A Leap in the Dark Peter Eleey
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A Leap in the Dark Peter Eleey For many of us, the larger questions the paranormal. Is the psychic healer begged by the possibility of the in Euan Macdonald’s Healer, for paranormal are of such enormous example, attempting to heal us through consequence that we tend to ignore the camera and projector? If so, is them. We may flirt with the idea of the magic working? How can we tell? ghosts or spirits, but to embrace their By honing in on a topic that by its existence we must admit the prospect nature defies the empirically verifiable, of our own afterlives; in denying Strange Powers rehearses and them we seem to confirm the finality reinforces some of the most basic of death—prospects either reassuring —if broadest, and most ambitious— or dreadful. I, for one, find terror conceptions we hold of what art can and hope on both sides of this coin, be and do. and prefer to remain, well, curious, As the exhibition is concerned if perhaps more on the skeptical less with proof than with power and side, but looking to be convinced one possibility, it can be said to fit with way or the other. a handful of recent shows dealing with As an exhibition located in a vacant, art that specifically evades or extends haunted loft of works that purport beyond visual intelligibility. Some to be in some way actively magical, have detailed early photographers’ Strange Powers provides viewers efforts to test the boundaries of with three ways of interacting with the medium’s mimetic proposition, as both its venue and the art on display. did The Perfect Medium: Photography We can believe in their power, and the Occult, shown last year deny it, or simply move on, leaving in Paris and New York. Others, like the question open. These are, of A Brief History of Invisible Art in course, the options available to us San Francisco last year, and The Big each time we encounter a work of art, Nothing in Philadelphia two summers not simply that which may engage ago, revisited the strain of conceptual 59 art that tends toward the complete a spell “obtained,” according to Monk, dematerialization of the art object, near Santa Monica Boulevard.1 We raising many of the epistemological decided to reprise this response alongside issues implied by the artworks Gordon’s request, but with as powerful in Strange Powers—a kind of art that a curse as we could find, painting a small effects, through its insistence on rectangular area the same size as the a presence unburdened by visuality, framed letter on the old blue wall of the a similar reinvigoration of art’s haunted exhibition space.2 transcendent values. The presence of James Lee Byars The effect of Macdonald’s healer, pervades a dark, otherwise empty space for example, or of Douglas Gordon’s that contains the artist’s ghost. First contribution to the show, is not terribly made in 1969 while the artist was still dissimilar from that of something like alive, The Ghost of James Lee Byars fills Robert Barry’s radio wave pieces a room so dark as to make the presence from the 1960s (not included in the of the now-dead artist practically exhibition), which broadcasted invisible tangible. Peter Coffin charges the space fields of electromagnetic energy in the in front of the doorway to the Byars room gallery space. We are asked to take on with a new wall drawing based on what faith the existence of key elements of is sometimes known as the Egyptian each of these artworks, which happen Flower of Life, a pattern associated to be all but impossible to visually with auratic power that consists of discern. But it is the artists’ emphasis interlocking circles. Coffin also alludes on invisible energy, in fact, and the to the role of circles in conjuring with resulting solicitation of trust, that forms a performance for Strange Powers that an inextricable part of the works’ is available upon request. When visitors meanings. Reprising a piece from 1997 inquire as to its location or form, that he had done for a show organized gallery attendants draw a chalk circle in Los Angeles by Jonathan Monk and around them on the wood floor of Toby Webster, Gordon sent a letter the exhibition space. Historically, to me and co-curator Laura Hoptman drawing a circle is a way of summoning instructing us to “do something evil.” and concentrating magical energy; Monk and Webster had responded by the circled individual is empowered painting a black heart on the gallery to invoke or conjure spirits, or be wall with paint they had cursed with protected from spirits he or she does not 60 want. Important to Coffin’s concept is bypasses the eyes.” His image locates the idea that the process of drawing itself in a fractured continuum of reflected the