Sleeping Giants

The Work of Max Streicher thrives through displacement. Inflatable white objects hang listless and large, they loom over the viewer, imposing on the space they lie. It is through their great mass that they give reference to the body. Their forms juxtapose dream-like-qualities, make believe and the hereness and now of the body. "Objects can be animate, where toys, images and abstractions represent (the very things we are most familiar)"(Streicher 10). Through this, Streicher attempts to recreate the childhood experience : forcing the viewer into a tight imposing space reflecting fairy tales and fables: the viewer becomes a child among giants, like Jack and The Beanstalk. The bodyness of his work gives reference to the briefness of life, through the body heaves to the metronome of fans and the flimsy fleshyness of white shiny silk.

The Notion of The Ghost: Emanuel Licha

Ghost, phantom, illusion, petit objet a:

Emanuel Licha's works thrives with the ironic; installations of houses with no entrance, transparent homes and barriers. His works are preformative, incorporating the act of storytelling with investigation. His viewers compete the work, becoming apart of the installation: they become Licha's ghosts, floating aimlessly in contrived spaces. It would not be unusual to enter one of Licha's spaces and view Victorian wallpaper of war, death and execution. To be made aware of destruction through his said "ignorance" to it. The real and the unreal merge to build an atmosphere where the viewer becomes trapped: a ghost behind walls, peering at others below.

Nous habitons des cabanes cadenassées du dedans comme le tombeau des pòetes et celui des momies.

We live in huts, locked from within like the tombs of poets and mummies (Cauquelin 75).

The Grotesque

Marcel's characters are void from narrative, transported, they float in the dissolved spaces of the page. He creates 'stills' that reference cinema and pop-culture- from wonder girl to ET. These absurd frames at a glance, pilot a role very ordinary- his non confrontational style softens his shocking and grotesque subject matter: with crocodiles eating decapitated female heads to drowning girls and circus clowns. Even once realized, to the viewer his images are Innocent, like that of a bizarre and twisted dream.

Marcel Dzama: More Fameous Drawings

Works Cited

Allen, Jan, Catherine Osbore, eds. Erik Edson: Fable.

Ages Etherington Art Center: 2004.

Cauquelin, Anne, Emanuel Licha : un autre fete au meme instant

brille dans Paris Paris : Centre Culturel Canadien, 2005.

Dzama, Marcel, More Fameous Drawings,Winnipeg Canada:

Plug In Editions, 1999.

Kiendl, Anthony, Ven Begamudre, and Jeanne Randolph, eds.

Little Worlds . Regina,Sask: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2001.

Michael, Linda, Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim.

Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family. Australia: Australia Council, 2003.

Streicher, Max, Sleeping Giants. Toronto, Canada: Cambridge

Galleries: Catologue Wood Printing, 1999.

Why?

What does this have to do with anything?

The project was created to house a public space for a monologued train of consciousness. The process itself, intended to result in a series of short video works, evolved into a single performance piece with the script itself the seven days of blogged entries. Each speaker represented a signifier of the author and a dichotomy of the self as well. The public space gives reference to voyeurism and comments on the deterioration of personal, physical interaction; as apposed to the Cyber identity, intended as a venue for personal expression and thought.

There is a level of control in stating this through the safety of the screen. There is nothing that ties myself or anyone to ideas or statements. Personalities are contrived, altered and edited with a chance of deletion. It is impersonal yet personal, fictional and factual. The real and the unreal are dissolved by the confines of the formlessness of the space. For this reason the text is slanted and chaotic, words are written by association with an attempt at truthfulness and complete absurdity.

Decapitated sunset

Speaker one: (impatient)
Time is almost up and the duration is tedious.
If I lay down I might dream of the ocean, where tables float upside down and I'll float out to sea. Perhaps you'll be waiting and perhaps not. That is not relevant. My lids are like drapes. No one ever considers that they can be drawn whenever most convenient. So lay down your heads when the sun passes over the hills- I'll lay down my head and close my eyes and all I known will turn into smoke. Time has no numbers and clocks are filled with honey. I'll drink dark coffee and fall to the bottom of the cup with remnants left to tell me gossip. And one... two... one two... one... two... one.