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Steven Gontarski has based himself in London since 1996. Upon the completion of his Masters in Art, he began exhibiting sculptures with fellow artists from Goldsmiths College in a variety of exhibitions including Die Young Stay Pretty at the ICA (1998) and New Neurotic Realism at the Saatchi Gallery (1999) before having a solo exhibition in 2000 at White Cube. The collection of drawings and paintings of The Visitors are a slight departure from the sculptures Gontarski has made in the last few years. The high glossiness of the three dimensional work suggested a fluidity, perhaps a frozen moment within a flow of motion. The seamlessness of the forms removed any trace of their fabrication - as though they just appeared or were created rather than made. Although neo-baroque in gesture and detail, the material and finish of the sculptures placed them in a futuristic territory. Whether taking form as a portrait bust or slightly larger-than-life statue, the subjects took the names of invented Prophets or characters taken from Gontarski's own mythologies. The figures rarely had faces, leaving a blankness on which a viewer could project his/her own ideas, giving further detail to the subjects introduced. In 2004 a French public art council asked Gontarski to propose a sculpture to honor two teenagers who died in a road accident in the village of Chaucenne. The project initially triggered many questions in his practice. How do you memorialize a life? At which stage of someone's life do we capture them as a memory? Had the two young men not died, how would they have changed as they grew older? Should we not consider the future as well as the past when remembering someone? Having lost a close family member at the same time as working on the sculpture commission, Gontarski wanted especially to confront some of the questions raised when considering memorials and to explore them in depth. He began a new body of drawings and oil paintings with the intention of creating images of people he knew, perhaps inviting new mythologies, but all-the-while focusing on details of the actual world rather than the imaginary. He drew inspiration from portraits of young adult subjects by artists of the northern renaissance, admiring the qualities of light and shade and the ability to produce images of permanent, timeless youth that went on to live beyond the physical death of the sitter. Gontarski considers the works to be continuations rather than representations of the sitters, impervious to time frames and physical limitations. 'The Visitors' consist of portraits of some friends, some strangers, and some animals - all invited by the artist to visit him in the studio. |
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Hey kids, remember Gaetan Dugas? Canadian airline steward. Introduced AIDS into North America. Aka "Patient Zero." The deadly nightshade of such fiction, produced to rationalize and naturalize the world's terror, darkens the glamour of Steven Gontarski's sculpture Prophet Zero I (all works 2003). His slim-hipped, pearlescent ephebe wears not a gnarga (a feline mask behind which baroque fags would catcall come-ons to fetching lads) but a medico della peste, a birdlike face cover sported by doctors during the plague years, with a beak filled with spices to purify the air breathed, here tipped with shining warning-red. The sculpture's "body" isn't right, it's super-and/or antinatural: Too long, thin legs willow up from strange toeless feet, which are joined to a base made of the same nacreous fiberglass as the figure itself; elegant arms end in witchy digits of all one length; shallow chest, dainty nipples, inny belly button, uncircumcised cock, spume of pubic hair, strangely small buttocks combine into something not simply human. Most of the prophet's masked head and part of his right hand are formed to appear shrouded by some rich fabric evoking a mourning veil. Not disturbing the shrinelike sanctuary of the solitary prophet, a series of eight handsomely rendered but in the end ho-hum "Prophetic Drawings" in pencil and (save one) gold marker was hung around the gallery's antechambers: more veilings; grave Mapplethorpe-y flowers; etc. The most prepossessing depicted a dark pair of skulls, one mirroring the other (skeletal Narcissus reflected in a pool?) behind a scrim of outlined peacock feathers, their "eyes" in two shades of blue. Gontarski has noted how in "classical sculpture, draping techniques show off the human form and the virtuosity in the artist's carving." He adds, "I'm attracted to the notion of a frozen moment, like the fleeting instant when a piece of cloth lands on the body in a particular way." But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The fetish shouldn't be all ersatz old mastery-y artisanship but the darkness of the meanings produced (fiberglass is, natch, not carved marble; one of the mysteries of the veil is the living hidden underneath; on the cadaverous thinking haunting all of this, see Blanchot). What's going on here? In a nutshell: Some kind of neo-Pre-Raphaelitism luxuriating into neo-decadence. (Smile.) Though he works in London, Gontarski's American, so I'd propose he's channeling Cassandran energy from compatriots Elihu Vedder and the funerary sculptor extraordinaire Augustus Saint-Gaudens (inhis spooky "Clover" Adams mode). Less charitably, he may just be aheavy-metal Mark Kostabi. Why should anyone care? Well, in the States most of the newest fag art - art deploying a fag sign system - is faux naive, boho, crunchy, Radical Faerie-ish, reeking of patchouli, crystal meth, astro-vividness, and (super yuck) collectivity. Poaching too heavily from the Cockettes and tasting not quite enough of the sublime icing of genius Jack Smith, most of the gay art children, jettisoning vital Cockette craziness, see only their drugged communal party and forget Smith's venom intelligence, orgiastic vampirism, and glitter-vicious accuracy. As Leigh Bowery demanded, "Where's the poison?" In other words: too much Ginsberg (love-beads version), almost no Huysmans (luxury, learning,elitism, and ruin). Steward of swish, antinaturalistic funeral rites - alabaster, ebony, and vermeil affect dissolving portraiture into unregulated erotic encounter - Gontarski transforms the gallery into an untimely burial chamber, situated beyond the pleasure principle. Prophesying doubt about everything but looking shiny and terrific, this is a boutique apocalypse. |
