Apestraction.

Exhibition By Mexican artist Damián Ortega.

Curated by Luiza Teixeira de Freitas.

http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/75095/apestraction/

Damián Ortega (Key words: Homo Faber : Hands)

(Damián Ortega

Mythic language organ. Object / organ

2013

5 individual pieces, concrete and pigment

12 3/16 x 10 5/8 x 10 5/8 in. (31 x 27 x 27 cm)

© Damián Ortega

Photo: Ben Westoby

Courtesy White Cube)

Apestraction is a  show that is concerned with Tools and the origins of tool making. Letting us think about how langauge and thought develop. From the Co-evolution of play, work and tool making. The underlying thesis is that art making, is tool making.

Art stems from the same play act and experimentation in the world.  And from generative nature of this play and work, each foray producing more language, through the changes and products of these gestures. It’s a compelling notion, that language and the development of thought almost happen despite themselves.

Art is the product of this same impulse present in Chimpanzees. We are draw to look at seemingly the smallest of acts.

The Chimpanzee Tools produced on show where collected from the Gashaka region in Nigeria where the rarest subspecies of chimpanzees survive. Looking at  these Tools, has a wonderful and vulnerable feeling to it. Because it is like staring at oneself, when ones own first reaching thoughts and action come about in infancy or evolution.  It also makes us experience a retrospective sense of loss, when in front of object we would have disregarded and we reconsider how we relate to the idea of intelligence.

We are brought to reconsider the nature of all made or utilized objects , we are alerted, that, without attention and interpretation would simply be looking at brunch of sticks without purposeful intentions.

Through out he show we are vitally reminded of this. It is curious how this nature of art or tools, become so invisible

in our daily lives. So that Ortega’s works have a habit letting us see beyond the mirage of the quotidian. And lets us celebrating these generative  organs of langauge.

Sometimes it is possible to notice in this show how art overlaps with language and value.

How Language, the hand, tool making and work are all intertwined.

suspended, from the ceiling various Chimp Tools, such as brushes (made by masticating one end) or poke tools and so on are hung to make a double helix.

The Honey brush. I like for the suggestion that this maybe the origin of the paint brush. The precursor to the paint brushing being the honey brush. Quite the contrast to the idea put forward by the thinker George Bataille, while pondering on the new discovered cave paintings, that painting was a form of cutting or laceration.

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added

Tool making, food extraction and children playing and eating with their own hands. Is in fact a very evolved thing to do. (Many of our modern problems seem to stem from food that we barely touch with our own hands.) Texture and invention, really are a hands on thing.

Upstairs in the gallery space, (intriguingly, Freud’s former bedroom), Are various art works from Ortega’s Oeuvre that fit tightly with the fascinating premise of the show.

Mythic language organ – I like the name alone, as it plays with our inability to necessarily locate that ancestor artifact which spurt us off in our growing and unending journey of creativity and consciousness. The use of mythic suggests a quality and generative capacity that exists outside the capacity of our imaginings. (Even a touch of our preference for the primitive as Gombrich would have pu t it)

Some how the Title, to me at least is suggestive of Mother. The expression Mother tongue springs to mind. Reminding us of the transmission of language from mother to child. Motherhood as a generative of language.

The work, suggests the organic and the organism of language. A good reminder, that the clean world of ideas is based in the messiness of the biological, and the mutative.

Bum Face! Is a mask sculpture adapted from a cocoa pod, resembling the beautifully minimalistic Inuit masks. Its title alone say it all. Adaptation, art and laughter. The idea is that on wearing the sculpture one is transformed into the Bum Face character, as such transformation occur in the act of theatre.

The work spread out through the house. In a remarkable good use and curation of space. So that an energy and momentum continuity the space is connected and is made alive. Whereas the rooms can normally feel a little static. (one of our favourite areas… the desk in the study with all the ancient figurines)

Normally such an exhibition would be condemned to remain in the exhibition room in Freud’s Museum (formerly the bed room).

I particularly enjoyed the, knife sculpture in the garden. Not immediately obvious from the start, the sculpture have variable dimension, like a Calder mobile set on a plinth. The sculpture is not viewable from one angle alone, moving around various hidden elements, of the shape and the curve of the object

Various elements are hidden behind, until, surprise. None the more so at discovering a kitchen handle attached. Where upon the steel sculpture is turned into a giant machete, meat clever or Oriental sword. The sculpture immediately sways from genteel art object to a weapon of serious potential violence… . A Vital re-awaking of the power of tool making. The originating of language from tools and the potency of language as maker of tools.

This particular tool, being langauge and an articulation of what is materially and symbolically possible in the world.

Ends September 1st

http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/75095/apestraction/