sex is, unanswered. The exhibition The pleasure is mine therefore strives to return to a more ontological investigation on the issues of sex and the sexual. Let us turn back for a moment to the introductory thought of Alenka Zupancic: sexuality as arising from the constitutive interval that separates it from itself. The works presented in the show touch on this very dimension: the sexual resists all attempts of its symbolization, but lingers in the field of the symbolic as a sort of parasitical entity that disturbs its symmetry. This is shown very subtly in Joyce Wieland’s film, Cat food, where an uneasy erotic dimension arises from the sophisticated and formally perfected footage of the “choreography” of a cat and its prey. Lacan’s thought that the animal eats regularly because it is not aware of the pleasure of hunger wittily loses its power. When a gesture of signification creates its space and the beings that inhabit it, something other gets produced, parasitizing on the productivity of the symbolic field. That is to say that the signifying order itself is born out of a fundamental constitutive deficiency that leaves its trail in the principle of pleasure. It is that very line of thinking that offers an interesting reading of Mladen Stropnik’s works. A minimal intervention that the artist performs in the medium of collage builds upon a certain asymmetry of the symbolic field, which makes it highly susceptible to parasitic meanings. Works show a simple and purely formal intervention of adding or removing the shape of a circle, which in turn formulates a fundamental inconsistency of the symbolic field by crystalizing it in a “sexualized” interpretation. A more explicit rendering of the same phenomenon is recognizable in the photography series by the Polish artist Natalia LL. The photographs work as a sort of dictionary of signs, which is intensified through a sequence of face expressions, elegant interaction of eyes and lips, to the height of playful eroticism. The work subtly alludes to advertising strategies that build upon the link between the senses of sight and taste, which in the sensual constellation of elements in Natalia LL’s work come together in a consumerist appeal. The problematic ontological status of sexuality is reflected in the artistic practice of the Austrian artist Caroline Heider. From the initial choice of photographic material, which she often treats as readymade, through simple interventions of breaking and folding, her works create elegant tensions, showing the symbolic field as un-whole. They challenge our gaze to try to re-unite the image, but to no avail: the image now acts as a formula for the asymmetry of the sexually contaminated symbolic. The work by Slovene artist Polona Tratnik entitled Monologues possesses a different kind of suggestiveness, developing the element that in the context of heterosexual pornography remains inexplicit, in the rear. If it is true that nothing is less sexual than the “pure” copulative movement, the sexual must “exist” through a number of “additional” elements, which “sexualize” the very fact of a sexual act. In the light of this claim the intervention of Polona Tratnik becomes even more intriguing: with the transfer of emphasis to the inexplicit, “scenography” role of men, the limelight shifts to the paradoxical status of human sexuality as dislocated from itself. Sexuality therefore does not arise from the duality of sexes or the multitude of genders, but, as Alenka Zupancic puts it, as »self-propelling« springs from the »singularity of pleasure«. Its ontological doubtfulness, impossibility of being unambivalently articulated, is the very element of elusiveness that the presented works are echoing by leaving it unsaid, leaving it free to linger in its own space of out-of-jointness. Curated by: Vladimir Vidmar You are cordially invited to the guided tours of the exhibition on Wednesday, 13 March and 27 March 2013 at 6 pm. Acknowledgements: Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna, Austria; Ana Grobler; Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, Slovenia; participating artists |
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