((Nay Sir Cis))
((Nay Sir Cis)) was exhibited and performed in the group show Medium Rare, at Untermainkai in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in July 2022. The project situated four paintings as the backdrop for a daily performance centered around a fifth painting resting upon four plaster sculptures at about knee height, like a “tomb” on the floor.
Initially, I improvised a series of paintings. I recognized five shared a visual synchronicity connecting their imagery to the story of Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The emergence of this narrative, a sort of root in Western cultural ideology, felt patriarchally obtrusive. Narcissus, a man’s man, in his egotistism, self-reliance, devotion for his independence transferred onto his reflection. The story pairs his narrative with the demise of Echo, plagued between women she is cast to be an unoriginal voice, pining for an unrequited love, in suffering loses her body. I was not able to subconsciously create outside patriarchal signs and systems, like Echo; it made me question Narcissus’s emergence. Could I maneuver this challenge to a different fate? I devised a concept, based on three of my own philosophical stances to rebalance and resituate the narrative and project onto a new trajectory.
1.) Painting is prosthetic: A canvas acts as an extension of the artist’s body, inseparable from performing and gesturing to the artist’s subjectivity.
2.) Painting is a performance of power: As a canvas reflects and extends the artist into another form, another body. This double body, in Lacanian terms, is the materialized mirrored self, (if you care for this). If you do not care, then let’s say to be able to recognize or see oneself outside of one’s body is a certain kind of achievement. It provides the individual a sense of power as there is value in being seen, like in a tagged photo on social media or your name in the paper.
3.) The relationship between the artwork and the artist is ecological: Both influence and affect the other in a cycle of submitting to each other throughout the process.
For Narcissus, reflection consumed him. The pool, like a tomb, sealed his fate. The pool is also a screen, like a painting. The painting reflects an artist, the same way the pool of water reflected Narcissus to himself. In continuing the paintings I found it necessary to stage a performance to actively work through this complex. I would remain true to my stances and demonstrate the divergence from the path of Narcissus’s complex in real time. The performance path was one of self awareness. I installed the paintings and set up the performance to improvise the task of pushing past the complex, where one fails and accepts death rather than becoming aware of ourselves in our selfish desires. But how do you break through a tomb, how do you avert death? You practice transformation.
The performance occurred an hour daily for the two-week exhibition. The pictures below capture day ten. Each day I signaled the performance by positioning myself on the floor, sitting with one knee up, in front of SUB\\ure (see 4th image below). This position reveals a tracing of myself in a white outline in the painting. Emerging from the painting I improvised interactions to reassociate myself with the “tomb” painting, __/:\Tossed/:\__ (see 5th image below), on the floor. The “tomb” was constructed to draw the gaze down, like Narcissus’s gaze at the pool. Simultaneously positioned as a reflection to She was In`’;`,’`flamed (see 2nd image below). If the foot in the painting continued beyond the frame on the wall, its imagined body could also gaze down upon the tomb. The top of the “tomb” painting is this foot's reflected self, its interior space marked with desire and conflict where two bodies mirror away from each other on a watery plane.
The sculptures are hollow plaster casts. They emulate a foundational sculpture of a stump that pushed me back into making paintings after a recess of five years. Their job is to support. In the performance I reframs and restructured the “tomb.” The casts under my weight and the weight of the activated “tomb” painting corrode and break down. The sculptures fail to maintain their job, to support; becoming victims of their own device. As the viewer watches, I appear to also be facing failure having my work not withstand my interactions. Following stance 1)., if the art is an extension of the artist’s body, these interactions are rather masochistic to watch. It is violence against the self. The sculptures' remnants, dust and fragments, are collected, repositioned, and curated; tracing the interactions in an experimental redistribution. As the remnants accumulate, transforming from one structure into another, a sort of floor painting appears under the table.
The performance could be seen as an act against the metaphorical self or as a self-indulgent ego driven to perform spectacularly. The artist plays between the tensions of performing and attending to the unplanned problems produced everyday. The work asks how to navigate penetrating systems one is born into without losing themselves or destroying everything. This is not a replication of self-destruction or idealization of nihilism. It is self care in the daily routine of showing up and working through failure. The artist is always aware of the audience and putting on a show, while attempting to find solutions for the destruction and the costs of performing and entertaining an audience. In tending to the deconstructed bits, the artist acknowledges the structures could serve other purposes, drawing out fresh perspectives. The exhibition ceases to be the endpoint and the performance surpasses the flower offering a garden.
