May 20, 2004
Introductory essay for "Noctambule"
(Written for an exhibition my current employers are organizing.)
Noctambule presents a select group of eight young American artists—including several who are participating in the 2004 Whitney Biennial or have previously exhibited together—at the Fondation Dosne-Bibliotheque Thiers, an exceptional Parisian hôtel particulier. The exhibition marks both the first time that some of them have exhibited in Europe and that the New York gallery D’Amelio Terras has organized an exhibition of this scale in Paris.
Despite practices that are formally and materially quite distinct, the artists—David Altmejd, Matthew Brannon, Amy Globus, Matt Greene, Hanna Liden, Chloe Piene, Banks Violette, and Michael Wetzel—are connected by an inquiry into the eerie, uncanny, dark, and unknown. Although some have been grouped under the rubric of the “Modern Gothic,” these artists focus not only on Gothic’s contemporary subcultural connotations but also on its fin-de-siecle suggestions of decay, Victorian decadence, Romantic idealism and otherworldliness. The title Noctambule, a French word for that which comes alive at night, pays homage to the artists’ interest in transformation, be it bodily, social, or material.
The past century was marked by a dispersal of the Gothic genre and by its viral infiltration—largely via movies and music—into the wider cultural landscape. B-movie and horror cinema picked up where literature left off in the last half of the 19th century; now this new generation of artists conflates the two to outline how the horrific can be seen at the edges of contemporary culture (or corrupting it from within.) This attitude is manifested in Gothic iconographies and in attempts to create counternarratives in the shadow of economic excesses, the promises of technology, and other recent Western cultural utopias. Anxiety over the limits and boundaries of this progress inevitably leads to diverse investigations into the supernatural, natural forces, imaginative delusions, religious and human evil, social transgression, and spiritual corruption; all that does not fit into “proper” modern society.
Noctambule is an exhibition of ravishing surfaces and the awful and threatening worlds that they sometimes only barely cover. The artworks render visual the imagined sites of transformation and objects of traditional Gothic writing, including werewolves, occult ritual, the eerie depths of the forest, libidinous desire, and decaying bodies, updating the references to include the mobs at rock concerts and the stars around which they gather, science fiction cinema, and teenage killing sprees. The building’s ornate rooms, with herringbone wood floors, crystal chandeliers, and velvet-draped walls, are anchored by sculptures with an equally exquisite sense of materiality. Glitter, crystals, and shiny enamel as black as the night sky are all wrought by hand, and a sense of handicraft also suffuses the paintings, drawings, and tapestries on view. These artists inquiries into contemporary culture—with its emphases on technological production, scientific advance, and the diffusion of democratic principles—unveil a dark current running just beneath the surface.