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Catherine Wood: Can you describe the sculpture you're making? Steven Gontarski: It's called 'The Monument to Doubt'. It's made up of a neoclassical figure of a fictitious character I've named the Prophet Doubt, standing on top of a tall, obelisk-like structure. I wanted to pay tribute to him on a grand scale. I'm interested in the contradiction presented by the title; the contradiction of monumentalizing something as ephemeral as Doubt, using a solid,architectural and sculptural language. I'm drawn to contradictions like that; blatant contrasts between hard and soft whether hard and soft facts and notions or hard and soft materials. C: I think that contradiction is very evident in your work: you make discrete, hard-surfaced objects but your references are very fluid; music, subculture, sexuality and notions of inverted 'spiritualism'. S: A lot of this work, the Monument is just one example, is coming from a romantic inclination or from its own fantasy space. I'm reluctant to use the word 'fantasy' because it has so many connotations I don't like, but let's say its own space that is... C: Imagined? S: Yes, a Created space. A space defined by general moods and tones and specific fine details, made up of fleeting moments in a similar way to music. I like to present a contrast in details from simple lines to accurate depictions. The Prophet Doubt doesn't have toes for example but he does have elaborate pubic hair. The general lines of the sculpture come through in the manipulation of fabric and the way fabric looks when it is draped. I always use fabric when I'm modeling the sculpture because as a material it is so delicate; it looks as though it has no weight. It drapes an object, simultaneously covers it while showing off its contours. It's the contradiction of masking and revealing. In classical sculpture, draping techniques show off the human form and the virtuosity in the artist's carving. I'm attracted to the notion of a frozen moment; like the fleeting instant when a piece of cloth lands onthe body in a particular way. C: Can you say anything about the cloth motif that recurs in your work? You began by using socks and bits of clothing that weresomehow draped and literally sewn into the actual sculpture. Those had a connotation of being found materials, discarded. S: Yes, but because I was making life size sculpture, I thought it was funny to do classical drapery with those kinds of materials. I mean - when the Red Hot Chili Peppers posed, just wearing socks to cover their genitals, they made an incredible statement. Right now I prefer to keep things simple; the plain cloth, the piece of linen, and concentrate on the contours of the drapery. C: So the new work has a purity that's untainted by local references, as opposed to the way in which a viewer could imagine where the items of clothing came from? S: Yes, unless we talk about specific gestures and poses as local references - the new statues are formally very posed. In addition to classical poses there are the dance and fashion poses with all their specific cultural connotations. C: Your new sculpture is a three dimensional realization of a human form, a 'positive' object and so its contradictory nature seems heightened by naming it after 'doubt'. Are you thinking of perceptual doubt or philosophical? S: I'm using Doubt as a synonym to a Created or unreal space. C: Does it have negative implications? S: I'm referring to doubt as an uncertainty of observed reality, or anuncertainty of truth, or of what will happen - as a liberating notion.This sculpture is a prophet, a figure ordinarily known as a visionary with glimpses into future events. I'm working on an ongoing series of prophets. They're not based on any particular characters or mythologies perse, they're imagined beings that have access to what will happen in their particular space. I try to make them look as though they do fit into and play a charged role in a very specific context and history. What this history is...who knows? It's imagined. I'm tributizing doubt because how can anyone know what will happen, especially now, no one has any clue because things seem to be going backwards in so many ways. Maybe it's time to celebrate the 'not knowing' and the belief that anything can happen. C: The prophet in your new sculpture - as with many of your recent figures and drawings - is blindfolded. Are you referring to the classical notion of a link between physical blindness and the power of imaginary seeing? S: Not seeing or 'knowing' can help to predict what can happen in the future by putting emphasis on Belief and memories... the ephemeral things, and not the hard facts. And so it's kind of make believe. When I say blindness and doubt, it's just blindness to our everyday reality. It's the mistrust of the eyes and documentation. I don't like the idea of documenting what exists in the world. I'm more interested in realizing what I'd like there to be. C: Would you say your work is optimistic? S: Absolutely. The work is make believe and I draw from what I would like to see happen and what I hope for. I don't try to document the horrors of the past or even the mundanity of life; they've been scrutinized to death. C: Do you see your work as 'political' in any way? S: It's hard to answer that because I feel that what everyone makes,however apolitical, is in some way a reaction to the world and what is happening and if it is interesting to anybody it's because it does somehow touch on things that are happening and ring true with what people are thinking about. Right now feels very unsure, when so many wrongs are being exposed and a lot of ideas are being thrown around of what to do next and have things gone too far? It's a perfect time to try and work out, 'what am I going to do personally to make things better and to encourage beauty and fairness?' When talking about being political as an artist, it's important to talk about time and place. I think if you are looking at art and poetry and all kinds of communicationin the late 60's, if you didn't have a political angle you simply didn't have aconscience. Right now if you make openly political work it reads as 'political work', which has already had its day. Can it truly make a political difference now? Perhaps music and movies do this better because they reach a bigger audience. C: Do you think there is nostalgia for a time when art was radical? Or do you feel that perhaps we are looking back further now, to a time before radicality was a necessary condition? S: Fine art has a very funny place in culture. It exists in an elite realm and because artists want to be radical and shake things up, they have problems justifying the elitism. There was a big tendency in college to make political work because it seemed 'worthy' and not just a product for the elitist consumption. This view is so limiting. My interest is in unashamedly working in fantasy. I do what I can to improve my world even if it's imaginary. If I can actually have it exist in some way or another and allow people to be part of it and enjoy it with me, then that's the best I, or any artist, can hope for. I think things like death, beauty and commemoration are much more important than the actions of randomly elected politicians. Beliefs on life, death, beauty and virtue make up the fundamental ideologies in the first place. |
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