Bojan Fajfric
Fajfric is a Yugoslavian artist and his work discusses the political situation there and in particular, the rise of Malosovic. Upon first entering the exhibition space, which was made up of 4 rooms consisting of mainly films apart from the two large wall prints seen in the below image, I was a bit overwhelmed. Film requires attention, and I didn't feel as though I could pay the deserved attention to this many films, especially as they dealt with a subject that was foreign and difficult to me. As a result, none of the films really sunk in and I walked round too quickly, just so I could "get through" the sheer amount of work. I did this until I came to the last room, which was very small and intimate with no other visitors in (they filled the other rooms). In the room was a short film consisting of a monologue over images of riders and horses. Aesthetically, it looked to have been filmed on a Super 8 Camera. The monologue spoke a kind of timeline, beginning with a sight that shocked the narrator as a boy (a man struggling with a black stallion and it bit his thumb off). The next sentence was about reading Marxist documents and becoming involved with Marxism and the Gorvernment at the same time (it was revealed that he later left the police because he could see what Malosovic was going to do). The interplay between the horse and politics continued through dialogue as images of riders riding through forests and graveyards were played. I thought the work was incredibly clever. I interpreted the horse as an example of power that stayed with him through the years, and he grappled with it, similar to the man in his sight. Then at the end of the timeline, after leaving the police, the man opened a riding school - he overcame the power he thought to be wrong that had taken something from him and literally tamed the horse. Even though it was spoken in a dead pan way and the only emotion expressed was at the beginning, I thought it was really moving and I really enjoyed it. It was clinical, but also quite beautiful.
Jim Shaw
The Jim Shaw exhibition was very different to the Fajfric exhibition. For me, I thought one demonstrated experience of wanting political change and horror at what has happened, whereas the other seemed more from an "average joe" point of view, attacking the Western problem of consumerism.
Jim Shaw is a prolific American artist who works in many different medias, but all of his work seemed to look a bit samey despite this. It had a lot of impact due to sheer size, such as "Untitled (US Presidents)" (2006), but the imagery used was a bit too obvious to be good, I thought. For example, businessmen as zombies, the White House hidden behind 1950s household products and 50s comic strips telling tales of the downfall of heroes. I know he is a postmodern artist and therefore draws on a lot of pop culture, but I just thought there could have been a more subtle way to do it. It was of overkill on the "consumerism's bad" front.
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| Untitled (US Presidents) 2006 |
In a few cases I thought that the references were too far so that I'm not sure if Shaw was the actual artist. I don't mean whether he actually created it, but more that the authenticity of the ideas might not have belonged to him. For example, the image below could be a mix of Pollock, Baldessari and a portraitist like Saville or Freud. I think it is very easy sometimes to pinpoint different elements of artworks taken from different artists (whether intentional or not) so that it degrades the artwork. It made me think about whether anything original can be done anymore, or whether we'll just keep retreading the past in different combinations. There are a lot of artists who work around this subject - Sierra could be another example.
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