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Mackenzie

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Plural

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Review

Sabrina Tarasoff is a curator and writer based in Paris.

The 23,000-square-foot location that up until the late ’90s held the Guggenheim Museum’s gift shop in New York City’s Soho district could now be best described as an exhibition hall-cum-retail space-cum Mecca (at least for those who hold Miuccia Prada as God). Taken over by Prada as its flagship store in 2001, with none other than Rem Koolhaas leading its redesign, the space stretches through a full New York block, not so much as a corridor, but a wormhole to the future: with cylindrical glass elevators, dressing room walls that turn opaque at a simple touch, and a wave-shaped double staircase in zebrawood that extends the full length of the interior only to serve as a spot for trying on clog-heeled sandals and the like. It is – or was – contemporaneity itself, expressed in conspicuous architectural moves, with, as the late New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp once suggested, “space as its ultimate luxury; space, and the dedication of so little room to stuff you can buy.”

While it would be speculative at best to assume that Eileen Quinlan paid any particular attention to the Prada flagship ordeal in her recent exhibition at Campoli Presti, it seems to stand as a viable example of the strategies of presentation that are disseminated in her work. The redefinition of Prada’s retail identity through pervasive winks to museum-like presentation, particularly considering the scarcity of products actually on display, puts into equal question the intertwinement of art and commerce – or rather, the subsumption of artistic practices into commercial environments. Quinlan’s exhibition, _Double Charlie_, inverts this hierarchy, as the economic propensity of a photograph – and its infinite reproducibility – is aired out. In a poignant art-world faux pas (but a faux pas nonetheless), _Double Charlie_ consists of 12 chromogenic prints, or, more specifically, two almost identical images installed in full editions of six (all 2015). Acknowledging this multiciplicity within the exhibition space asserts a very welcome attempt to remove some of the hush that surrounds the commercial aspects of artistic production. It’s a necessary breach of etiquette aimed at destabilizing the ever-present (mis)conception that art and commerce exist in separate realms. Quinlan’s photographs force an engagement with both sides: on the one hand, demystifying the art object from its mythic singularity by displaying full editions, and on the other, acquiescing to collector protocol by titling and presenting them as installation.

To engage in this strategy plainly would appear downright cynical, were it not for the artist’s rigidly intuitive process. The images themselves are mystical abstractions of something akin to leather bathed in a theatrically amber light. A soft and supple Prada bag, perhaps, staged as a still-life in an elusively ambiguous frame, waiting for the supposition of an opaque market slogan and a ritualized brand name to provide it with value. Of course, to give away too much would be vulgar or promiscuous; to give too little or too grudgingly, ineffective. Instead, Quinlan relies on a process based partly on rigidly self-imposed rules, and partly on strategic reflections on commercial photography. Though a full object is never displayed, it is hinted at through textures and curves, rendering it a ghost of its former self.

Though she has previously discussed the partial lack of meaning in her titles—using the names of obscure perfumes in order to alter a viewer’s perception of the work, without any real significance to the product per se – it is hard to consider these images without conjuring a parallel to the lingering powers of scents. Charlie, for example, was a successful perfume manufactured by Revlon, marketed in the mid-’80s with the confident, Annie Hall-esque Shelley Hack as its spokeswoman. Though there are surely ways of linking the perfume’s factual history to an ancillary discussion on marketing strategies, Quinlan’s use of Charlie as a title seems to be more about an emotive extraction. With the tensions of the Charlie Hebdo attacks still fresh in the spring air, the title is naturally evocative to a Parisian audience. The title infuses the work with a subsidiary meaning, in order to sway the viewer in a preferred direction through memory and emotion. It is a marketing strategy in itself, veiling the essence of the “product” in misleading and affective slogans – not unlike a darker version of Prada’s Candy: “with joie de vivre as a starting point for new ideas!”

If this was Quinlan’s intent with other similarly entitled series, such as _After Hours_ (currently on view at Campoli’s London space), _Double Charlie_, then, does not seem to be a disingenuous or tactical move. Rather, there is something touching about faintly dedicating the exhibition to the events of January past. Without delving into too much detail, it professes an ability to be vulnerable and real in spite of one’s artistic regime or outside expectations of emotionally void and impersonal practices. Quinlan extends herself and her own sentiments into the space and in return, the work gains the viewer’s trust.

Perhaps this navigation between disingenuity and sincerity in the art world and its mechanics is at the core of Quinlan’s explorations into studio photography. Prada may have Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron, the Dan Flavin-church-cum-grotto in suburban Milan, and both an artistic and philosophical history to legitimize its practices, yet it makes no pretense to exist outside of the market that sustains it – regardless of its impact. Art, on the other hand, operates largely under the illusory forcing of a market that has sought to maintain total opacity. At best, the systems of editioning and dissemination that have been devised – particularly for photography – are arbitrary, and purely intended to increase value through scarcity and elusiveness. In _Double Charlie_, Quinlan opens up a discourse in favour of transparency. She untangles art and commerce only to navigate the boundaries therein, and locate where photography, as a medium as well as an object, fits within the contemporary – and its markets. It is a realistic and inquisitive approach with room for hesitation, interjection and intuition.  
In the end, the “double” in _Double Charlie_ could refer to any number of things: the double edition, the double standards of the art world, or the illusion of specificity that doubles the value of objects. Whatever one’s take, the exhibition raises crucial questions regarding the interplay of value, display and objects in an age of luxury, while forgetting to acknowledge the complicated role of the photographic medium itself.

