Last week SMART Project Space in Amsterdam opened a stinking intestinal exhibition by the Netherlands based artist Nathaniel Mellors. It’s imaginative density pushes the shifting relationship between artwork and audience inside a corpulent and corporeal environment.
The exhibition is part of the ongoing Statement Series at SMART Project Space and has been conceived and realized by Nathaniel Mellors in collaboration with the British artist Chris Bloor.
Taking their cue from SMART Project Space’s historical function as a morgue, Mellors and Bloor take the visitor on a fantastic voyage inside an imaginary body, creating a narrative framework where each exhibition space is mapped to a specific body work. The brain being a key element to the exhibition, where it features the new film commission Ourhouse Episode 3 ‘The Cure of Folly’ written and directed by Mellors and co-produced by SMART project space.
For the visitor the most alluring draw of : Hypercolon : is the dialogue between the many artists:
“A substantial portion of the exhibition is devoted to the diverse and dynamic exchange that Mellors shares with artistic contemporaries such as Vito Acconci, Brian Catling, Chris Bloor, Mick Peter and Erkka Nissinen, as well as with younger generation of artists including Tala Madani, Linda Quinlan and Timmy Van Zoelen – all of whom, like Mellors, developed deliberately coarse styles and make liberal use of satire and caricatural line.”
Entrance point of the exhibition is the right eye, which reflects upon the technical aspects of optics and photographic reproduction as a tool for depicting the truth that has been adopted as a vehicle for duplicity and fakery. The orientation of the room is purposefully, minimal and black and white.
The brain is the key to the show where the new film commission Ourhouse Episode 3 ‘The Cure of Folly’ or ‘De Keisnijder’ is shown. It is part of an episodic series of films written and directed by Mellors. On this occasion the family home is under attack from a carnivalesque medieval procession featuring a disconsolate, self-harming male gang who are appropriated by a powerful female mystic known as ‘The Hek’; this group of revelers ride on a haywain towards the house in pursuit of “the stone of madness”. As in previous episodes the script combines linguistic and visual absurdism and returns to Mellors recurrent theme of power and control through the manipulation of language.
Further on the visitor passes through the mouth, the ear, genitals, foot, and stomach until he reaches the colon with video and sound works by Nathaniel Mellors and Timmy van Zoelen.
Hypercolon will be on view until November 13, 2011.
