| Shannon Bool |
| Elektra |
| 18 Nov 2006 - 20 Jan 2007 |
| Exhibition view |
| Press release |
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_Since the middle of 2004, you have been producing bodies of work that play with psychoanalytic content like your "Wolfman Series" or your Art Statement in Basel "The Fiftieth Session". Could you tell me your interest in Psychoanalysis and how it relates to the current exhibition, "Elektra"?
The works in the current exhibition stem from a body of work that I have been developing since the beginning of 2005. At this time, I was thinking of how Freud presented the Electra complex, but I actually became interested in the idea of Electra when I saw an experimental theatre presentation of Electra by the Polish director Wloksimierz Staniewski. The performance was completely explosive, but it was somehow balanced by Staniewski’s choreography of concentrated gestures, or hieronomy. The gestures that Staniewski uses are not direct references to the original hieronomy, as the exact code or interpretation of these gestures has been lost. What was interesting to me was the tension between the fixed, formal gestures and the unrestrained emotional content.
I found something similar to this when I came across documentation of the collaboration between Martha Graham and Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi created what he called "Mindscapes" for Graham’s performances. In Graham’s portrayal of Clytemnestra, you see how Noguchi’s set finely tunes Graham’s expressiveness by providing a psychological space for it.
In Euripedes "Elektra", there is also a brilliant balance between unrestrainable emotional expression and the formal anchoring that takes place through Euripides’ portrayal of Electra. Euripedes’ Electra is harrowingly obsessed with justice and highly efficient, but at the same time her identification with her victim status is almost campy.
_Could you give a brief outline of the Plot of Euripedes "Electra"?
Several years before the play takes place, Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aigisthos. Her son, Orestes, was smuggled out of the country by an old servant of Agamemnon's; her daughter, Electra, was married off to a farmer, for fear that if she married a man of noble rank, her children might avenge their grandfather. The adult Orestes returned to Argos. The siblings plotted the double murder. Aigisthos was first murdered, and shortly after, Clytemnestra was summoned to Electra’s home to see a supposed child of Electra's. She and Electra argued, then went inside the house,where Orestes murdered her. At the end, Orestes and Electra were overcome by guilt.
_Your work connects abstract ornamentation and narrative figuration. A significant characteristic of your work is the experiment with extremely varying materials: photograms, drawings, collages, painting, installation and sculpture. The combination of deep perspective and representation of surface is also significant, as in the installation "schrägraum" (2005-06) that was recently shown in the Hamburg Kunstverein, or the wall drawing "origin/inversion" (2005). How do you see the connection between form and content in your work.
_I don’t really differenciate between form and content. In some of the works in the current exhibition, ornament provides a new context that intermerges with my initial references. For example, in "The Murder of Clytemnestra", I have extended Noguchi’s set design so it appears to be responding to the murder scene. "In Kore Behind Curtain" I veiled a semi-transparent pattern over a documenation photo of a Kore in profile. The result is the illusion that the Kore is animated, almost human. It is widely believed that the original intention of archaic Korai sculptures (which seem at first very stiff) was represent –to a certain extent- individuals. In this case, I wanted to use ornamentation to take the viewer back to the statue’s original experienced qualities. In general, I use different elements of pictorial language to disorient my senses. And then through this process I find it essential to isolate elements of expression that are of importance to me. Ultimately, the formal decisions that belong to the process are events that function as content in their own right.
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