Claire Morgan: haunting the periphery

"Here is the end of all things"
Thistle, seeds, bluebottles, a taxidermy barn owl, nylon, lead, acrylic
2011

London-based artist Claire Morgan's delicate sculptural installations presents a disturbing liminal point in time where the natural flow of life has been arrested in some way. Theorist Manuel Aguirre employs an understanding of the liminal as a defining feature in the Gothic novel. In his understanding, the effects of terror in the Gothic novel are due to the textual constitution of a threshold between the domain of rationality and the world of the 'Other', the 'Numinous'. This threshold, or 'limen', expands and become an unhomely space of its own in which the protagonists are caught up and subsequently attempt to escape.

In Morgan's work the suspended matter (from a taxidermy barn owl, thistle, seeds and other artificial materials) presents an ambitious appeal for an urgent renegotiation of our relationship to the earth. Petrified animals populate this liminal threshold, haunting the periphery of our familiar world with a measurable physical presence and stillness. Darren Ambrose (October, 2008) observed that in Morgan's works "the avatars from the closed realm of nature are brought into the visibility of our world and are coaxed into speaking our language". The viewer's engagement with nature is staged through a careful consideration of natural rhythms and cycles. The poetic installation has a strange balance between chaos, control, constraint, balance and geometric form.

Yasuaki Onishi: the ethereal Gothic.

Yasuaki Onishi is known for using 'humble materials' like plastic sheeting, dead branches, hot glue, cardboard boxes and urea, to create monumental installations that appears to float in space. The process, that the artist refers to as "casting the invisible", involves draping the plastic sheeting over stacked cardboard boxes, which are then later on removed to leave only their impressions. The process of 'reversing' the sculpture is the artist's meditation on the nature of the negative space, or void, left behind. In "White landscape" (illustrated above), the suspended branches and ropes are covered with dripping hot glue. This effect creates new shapes imbued with a faint luminosity. The dripping glue creates a vertical line using gravity and it's shape is maintained as the glue temperature cools down with urea. 'Urea' is an organic chemical compound, and is essentially the waste produced by the body after metabolizing protein. In the second image the artist used black hot glue to create intricate 'spatial drawings'.

Ikeda Manabu: the 'Gothic' excess of imagination

Though 'Gothic' is a borrowed term in contemporary art, applied mostly to artworks centering on death, deviance, the erotic macabre, psychologically charged sites and fragmented bodies, it is also the product of an excess of imagination, or a surplus of fantasy. In this view, Japanese artist Ikeda Manabu's meticulously drawn gigantic acrylic ink drawings, explore apocalypse and takes pleasure in the fragment, inconsistent narratives, the disjointed and the morphological. These works create feelings of gloom, mystery, terror, suspense and fear. Traditional Japanese architecture clashes with giant mangled tree roots, while swarms of birds and fish dart through the water or atmosphere. Each work takes up to two years of eight-hour days to complete. The most unbelievable aspect being that Manabu has no idea what the final artwork will look like, but instead explores each work originally from day to day as he progresses inch by inch. In 2008, Manabu created "Foretaken", a 6 by 11 foot intricately drawn merciless tsunami swallowing trains, boats, buildings and all things human that explode in a syncopated dance of destruction. The artist prefers working with 'Tachikawa Comic Nib Foutain' pens.

Nicola Samorì painting

Nicola Samorì
"La Vertigine" (Cardinale)
Oil on linen, 200 x 100cm (2012)

Gothic's shadowy relationship with the past is conveyed in the solidified ghosts of Italian artist, Nicola Samorì. Known for his smoldering intensity of his figurative work, Samorì skillfully creates moody and atmospheric pieces that weigh heavily, both physically and metaphorically. In a recent interview with Mia Benenate  (The Huffington Post) the artist states that his work "stems from fear: fear of the body, of death, of men. I think my nature as an artist is something like feeling helpless. Works are just temporary shelters and painting is a leisure place where one can conceal yourself". His influences range from a Baroque use of 'tenebrism' (darkened or deepened shadows), to a dark and eerie Gothic world. The artist lives and works near Ravenna, in Italy. When asked about the "darkness" in his work he replied that "it is an unconscious mirror perhaps, sort of an exorcism to take away something from you or give form to whatever you do not want to live. What is shown in my work is what I have escaped".

Vim Delvoye stained glass windows

Vim Delvoye
"Chapelle"
Stained glass and metallic chapel
Mudam Luxembourg, 2006

Vim Delvoye is known for his Gothic inspired stained-glass windows and sculptural works made of steel, lead, glass and actual x-rays. In "Chapelle" thousands of x-rays have been applied to the structure's windows using traditional stained glass-making techniques to create a macabre, yet beautiful display of skeletons, bones and teeth. On first inspection some of the windows simply look as though they are made of an abstract design, when upon closer inspection, one can see teeth, intestines, sculls and other anatomical features set against blood red glass. One of the creations show two skeletons in a passionate embrace, hugging and kissing in panels that make up an arched Gothic window, with jeweled stained glass diamonds connecting the panels.

Urs Fischer melting sculptures

Urs Fischer
"Untitled"
Melting wax (2011)

Urs Fischer created a haunting replica in wax of Giambologna's 16th-century sculpture, "The rape of the Sabine women". The original sculpture is housed in the Loggia in Florence and features prominently in the classic film "A room with the view". Fisher ingeniously decided to create a giant slowly melting life-sized sculpture for the 2011 Venice Biennale. Throughout the duration of the Venice Biennale the sculpture slowly melted into nothingness, thereby becoming the ultimate statement on the passage of time. Imbued with their own mortality, his sculptures and installations cultivate the experiential function of art. The melting sculpture challenges the viewer's own notions of mortality, loss, perfection, catastrophe and the sublime. Moreover, what can be more 'gothic' than melting wax?

Olaf Brzeski

Olaf Brzeski

"Dream - spontaneous combustion"

Resin and soot (2008)

If you look around some of the most interesting contemporary art today, exquisite Gothic shadows are everywhere. Olaf Brzeski's installations take place between the poles set by the adherence to the classics and risky experiment, sculpture and drawing, monstrosity and attaining realism through the grotesque. In his "Dream - spontaneous combustion" the artist created a sooty, solid cloud of resin that marks the spot of a spontaneous combustion in one of the basements of an art school. For the artist "fire is nothing but change in the form of matter".