Psychometry (II)
ARRATIA, BEER, Berlin, Germany
Adrian Hermanides, Alms for Birds (2009)
According to ARRATIA, BEER’s press release, ‘psychometry’ refers to ‘the divination of facts concerning an object or its owner through contact with or proximity to the object.’ ‘(II)’ implies an earlier attempt. Or perhaps the number two, which repeats through this group show – curated by the San Francisco emigrant and conceptual artist D-L Alvarez – in pairs. Or perhaps some idea of mirrored identity.
In the first room, Benjamin Alexander Huseby (a professional fashion photographer) supplies two monumental stone plinths, if you could call them that: DIY and unfixed, on them are mounted glossy Lambda print photographs on card. The look of the plinths suggest Greek temples, or in other words, the cult of the body. Patrick (2009) shows a male torso and Anja (2009) shows a female. Anja wears jeans, unbuttoned, and seems somehow masculine. Patrick seems feminine. Both bodies are missing their eyes and lips. Huseby also contributes a frame for these pictures, a blue-and-yellow folding screen, which he calls MG (2009). The plastic standing structure proposes a principle of triangulation on the bodies, the blank backs of both photos neatly aligning with their own separate colour codes. The addition seems to have something to do with gender, which is the dominant theme of this show, with queer shades.
‘Psychometry (II)’, installation view
And, at certain points, more than shades. In the second room, Gwenaël Rattke displays three photo collages on paper and cardboard: Fear we Trust (2008), Kiraly (2009) and Point Eyes (2008). The collages are gothic and gay, Gilbert and George, green and yellow, black and white, red and blue. The black and white picture on the far right side of the wall borrows from Fascist iconography, while the red and blue, in the middle, seems orgiastic and liquid-utopian. The green and yellow image on the left includes, as a motif, a naked circle of boys. My companion is upset by the apparent lack of criticism. ‘Orgy, sex and power. Power, sex, and orgy.’ The press release, on the other hand, states: ‘The work is a type of billboard for an event that will take place on the exhibition’s closing (May 2, 5-9PM) in which [Rattke] and collaborator Chloe Griffin will bring the collage into a third dimension with live super-eight projection and sound.’
Also in the second room, Adrian Hermanides offers a grid made up of what seem like fleamarket objects, drawn from the objects of a deceased photographer. Entitled Alms for Birds (date unsupplied), a certain fastidiousness governs the grid’s structure, each particular thing sits in plenty of space. I sit on the floor to make notes, my pencil lead breaks, and I think about leaving it there, as a new object. Would this be permitted? The grid appears somehow too neat, too geometric, and the content seems flat. There are boots, jackets, a knife, magazines, film lights and a pornographic picture of a woman being fucked, a blank expression on her face. A leather belt. Two different, single, female shoes. A dirty broken record player, and, in the corner of the room, a tiny white Sony portable hi-fi, which I think about plugging in, but in the end decide not to. The environment seems unreceptive to play. One of the objects on display is a ruler, long and wooden, of the kind once used to beat children’s fingers’ with.
Jennifer Locke, Sighting (2009)
Back in the first room, streams of blue ribbon extend from the wall, with little piles of sand on the floor. Entitled An actor you can see through crystal (date unsupplied) the work is a collaboration between Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Brenna Murphy, assembled by the former, based on a web collage made by the latter. The work is hard to get into; it seems that the way to experience it would be maybe to crawl through it. ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ I ask my companion. ‘Definitely not.’ On the other side of the room, a monitor displays a man darting around a recording digital video camera, pointed at a mirror, taking still pictures with another digital camera. As he presses the button, the camera flashes and the rest of the room behind him is illuminated. The video loops, the man seems in perpetual motion. Logic dictates that this must be Jennifer Locke’s video Sighting (2009) which is the only the video work in the show. But see if you can get there from this gnomic description: ‘Locke’s Sighting (2009) has two components, each trying to capture a reflection, but the effort only obscures the self further.’ Yes it does.
‘Psychometry (II)’ offers an interesting set of puzzles to work through and wonder at, with the press release itself, Press (2009), constituting the chief of these. The work reads like a poem by Hegel, which I guess is something, but it doesn’t exactly help identify individual works after the fact. At least from my perspective, it would have been very helpful if it was a bit more description, a little clearer, and a bit less discursive and dense. But, of course, this is not the only perspective.
Benjamin Huseby, Memory Game (2009)
The most thought-provoking work of all is almost the simplest. Huseby’s Memory Game (2009) is made up of an arrangement of books all open to pictures of flowers, a flowerbed of sorts planted near to the gallery’s entrance. Reds and violets and yellows, though no smell. ‘We are fascinated by the unit,’ philosopher Michel Serres has noted, ‘only a unity seems rational to us. We scorn the senses, because their information reaches us in bursts. We scorn the groupings of the world, and we scorn those of our bodies. For us they seem to enjoy a bit of the status of being only when they are subsumed beneath an unity.’ Like objects themselves, psychometry has its limits.
Daniel Miller
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