Bjørn Melhus
Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany
Given the current global political climate, it’s of little surprise that the three pieces presented by Bjørn Melhus in his latest solo show revolve around scenarios of dread, loss and threat. Known for his adept procedure of using snippets of dialogue from television and film – himself lip-synching to the often-recognizable sound bites – to create video works that are comic yet socially pertinent, visitors expecting more of the same will not be disappointed. In the only finished work here, The Meadow (2007), we meet the familiar figure of Jimmy (from Auto Center Drive, 2003), who is being driven through a sinister forest into a proverbial ‘dark and stormy night.’ The trip is tense – he is accompanied by two silent policemen, who may be protecting or impeding him, another relevant uncertainty in today’s world – and the car repeatedly comes dangerously close to hitting a roadside figure. Stopping after each close call, Jimmy enters the menacing wood to come across various characters: a Smurf popping up from the ferns to perkily ask ‘You’re not afraid are you?’, a prostrate Big Foot and a buried man, all of whom cite lines from Bambi, the Disney movie that deals with loss in a similar environment. His last encounter is with the familiar hippy Jenny, who indicates the title’s inviting pasture but warns, in the voice of the faun’s dead mother that, ‘There might be danger.’
The other two works on show, which will eventually comprise a trilogy, are unfinished yet nevertheless intriguing. The City is a video collage of the work-in-progress: 12 small screens flash haunting, nighttime images of the main players in today’s political context - London, New York, Istanbul, and an unidentifiable Asian city. Unusually, Melhus does not appear and the only interruption in these desolate, still scenes is the ringing of a mobile phone, causing random screens to blink white. Though straightforward and with no overt reference to terrorism, one can’t help but see the London Eye as the next target to go up in a flash of blinding light. The Castle, meanwhile, shot in an Italian palazzo where the German-Norwegian artist had a residency, sees a subdued Melhus, dark and bearded in priestly garb, in a movie trailer. Silent scenes of strange emptiness in antique rooms full of ancient portraits and religious iconography are connected by text that reads, ‘faith, tradition, evil, power, fear, chaos, home, family’. These may as well be the flash cards for tonight’s news, and show Melhus still able to make biting commentary through the simplest of means.
Amanda Coulson
