Annihilation- Dante Guthrie, Lindsay Lion Lord, William Mora, Andrew Rutherdale, Cléo Sjölander
Galerie Laroche/Joncas
March 20 – April 22, 2023 review by Natalia Vitotijevic
The art pieces communicate as a collection of artifacts. First, we are met with Cléo Sjölander’s gothic ceramic sculptures on our left, warding off danger. William Mora’s anachronistic ceramic sculptures are on our right, inviting us to investigate further. As we walk through the space, Dante Guthrie’s bronze casted sculptures appear on plinths, challenging our ideas of creation and the object. On the far wall we are presented with Lindsay Lion Lord’s textile work, a large mystic quilt communicating with us. Andrew Rutherdale’s laser engraved SCOBY and insects with aluminum frames propose us a new alternative to the object – something which could include both the living and the dead.
The idea of our world no longer existing looms through the exhibit. A protective atmosphere, a desire to overcome the bad. Sjölander’s gargoyles could be warding off our own gargouille. Is our current gargouille like the gargouille of the W.H Auden’s Age of Anxiety? The threat of a nuclear armageddon?Annihilation could be a response to our moment. However, our moment goes further than a nuclear armageddon. In the past, we had the chance to hope that destruction could not reach us. In 2023, we are acutely aware that we will inevitably perish along with the enemy, with destruction, and with any ruination we face.
We’ve been designated a new condition. A condition defined by the urgency of capitalism. The current matter of owning nothing yet being content. The creation of a new, second nature, that we have the capability to manipulate and control. Accepting the consequences of these changes, while attempting to preserve our humanist values, autonomy and freedom.
Cléo Sjölander’s pieces render this condition by presenting us sculptures that imply the existence of something frightening. Flesh Renewal, 2023 is a sharp ceramic frame, with a flesh-like material stretched out and caught into the sharp hooks. Sjölander’s piece plays with the skin as a metonym for the human. The piece of human is contained and hung within the frame. Restricted from its own body and world.
William Mora’s Guards and La Cucha Me Dice ‘No Hay Nada De Imposible, Solamente Hombres Incapables‘ touch into the gothic psyche and the entanglement of despair. The sculptures are relic-like, haunting us. They haunt while at the same time tormenting us of what our future brings and, reminding us of the state of the world. Fragmentation, ruin and dissolution. The myth of the relics creates an ambiguous tone, while implying the possibility of transcending one’s own existence. The desperation to transcend one’s own existence.
Lindsay Lion Lord’s Gifts From The Past is a quilt with moon symbols sewn into the fabric, offering us a blended path of time. The quilt is reminiscent of cave drawings and figurations, sharing a story or message. The quilt has the atmosphere of Eden, a place where we would be safe. A gift given to us in order to heal from the past, to mend our histories. Gifts from the Past is the treatment we saved up for the future.
Dante Guthrie’s Quartered Procession, and Px01, Px02 are bronze casts with thermal and textural alterations applied onto the metal. Revered objects, to be nourished through time. The use of bronze presupposes the permanence of the sculpture, the sculpture’s strength and resilience. The casts come from Warhammer40k, a miniature war game. Warhammer takes inspiration from the medieval and renaissance period. It is set in the future, where a fictional human race is lost in an ongoing battle. The specificity of the sculpture’s visual context suggest a direct relationship with the anxiety of second nature, manipulation, artificial intelligence, and warfare used to enforce power. Since the objects are also delicate and detailed they imply a force that lies within us; the endurance of our being, our capacity to create expansive worlds, stories, objects, and our desire for nurture.
Andrew Rutherdale’s Reason’s Nightmare and Insect Reliquary 2023 display natural organisms. The acrylic laser cut SCOBY, plays with the idea of our ability to control an organism. The SCOBY has been forced into a shape – while the bugs are propped in the frame and displayed with LEDs. There is a feeling of separation and containment. The exploration of the complexity of life and death. The existence of the soul, and how the technology of power over the body mediates the body and soul. The SCOBY being forced into a form creates an interaction between technological power and the SCOBY, resulting in the SCOBY acquiring its own subjectivity, consciousness and even personality. “He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man” are the words that the SCOBY forms, expressing the melancholia of its own containment and the lack of freedom to exist.
Annihilation acts as a ritualistic archive that seeks to transform our moment and propose a version of freedom. The exhibit engages with the gothic and shows us the positive power of the repressed. Annihilation questions the transcendent desire to live beyond death by leaving a form of matter behind, despite our annihilation. Together, the artists in Annihilation propose what would happen if the end of history came today. The exhibit contemplates whether freedom is attainable and whether the only way to reach it is through annihilation. The power of ambiguity and the lack of truth; how the only way to win the game is to not play the game.
