Worlds collide in Victor Man exhibition
two photographs of two different leather gloves that have been discarded in a street. “One recognises them as gloves and how they function. You wonder about where they are from. The over-arching thematic within the exhibition is of covering and revealing and how concealing something might have an erotic charge,” says Prince.
The photographs correspond with a large black staff, propped against one of the gallery’s white walls. The staff, to which a strand of hair is attached, has black leather gloves tied around the middle in an almost suffocating manner. Here, the emotional impact is unsettling, the staff suggestive of weaponry and coercion, the gloves hinting at threatened violence, dark sexual desire and a wish by the wearer to leave no fingerprints, no traces of interference. One needs little reminding of the climate of fear that permeated Ceausescu’s secret police and informed its tactics of oppression.
One of the show’s most powerful and infuriatingly tantalising pieces is an oil painting of a woman and a man furtively touching fingers. The hands are ungloved, naked, but the faces of the subjects are obscured by a heavy black cloth. What is revealed in one sense is also concealed; there is no clear line of communication or narration.
The woman appears to be smartly dressed. Is she and her partner/lover/tormentor/client at the theatre, the opera, or are they posing for a formal photographic portrait? The woman is wearing a shortish dress, stockings and shiny black shoes. The fact that the faces are obscured in Untitled (2007) means it is impossible to gauge the true nature of the sitters’ relationship and we do not know if the reaching out of the hand is a requited passion or a gesture of evasion.
The work takes on an altogether more unsettling quality when one considers the print of a tied collar, bearing the caption A la Russe, that Man has positioned next to the covered portrait. The collar is suggestive of restraint, control and the repression of a desire rather than girlish playfulness.
“Without being over-literal, there is the metaphor of where two different worlds meet, the unconscious with the waking conscious, the one world where certain codes of behaviour exists and another world where things are freer, or more repressed, and the equation of that with the former communist Romania,” says Prince.
“That is a rather simplistic equation, and I wouldn’t want to overstate that. But very definitely there are links and images that Victor uses, such as a sexualised image or an eroticised image or use of a particular material, such as fur and wolf heads, and how within Romanian mythology and folklore they have particular meanings.”
Man confounds the visual experience, and unashamedly employs visual trickery, exemplified with his use of a “black” mirror. The work Those With Teeth And Those Without (2008) features a large sheet of glass, its silkscreened and painted surface black, reflecting light that reveals a phantom figure. It is propped against the wall and is augmented with felt rolls.
The artist’s fascination with ideas of concealment and illusion is taken to its logical conclusion in a piece featuring a huge black curtain, draped over a gallery window. The art, quite literally, is impenetrable. One could stand around and wait for the drum roll and the dramatic pulling back of the curtain, but it’s never going to happen.
Some puzzles are easier to crack, though. Take the title of the show, Attebasile. It’s a girl’s name, spelled backwards.
Attebasile, organised in collaboration with the Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière, is at the Ikon Gallery until January 25.
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