Aftertaste.
Willems, Brian
The Wall Gallery | Berlin, Germany
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Aftertaste," at Berlin's newly opened Wall Gallery
(through January 24), can be interpreted in at least two ways. The term
can refer to what remains after the tongue's taste receptors have
been activated, or, in Pierre Bourdieu's more political metaphor,
to those morsels of aesthetic appreciation tied to class or regimes of
domination, but now surviving only as inert, ironic remnants. Both these
meanings float interchangeably on the surface of this exhibition, in
which four artists--Matthew Rose (U.S./Paris), Sunna Wathen
(U.K./Iceland), Lisa Salamandra (U.S./France) and Nancy Jones
(U.S./Berlin)--are charged with exploring "sensuality, consumption,
and transformation."
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Rose adds a surreal twist to 1950s pop advertisements, showing,
among other things, a housewife or tire salesman with their heads
replaced with carrots and a bottle cap, respectively. Looking remarkably
like a Neutral Milk Hotel cover design, Rose's images redirect our
sometimes frustrated expectations of a promised appearance to the
announcements themselves, deferring desire to a "second
coming" that never actually arrives.
Wathen and Salamandra both extend the meaning of bread far beyond
ordinary consumption. In Breadcornermountain (2008), Wathen piles the
remains of countless loaves into a corner, turning them into a useless
Jacob's ladder. Salamandra's Daily Bread series (2001-ongoing)
dispenses with the food item altogether, turning her old bread wrappings
into watercolor and ink montages which in no way attempt to hide their
mundane origins. By refusing to dispense with the use value of this
staple commodity, these two artists foreground the shadow of exchange
value that lingers long after bread has been drained of substance.
Similarly, Jones's cartoon-like, mainly black-and-white
renderings draw close to the treatment of women as commodities, yet
absolve themselves of further comment at the same time. Bluebird (all
work 2004) shows a woman sitting on a man's face, hiking up her
dress to make things go more swimmingly. Her face is completely hidden
by her hair, while the only dash of color is a bluebird looking down on
the couple from a nearby branch. Two girls receive the same favor in
Girls, with red dots covering their breasts, while in Phone Girl a
solitary siren crosses her legs around a phone cord. In Bubbles, another
Bambi bimbo seems duly excited by her explosive bottle of bubbly. These
images are doubtless ads, but exactly what for remains unclear. As Jones
points out, "While women may consistently be depicted or viewed in
vulnerable poses, the pursuit of a flat, cartoon-like, or simplified
image can end up rendering the abstraction harmless." Indubitably,
the payoff never comes without a bitter aftertaste.