Writer

Predecessors

issue-126-p65-67.pdf

Sabrina Tarasoff reviews Eileen Quinlan’s _Double Charlie_ shown at Campoli Presti, Paris. (March 21 – April 11, 2015). 

Eileen Quinlan: Double Charlie

Henry Adam Svec is a writer and scholar who is moving to Jackson, Mississippi.

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at,” as Oscar Wilde put it, “for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”[^1] Eleanor King’s recent exhibition, _Dark Utopian_, scours maps and diagrams of various scales for a better place that does not exist. Whether or not this interdisciplinary assemblage denotes a route to utopia, however, is a provocatively open question. Rather than offering legible instructions to paradise, King sets the viewer adrift across the smooth spaces of modernity, forcing us to reckon not only with an “impossible” destination, but also with the murky desires that might drive us there.

The main room of the exhibition is dominated by a massive wall painting, _Deepwater Horizon (BP)_, whose vibrant hues and stunning stripes reach from floor to ceiling and around the gallery’s winding walls. King has taken a standard cartographic view of the coastline, from Halifax to New York City, and exploded it with cool colours and angular contours – a bird’s eye representation washing out into abstract, mechanical patterning. It is an exhilarating image. The dazzle painting style to which she alludes was used by the British to disguise ships during the First World War (it also found its way into paintings by NSCAD president and Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer); but King’s gesture highlights contemporary reverberations of this colonial heritage, too, for both sea and land – and art – have become prime real estate. Indeed, from the point of view of corporations like British Petroleum, the whole world is a site of value extraction, what Martin Heidegger has called a “standing reserve,” just waiting to be called to productive action.[^2] Is King’s dazzle camouflage a defensive manoeuvre, then, an attempt to conceal both the map’s territory (and the map) from the hungry gaze of capitalists and speculators?

Extending the nautical and navigational themes is the sculpture _Rafts_. Two small punts lie in the middle of the gallery floor – the rickety vessels seemingly engaged in a vaguely sexual coupling, soft blue mounted onto faded yellow. As with the wall map, there is a medium-specific attention to materiality in the visually pleasing and playful work, arresting given its gothic minimalism. Yet, these found objects also introduce the question of political-aesthetic translation. Are such beautiful and cleverly positioned things to be desired or consumed? (Not owned, one would presume, since they are listed as materials only “borrowed” from actor John Dunsworth.) Or, are we meant to wonder about their usefulness as actual tools for survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? King has us scuttling between the gallery, the coastal province of Nova Scotia and the ideal society.

The other works in the main room focus more on aesthetics than pragmatics. _Wormholes VI, VII, VIII_ are large drawings on paper that have been imposed onto the wall painting like digital pop-up windows. With coloured pencils, King has repeatedly traced the shape of the Compact Disc and the vinyl LP to burrow winding, cascading paths, which bump into one another but do not manage to connect. In a similar vein, the sculpture _CD Worm_ is a stack of old CDs shaped into a bent tower – like a creature reaching up for rain. There is a less obvious connection between these meditations on the materiality of sonic media and the show as a whole, but conceptually they continue to riff on the themes of drive, utility and despair. It is as though King’s quest for utopia continues, but here in distinct media and forms rather than in geographical locations.

In the title work _Dark Utopian_, a video and sound piece that plays in a second room, we perhaps get the clearest articulation of the artist’s political vision. Via a recording of a Google Earth tour, we float slowly down the coastline (facing the land, not the sea), from Halifax to New York City and then back again. It is an eerily claustrophobic, lonely ride. We are also treated to a didactic protest song of sorts, though far from the optimistic anthems of the folksingers of the mid-20th century. King herself sings plaintively, her voice echoing, her electric guitar ringing slow arpeggios: “We’re so confused / We have no clue / How to get out of the mess we’re in / Is there no light at the end?” The earnest and melancholy tune is played loud enough to float faintly through the entirety of the space, giving the whole show a frosty, quizzical glaze.

Theorists and artists alike have worked to reimagine utopia over the past decades. Utopia is not necessarily a rigid framework to be imposed onto society; according to Ruth Levitas, it is only “a desire for a better way of being.”[^3] As is suggested by the exhibit’s title, _Dark Utopian_ is not all sunshine and rainbows and relational aesthetics, and there is a decidedly void affective energy running through it. Yet, it is in King’s ambivalence and high-punk aesthetic that we see her utopianism’s potential. It is in between – along the cold channels of our global systems, like seaways and Google Earth and digital networks and even the institutions of contemporary art – that we find our dwelling places, and that is where we need to do the hard work of desiring to be better together, for now.

[^1]: Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (Boston: J.W. Luce and Company, 1910).
[^2]: Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
[^3]: Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

issue-126-p64-66.pdf

Henry Adam Svec reviews Eleanor King’s _Dark Utopian_ shown at Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Jan 16 – June 14, 2015).

Eleanor King: Dark Utopian

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