Lorna Marsh: Cage
Paintings
Aldo Castillo Gallery
233 W. Huron St.
Chicago, IL 60610
(312) 337-25
October 17 November
15, 2003
By
Diane Thodos
Lorna Marsh Woman with Head in a Box 2003
mixed media on canvas, 36 X 24 inches
Courtesy Aldo Castillo Gallery, Chicago
In the two years since 9/11
mainstream American artists have failed to confront the tragedy in any
significant emotional depth. Peter Plagen's statement in a 2002 Newsweek
web exclusive, that "so far no impressive works about the attack
have made it to public view," essentially remains true. Arguably,
it is the deconstructive bent of the art world with it's focus on irony
has suppressed the possibility of direct emotional content. In contrast,
contemporary South African artists like William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas,
and Lorna Marsh have made emotionally significant art about trauma and
social tragedy. Just as these artists have developed their perceptions
on the periphery of South African society, so, it could be argued, their
expressionism remains outside the conceptually based mainstream of contemporary
art. Both forms of marginalization are a source of strength.
All three artists share a similar artistic background, with the classical
approach to drawing which was standard in South Africa. The emotional
impact of their work comes from shared desperation born of social and
political turmoil but tempered through the perceptions of individual
lives. "It's because of the social repression," Marsh states
"that our emotional core is the same. It's pretty much the same
experience the German Expressionists had. The social mindset was very
"verkrampte' which means narrow minded in Afrikaans." Lorna
Marsh continues by saying that South African society was "controlling,
repressive and very Calvinistic in a way that people in America don't
have a consciousness of. You don't want your sexuality, place in society,
and personal choices legislated for you, and this is what they did."
Lorna Marsh Mounted
Head 1996
mixed media on paper, 22 X 30 inches
Marsh avoids postmodern distancing
devices. Consequently the emotional invective found in her work does
not become anemic or insubstantial. This point cannot be underestimated,
particularly because the narrative elements in her work is informed
by the unsettling pulse of the artist as a living witness to unresolved
dilemmas and dangerous turmoil. Marsh creates parables of a destroyed
world using invented symbols and situations in much the same way that
Eastern European animated films from the 60's and 70's commented on
the folly of human nature trapped within the political Communist dystopia
of that time.
In her current exhibition, Marsh examines the repercussions of living
in a state of imprisonment. As in her previous exhibits Africa Within
and Birds of Prey, Marsh uses animals to express the condition of society
while portraying human beings as insubstantial shadows bent on their
own self destruction. A similarly bleak and unredeemable view of humanity
is found in Kentridge's animated films where the only symbols of hope
are the constellations in the sky which are far from earth. Previously
the animals in Marsh's paintings portrayed the violence of instinctively
wild predators, or became prey as decapitated or limbless victims. Her
current images are ghostly disembodied forms of animals who are muzzled
and caged. They are imprisoned as much by literal cages as by symbolic
ones of social iconography, where mounted heads and tamed "bunnies"
exist as empty signs of the animals wild counterparts. With instinct
lost, the animal's memories of their previously wild nature does not
survive the conditioning process they have been put through. Comparing
previous exhibits to the current one, it is as though the volcanic intensity
of the artist's burning landscapes have erupted into a white blanket
of ash that has covered the stage of her work, freezing feeling imbedded
within her painting's surfaces and snuffing out the sense of life.
Marsh's work has also always engaged issues surrounding the role of
women within rigidly Calvinist South African society. This is a theme
she shares in common with Marlene Dumas which is most acutely portrayed
Marsh's Eve series from 2001. The current exhibit portrays women as
caged and conditioned creatures in much the same way her animals are
portrayed. In Woman With Her Head in a Box a nude female has covered
her head in a box so as not to see a menacing snake twined around her
ankles that threatens to violate her. Clearly Lorna Marsh is presenting
a cautionary tale about women not taking a part in their own empowerment;
by accepting repressive socially dictated roles women can also become
blind to the social and cultural traps which victimize them.
Marsh adopts a direct approach to her materials, refusing to fetishize
them. Her handling of paint and media shows a kind of rawness and brutality
that reflects the society she wishes to portray. Her scratched, smudged,
and scumbled surfaces become a metaphorical way of showing the dirty
underbelly of the world, presenting it as edifice supported by rusted
scaffolding which has cracks in its plaster. In the Cage Paintings series
her formerly expressive colors and marks on the canvas surface have
curdled into a disquieting snowfall of numbness.
