‘A FACE TO COME, OR ALREADY PAST’: A REFLECTION ON
MURRAY MCKEICH’S PZOMBIE EXHIBITION
Julie Clarke© February 2007
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In their discussion of the importance of the face in communication, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari said ‘All faces envelope an unknown, unexplored landscape, all landscapes are populated by a loved or dreamed-of face, develop a face to come or already past’ (1987:173).It is with this concept in mind that I approach Murray McKeIch’s exhibition entitled pzombie, a word that evokes the uncontrolled territory of the body’s internal functions.1 For this exhibition McKeich has collected detritus from the urban environment, such as chicken bones, plastic flowers, the rims of eyeglasses, twigs, vegetables, shoes, tickets, a plastic ruler, damaged dolls as well as other objects that cannot be identified in the final composite images. These items were then scanned and incorporated into bust length portraits of fantastical beings. By doing this he literally creates the face that reflects a landscape not only inhabited with people and structural elements, but also with the refuse associated with personal consumption, memory and history. The face displayed in this manner becomes a site of adornment and revelation that goes beyond the range of usual facial expressions.In spite of this, McKeich’s entities appear to cover a range of human emotions including—happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disappointment, pain, joy and anger, however some facial expressions cannot be read as solely human, since the upper and lower lips are elevated or extended beyond the range of normal facial muscle function.The iconic images evoke the heads of heroic individuals represented on coins and stamps as well as Victorian photographic portraits set within an oval frame on a black background. McKeich’s use of this traditional mirror-shape and his construction of the right and left sides of the faces as exact copies of each other, producing absolute symmetry not found in nature, implies that the work is about memory and recognition, reality and fantasy, perfection and imperfection, as well as identity mediated through technological interface. However, since McKeich has used a computer application program that draws upon the scanned elements to form endless visual combinations, his control over the end product is assisted by his resolve to intimate the corporeal. He has accomplished this by setting parameters, so that the individual scanned elements fall within the shape of the human body. McKeich presents the face as an abstract machine formed from a white surface punctuated with deep blacks holes. A face is nothing without holes—the eyes, the nose and an opened mouth. Although human or animal eyes may be clearly seen behind the black holes on these highly ornate and mask-like faces, the mouths appear as cutouts, creating a deep enveloping void that cannot be penetrated. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have noted ‘…there is something absolutely inhuman about the face’ (1987:170). This is primarily because they considered ‘everything a machine’, or rather that the human becomes non-human in machine culture (1977). McKeich’s desire to hand over to a machine, what we would usually consider the creative aspect of making art, is an example of the human becoming non-human, however, his humanity, if you like is maintained by his selection of discarded objects, the construction of parameters and his intervention into the images at various points of their assemblage.1 Our autonomic nervous system is self-controlling and independent of outside influences. It controls our heartbeat, blood flow, respiration and other bodily functions related to the human body, and is referred to as the zombie body.2 Elements from the organic and synthetic world fuse together in these images eliciting notions of the cyborg—a state in which nature and culture, human and machine amalgamate. One might be lead to believe that these creatures belong in the realm of science fiction, where elements of different species and machines threaten to integrate with and pollute each other. Since these fantastical entities are neither human nor animal they suggest a new species one that can only emerge through technological intervention. It is in this sense that the works invite us to contemplate new perceptions of the human body engendered by advanced communication and medical technologies. Whilst there are precedents from within art history, such as the Baroque, nature painting, still life, portraiture, fantasy art and Surrealism that may be read in relation to McKeich’s images, they bear a resemblance to those of the Italian Renaissance painter, Giuseppe Arcimboldo whose allegorical paintings of the four seasons and the four elements, consisted of animals, flowers, trees, hay, fruit and vegetables, goblets, jewelry, armor and other man-made objects formed to suggest a human face. In particular McKeich’s portraits are suggestive of Arcimboldo’s 1591 painting entitled Vertummu a portrait of Emperior Rudolf II, who collected exotic animals and was a patron of the arts and sciences. Like Arcimboldo’s paintings McKeich’s work engages with notions of the grotesque, parody and mimicry. Keich’s images demonstrate mutation, transformation and a process of becoming other, which simultaneously suggests the same, since each image appears as an amalgam of the others. The oval form implies homogeneity, however since each contains a complex blueprint, the human genetic code and its ability to create heterogeneity between individuals is evoked. The outer layers of these marvelous entities reveal a sophistication and complexity, as though the interlaced interior of their bodies was being worn on the outside. These exoskeletons, if you like become masks that signify our total integration into consumer society and its technological mediation. If we imagine these entities as existing beyond their frame then they appear as strange attractors to other beings that might delight in their complex adornment. Their exquisite beauty and symmetry invites a desire to know more, to move beyond the surface to what lies beneath its formidable shell. If the face is a kind of landscape, then these faces are littered with detritus that is rendered valuable. Indeed ‘Maddern Square’, the silent animation that accompanied the pzombie exhibition displays gold colored as well as monochromatic images that float together in a transparent ethereal field and suggest a mechanism that operates through a harmonious energy generated from a slow transmitting pulse. There are no obvious faces in this animation, only topography of the invaluable made precious. Incongruous elements that hint at biological or perfunctory life throughout the non-delineated structure are permeated with a quiescent flow of electrical energy. Occasionally our eye settles on a recognizable form—wire-mesh or netting, small flowers, stars and leaves, plastic tubing, strings of beads, thread, a plastic ruler and bone fragments and it is then that we return to the images of the motionless faces, which appear indelibly linked to animation and human expression.
References:
Gilles, Deleuze and Guattari, Félix (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
Translation and Forward by Brian Massumi, Mnneapolis, London, University of Minnesota Press.
(1977) Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, New York, Viking Press.
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