Celestial Contrakt

Celestial Contrakt

16 November, 2009
by: Claire_loves_jam

We all love a good impoverished-artist-makes-a-break-for-fame tale, don't we? Schwartz Gallery in deepest, darkest Hackney Wick epitomises said narrative. The residential part of the dilapidated building is dripping with creative talent as well as leaky pipes; jumbled fragments of obscure artwork deck the corridors and bold murals creep along the peeling walls. Exhibitions here were born from a palpable need for local artists to display their work.

Nestled beneath this commune of studios, the yawning space lends itself perfectly to ambitious installations and modern sculpture. Recent years have seen a proliferation of art galleries taking advantage of cheaper rents for cavernous warehouses in the no-man's land backing onto the Olympic park – ideal for exploring current movements in contemporary art.

Tonight, Celestial Contrakt – a journey into the 'celestial' and the 'ethereal' – is liberating all manner of strange, heavenly impulses. I'm told the work displayed hinges on perceptions of 'quasi scientific phenomena'. Themes of life, death, beginnings and ends guide us through the time-space continuum and we're encouraged to banish the 'terrestrial' world in favour of an imaginary cosmos.
A forty-year-old foetus emblazons digital silk print, a child mannequin made entirely of tiny, plastic joggle eyes teeters on the periphery of innocence and pure evil, and a tri-layered face stares at me with hollow eyes. It's as peculiar and eccentric as it sounds.


Alex Bunn, 'Quabrid', lifesize polymer sculpture on glass base, 2008

Parts of the exhibition meander towards more sinister interpretations of the sublime. Etched into Alex Bunn's jet-black skeleton bust, 'Memento Mori' quietly provokes: 'remember you will die'. Lee Wagstaff's Shroud, a self-portrait screen printed in his own blood, sparks instant deliberation among its viewers. Where did the blood come from? What's the point?

I can't help but agree with David Bowie's analysis of this piece as 'spiritually arrogant'; religious imagery adorns Wagstaff's form as the culmination of four and a half years spent acquiring all-over tattoos, and there are aggressive allusions to the divine in the blood-soaked swastikas, stars, squares and circles. I don't want to like it, and I'm not a fan of self-mutilation in the name of art, but I can't deny its power.

It's not all gore and nihilism, however. I find Andrew Hladky's oil paintings strangely warm and inviting despite the barren landscapes depicted. He uses a 3D form of pointillism to build up slender layers of hardened paint in the shape of lots of miniature stalactites. Multiple sunsets explode across the sky, horizons chase horizons ,and it's utter chaos – the textured surface is both a sculptural delight and an assault on the eyes.

Once my concepts of the material world have been well and truly reconfigured, I'm ready to return to planet earth. Tonight's 'suggestion of irrational mystical delirium' has worked a little too well and I wonder if I've hallucinated the man lying on the floor next to me who's gazing vacantly up at a cluster of balloons – or is it part of the show? Definitely time to go home.

Celestial Contrakt is at Schwartz Gallery until 6th December 2009.

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Claire_loves_jam