Michael Kirkham - Hardcover

Michael Kirkham. Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries, Michael Kirkham, Ernst van Alphen, Mets & Schilt uitgevers. This volume was published on the occasion of the Michael Kirkham exhibition Haags Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands, July 12 - October 28, 2007.

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Buchbeschreibung Hardcover. Zustand: Sehr gut. 79 p.: Ill., Supplement. Lediglich der Einband ist leicht berieben. Sonst aber ein sehr gutes und sauberes Exemplar/ Only the binding is minimally rubbed. Otherwise, however, a very good and clean copy. - In a world in which film and television is ubiquitous, illusionist spaces present themselves predominantly as animated and thus as narrative. Everything moves, or can start moving. Everything lives, or belongs to the domain of the living. Everything relates to everything, or can be related to something else. It is this implied interaction between human beings and objects that imposes a narrative coherence to almost any form of illusionist space. It is especially in contrast with this "hysterically" animated world that the paintings of Michael Kirkham induce an uncanny experience. Again and again we question to what extent his illusionist spaces actually are animated. Are the figures we see represented in his paintings supposed to be human beings? Or are they puppets or automatons, comparable to the puppet Olympia in the famous story "The Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffmann? Are the eyes of the figures supposed to see something, or are their gazes empty and their eyes of glass? It is precisely this ambiguity in Kirkham's work that makes us think of the work of the German artist Oskar Schlemmer or the English artist L.S. Lowry. But our hesitance or uncertainty is not restricted to the ambiguity between alive and lifeless. In most of the early paintings, the space in which the figures are situated is highly undefined. Although we see pieces of furniture such as a bed or a couch, it usually remains rather unclear whether we are confronted with an interior or an outside space. In the rare cases that we see more than one figure represented in a painting, it is a so not really clear whether something is or has been going on between them. In e.g. Couple on Bed (Sleeping) 2001 as well as in Couple on Bed 2001 we see a naked man next to a naked woman. Inclined as we are to read situations like these as narrative, we tend to think of a couple having just made love. But looking more carefully, we realize that nothing in the painting indicates that the man and the woman have been involved with each other. We simply see them lying or sitting next to each other. Is this a genre painting, comparable to a love scene by Fragonard or Boucher? Or should we see these paintings as still lifes: two bodies on a bed? The ambiguities in Kirkham's work imply more than a lack of clarity or an arbitrary possibility of choice. They cause a feeling of discomfort, of anxiety, or even of threat. It is because of this "gloomy" effect that the expression "uncanny" is so adequate to describe the impression these works leave on the viewer. Sigmund Freud, in his profound analysis of the uncanny experience, mentions some situations that almost literally fit the paintings of Kirkham.1 He mentions wax sculptures, puppets and automatons as case in which it is not clear for viewers whether they are seeing something alive or dead. But he also mentions epileptic fits or certain fits of madness as events that create the impression that a mechanical or automatic process is occurring behind the usual mental activity. In literature such as gothic stories it is usually haunted houses where the uncanny is experienced. Inside the intimate and safe space of the home, events happen which suggest the presence of an alien force or person. However, Freud comes to the conclusion that what imposes itself as strange or alien is in fact not strange at all. It is not unknown, but rather something that is familiar and known that has been repressed. ISBN 9789053305676 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 782. Artikel-Nr. 1219734

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