Moving forward we’re looking into more storytelling styles and their respective origins. Since the notion of the metanarrative and stories within stories is something we’ve been looking into, we found ourselves reading Don Quixote. It’s a bizarre 400 year old novel by Miguel de Cervantes where a middle-aged man from the region of La Mancha in central Spain becomes obsessed with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read, and decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the evil. But basically it’s a fictional author who discovers fictional account of Don Quixote, so a story within a story, and Don Quixote understands that he’s being written about. It made us think about the film Deadpool; both seem to make fun of the heroes of their time, employed metanarratives, and some call them a proto-postmodern works.
An example being the bit in Deadpool where he’s handed a card by TJ Miller’s character and told that it “might further the plot”. After looking a little more into it, it turned out that someone else had already made this parallel since Deadpool actually kills Don Quixote in the comics. Sometimes we wonder about the value of this self-referential nature of the film, is it somehow comparable it to hipsters that attempt to subvert the mainstream with ironic moustaches and drinking obscure craft ales…Anyway, we’re also thinking more about methods of viewing and things which are essential to the viewing process. This would include things like a wall, the screen, plugs, seating etc. This is because we’re always trying to find a way for the work (if it’s a film) to leave the screen and almost leak out into its surroundings to give clues or hints about other aspects of it. This then links back to our thoughts about narrative construction, certain aspects are essential to building a world that’s believable – extras, a set, genuine dialogue etc. We’ll continue with this in the next week or so.
We’ve completely forgot to discuss galleries we’ve been to in the last few posts so here goes. Union Pacific had a range of uninteresting paintings and ambiguous welded metal structures. A slight saving grace was a book by the title ‘The daughter of the Easter egg’ by Zora Mann. In the middle of the book there is a short text, while the rest of the pages are blank. This book is deliberately left almost empty as it was the installation in Art Basel Statements that offered the full imaginary scenario of the artist’s being. It’s very understated; just left on a table, easily missed. Something that would have been a shame to miss it since we find it to be the most effective and thoughtful work.
Next up was Carlos/Ishikawa who did a great job or manipulating the space; the ceiling was brought down and your entrance was highly controlled through floating cardboard walls. Other than that the actual show wasn’t too exciting.
The downstairs of Maureen Paley was well thought out – showing some ceramic vases and wall paintings by Eduardo Sarabia. They came out of conversations the artist had with residents on the Mexico/US border. They were displayed amongst boxes hand-painted to look like food crates for their namesakes, perfect for (theoretically) smuggling the artworks between countries.
The Approach had quite a dull show on, the kind of thing that would look nice in your house, drawing of birds and stuff. The positioning of some of them seemed very intentional, looking at each other within a corner but it feels like we’re very much clutching at straws here.
We really enjoyed the look of the show at Modern Art. A few well used notice boards with adverts on them. This is something we’ve been thinking about for a while but wasn’t sure how to approach it. However, this was by Fiona Connor and her thoughts were that this was about how the internet causes such notices boards to no longer be used. We were thinking more along the lines of, the old staples are a reference to what is no longer visible but was once present; absence = presence kind of thing.
