Jason Dodge / Tereza Buskova

Gallery One One One, London, UK

‘Rituals’, currently showing at Gallery One One One, comprises two separate solo shows that are linked loosely by the themes of narrative and performance. In the ground floor space is US artist Jason Dodge, showing a number of sculptural works of what appear to be randomly compiled objects, all of which are brought to life through carefully devised captions that reveal the objects’ back-stories. A humble pile of cut pieces of cotton, in various grey-green hues, are unveiled as pockets cut from the trousers of five people of different professions – a pilot, window washer, acrobat, ballet dancer, judge – placed in ‘order of altitude’, while another caption proclaims a nearby narrow tube to be ‘filled with seeds of poison hemlock’.

In Dodge’s work, the performances all take place off stage, and we are left to imagine the events ourselves from the tales woven by his captions. The artist requests a significant degree of complicity here, asking that we accept his stories in order to give substance to an otherwise disparate – and potentially dissatisfying – set of objects. By choosing to believe that the bell hanging from the gallery ceiling has indeed rung through the chimneys of a Berlin neighbourhood during a spring chimney cleaning, or that a taxidermied owl contains rubies (as Dodge claims in other captions), vigor and intrigue are added to the inanimate objects. Dodge also emphasizes an innate sentimentality here too, playing upon our desire to imbue the materials around us with memories and meaning.

While most of Dodge’s sculptures appear to contain evidence of past events, one makes time itself central to the work: a corner of the gallery is filled with silver trumpets and trombones lying silently beneath clear plastic. Here the caption reads: ‘they are waiting for you at the monument. they (the brass band is) waiting for you at the monument’ – a more ambiguous tag than in Dodge’s other works. Once again the artist is referring to an event occurring elsewhere but his use of the present tense is at odds with the clinical display of the instruments, which hints that the caption itself is the relic here and that the opportunity to meet the band at the monument has long since passed.

After Dodge’s cool display, entering the downstairs space, where photographs and a film by Tereza Buskova are exhibited, takes a little adjustment. Theatre and fantasy are at the forefront of Buskova’s works, which play out scenes of a wedding filled with ritualistic intensity, alongside an undercurrent of something more discomforting. The bride is heavily made-up so that she wears only a haughty, angry expression, topped by an elaborate veil or headpiece, which is also displayed in the gallery. The performance here is an overtly sexual one, with the bride at times found stalking virtually naked through a garden setting, or cavorting provocatively in her bridal gown.

Czech-born Buskova draws on Eastern European folk traditions and symbolism in the works, but presents them with neither subtlety nor explanation, so that the ritualistic imagery appears confusingly sinister. But perhaps this is her point: these rituals are steeped in a language of imagery that can be elusive to outsiders. When shown alongside Dodge, however, Buskova’s work feels exaggerated and melodramatic, quite lacking in the depth of storytelling that his enigmatic sculptures contain. While rich in exotic imagery, they offer little that truly intrigues. 

Eliza Williams