circle itself is a magical act. (magical?) light, passing from Dee’s The issue of the transferability of mirror through his camera onto film and transformative power is addressed eventually to the photographic print. by Paul Pfeiffer and Joachim Koester, Anne Collier’s aura Polaroids are whose pieces each seem at first blush portraits of artist friends, literalizing to be about magic, rather than magical one of the motivating ideas of this themselves. Pfeiffer’s Poltergeist exhibition: that artists themselves exude (Spoon), (2001), is a re-creation of the magical force, and that their powers are utensil bent by the spirit in the worth considering, however pictured movie of the same name. But as the or otherwise suggested. In contrast to artist explained to me, “I see a strong Collier’s images, however, Miranda materialist aspect in matters that have Lichtenstein offers a simple and visually to do with ghosts, the devil, etc.... uneventful record of a psychic in the in this sense [my sculptures of] the fork midst of her activities. Prior to the and spoon are not a thematization show’s installation, Lichtenstein brought of ESP, they are an attempt to summon Sondra Shaye, a psychic healer, to the the devil him/herself.” Koester’s exhibition space to “clear” its spiritual new Magical Mirror of John Dee energy and harmonize the room. During (2006) is a photograph the artist took in her visit, Shaye said she felt a number the British Museum of the display case of histories in the space, including holding the black Aztec mirror that once a period when she believes it was used belonged to John Dee (1527–1608), as a brothel. Like Macdonald’s who was an adviser to Queen Elizabeth healer, Lichtenstein’s offers no apparent I and originated, with Edward Kelley, evidence of her paranormal power. But the practice of Enochian magic hung in the exhibition, the documentation (a type of ceremonial magic based on functions similarly to Byars’s ghost the evocation and commanding or Gordon’s cursed paint, directing of spirits, which Dee and Kelley claimed our attention to the otherwise had been given to them directly by an unremarkable space around us through angel.) Koester notes, “I see the mirror its invocation of the room’s invisible as an embodiment of a phenomena— energy. In a space so charged, a certain type of vision which almost Mungo Thomson’s group of black wind 61 chimes seems to register energies a test she conducted with a Parisian beyond the thermodynamic. clairvoyant. Calle first approached the A number of works, however, psychic, Maud Kristen, with the proposal specifically offer evidentiary support that Kristen would try to discern Calle’s for magical thinking, however future, and in turn, Calle would go possibly unconvincing. In the eight wherever her future dictated. Kristen, as videos that Artur Z˙mijewski shot of we learn in the video, tells Calle that she Pawel Althamer under the influence of is only comfortable attempting to foresee various psychoactive substances “where and when” but not “what.” or induced altered states—including The artist accepts these terms, and they LSD, mushrooms, peyote and conduct a test that delivers some very hypnosis—we find ourselves in the odd coincidences, seeming to confirm space between the objectively sober the feasibility of Calle’s proposition to Z˙mijewski and Althamer, waiting to engage her future more actively. While witness a Carlos Castaneda-like moment waiting for something to happen, for of psychic transcendence. Implicit example, Calle receives a text message in these videos is the idea, already from a friend who has the same last generally embraced, that an artwork name as the town Kristen has sent her to. can register the psychological state “It seems that the universe has accepted of its maker. In this way, Z˙mijewski us,” Kristen says at the video’s conclusion. and Althamer’s videos recall the “I was waiting for signs of approval, so paintings Lee Lozano did while drunk, that we can continue.... I just wanted to stoned, in love or depressed, or Francis watch the coincidences unfold before us.” Alÿs’s Narcotourismo (1996), for which Jonathan Monk provides a similarly the artist conducted walks while high active vehicle for us to consider the on heroin, cocaine, hashish and other coincidental and its magical portent. drugs. But watching Althamer in real Like Douglas Gordon, Jonathan Monk time, we try to discern what among reprises a previous work, for which he his various behaviors may or may not sent a number of letters to the last known be paranormal, in an investigation address of the late artist Alighiero Boetti concurrent with his own. (1940–1994), on Piazza San Apollonia Sophie Calle leads us on a similar in Rome, and awaited their return.