Bad Moon Rising
Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Curated by Jan Van Woensel, ‘Bad Moon Rising’ compiles an eclectic and forceful range of artists and artifacts that share an apocalyptic vision of the current predicament of the US. According to the press release, the works cast ‘a dark shadow’ over America’s ‘promised ideologies of freedom and prosperity…with no space for mercy’. As a Belgian recently relocated to the US, Van Woensel presents the exhibition (‘about the Americans, for the Americans’) from the shocked ethnographic viewpoint of an outsider, happily pointing fingers at domestic social atrocities. While his accusations are undeniably valid and pressing, the sweet smell of schadenfreude seems to linger in the air at Silverman Gallery.
The exhibition’s most compelling aspect is that many of the disturbing facets of American society depicted are, at the same time, attempts to revolt against, disturb, and circumvent the system of capitalist competitiveness and conformity. Materials taken from popular culture - an Atari game called Custer’s Revenge (1982), a mounted copy of the Houston Chronicle (from October 17, 1991) reporting on George Hennard and the Luby massacre in Texas, and a quote from Tariq Ali blown up on a vinyl banner - are scattered among the art works in the show, while Rage Against the Machine’s song ‘Testify’ plays in the bathroom.
Vanessa Albury and Marthe Fortun’s Primal Scream (2007) is an outcry that has neither a clear target nor a hope for change – it simply marks the current state of affairs. The work is presented as an audio piece as well as a muted double projection that maps the sites of several interventions on 28 February 2007, when Albury and Fortun performed a single loud scream at a selection of random public spaces within the city of New York. This was a disruption fully conscious of its futility, but nevertheless an act that expresses an underlying and suppressed sensation that seems omnipresent within contemporary society
Philippe Vandenberg’s semi-abstract paintings like L’important c’est le Kamikaze (2004) and Mama Swastika Revisited (1994-2004) reflect upon the banality of evil. Through the playful repetition of provocative signs in rainbow colours they comment on the absurd and the emptied-out state of signs and phrases in popular media.
In the back corner of the space Yoji Sakate’s play The Attic (2005) lies on the floor. Sakate meditates on the phenomenon of hikikomori, a term describing a social withdrawal syndrome prevalent in Japanese youths. Pondering the need to retreat suspended between healthy alone time and the most extreme forms of isolation, Sakate’s play introduces a mysterious internet company that offers tiny ‘attics’ to people who wish to withdraw from society completely.
Ragnar Kjartansson’s video Sorrow Conquers Happiness (2006) provides the score for the exhibition. The work shows the artist in a suit and tie, accompanied by a jazz trio repeatedly singing ‘Sorrow conquers happiness’ until the words become detached from their meaning – melting into a mantra for suffering. Within all this devastation the visitor is lucky that Van Woensel keeps Ben Vautier’s Flux Suicide Kit (1966) handy, a small plastic box containing a fishing hook, a piece of glass, a razor, matches, and an electrical plug, to offer the possibility of ending the ordeal right here and now.
‘Bad Mood Rising’ is a show that maintains a safe distance; through isolating the positions at hand, each seems threatening but at the same time controlled. It is precisely through this distance that a pattern can be recognized that, if stretched, can be made to fit most other nations just as well as the US. The overlapping sing-song of complaint seems to cancel itself out. Too many voices are moaning at the same time, leaving the visitor with the feeling that there’s a bad moon on the rise – or maybe just a bathroom on the right.
Anna Gritz
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