THE Galeria Hilario Galguera sits solidly on
its side street in Mexico City like an impregnable retreat, the blankness of
its walls a perfect suspension of purpose.
Its purpose, of course, is art. To seek entrance, one must ring the bell to
determine how that purpose is served, and it is my interest here to consider
just how it is served – in a sanctuary that disguises its function – in the
exhibition of work by British artist Torie Begg.
I have previously written on Begg’s work, and there is one particular
quality of her work that seems appropriate to draw out in the context of
this exhibition. That is the degree to which there lingers a sense of
foreboding, an indescribable but palpable sense of evasion implicit in the
layers of paint that trace the surface of the objects, whether stretched
canvases or the apparent bric a brac of ordinary life. It struck me,
standing in front of her work, that making is a dirty business, a
transgressive act akin to covering up a crime. And what would this ‘crime’
be? How extensive is its denial?
One need only read Begg’s titles to find a central allusion that defines our
centuries-old ambivalence towards making ¬– the question of truth. For Begg,
the word is ‘apparent’, the test of appearance in answering to the
anticipation of truth. Let me suggest an image I want to explore later: it
is the image – though not the act – of Saint Thomas touching the risen
Christ’s wounds.
But first it is important to retrace our steps to where we enter the large
open courtyard past the entrance vestibule. Wrapped around the wall –
forming a kind of ante-room to the broad steps of the interior stairway
leading up to the galleries – are three large rectangular paintings loosely
washed in pastel horizontal stripes representing the three primary colours –
red in one, blue in another, yellow in the third. Across each, and
off-centre, leans a ladder – really an image of a ladder, since their
construction is so light. The effect of these works (‘Narrative’ series:
‘Apparently’ landscape) forms an axis of intersection between two
infinities, one bound to the earth, the other bound to Paradise.
Turning from these, and mounting the stairway to enter the body of the
exhibition, strikes one as a passage into consequence reminiscent of Dante.
The exhibition already begins to seem less an exhibition, and rather more a
journey into Doubt, and that impression immediately finds its expression in
the extension of the ‘Narrative’ series: ‘Apparently’ Gold Pablo Tepoztlan.
Washed this time in gold, the work includes a square canvas of close to two
metres which becomes the ground across which another ladder leans against
the wall and before which is set a simple square-back chair, a pair of
loafing shoes, and three guitars – one leaning against the chair and ladder,
the other two lying on the floor and spilling out towards the viewer. If the
trinity inherent in the courtyard narrative offered a finely balanced
dualism, its expansion here – the chair, shoes and three guitars – seems
rooted in the golden pleasure dome of languid insouciance.
If I have dwelt on these works we first encounter, it is because they set a
stage – I believe they set the stage – which directs the engagement Torie
Begg has defined within the space of this gallery, and with respect to the
cultural life of Mexico itself. While much of the work in the exhibition is
drawn from Begg’s history of practice, these works were conceived for this
occasion: they direct our view.
And towards what view is the viewer directed? For those familiar with Begg’s
history, it is clearly the body – its tension between elegance and nausea –
that is at issue. For those coming unfamiliar with the work to this
exhibition, what must surely be visceral is the shift that almost abruptly
breaks from pleasure dome to the brooding darkness of blacks and blood-reds
row on row. Following the gallery’s maze of rooms, with the implacability of
Begg’s signature bleeding squares occupying wall, floor and ceiling, one
passes by a small room. Shockingly, because it seems so like – yet so
removed from –‘Apparently’ Gold Pablo Tepoztlan, Andy Electric Chair
‘apparently RED’ tears open the flimsy veil of Death. One cannot linger
here. The path is set towards a destination that one can only dread.
From Pleasure Dome to Dread. As this exhibition opens the curtain in
anticipation of its final act, another image occurs to one: the image of
Pandora opening the box and letting loose all the ills of the world, and it
is at this juncture that we remind ourselves of Saint Thomas inspecting the
wounds. Because Begg has laid a trap, one that lurks within the gallery, at
its central heart – a trap that was already a premise of this exhibition,
though one that exists outside Begg’s own work. Unsuspecting, we have been
lured as along a path into, through, and now suddenly beyond the work to
round a corner and find ourselves staring for an uncomprehending moment on
the image of consequence itself: the Trinity of Christ and the two thieves,
a work by Damien Hirst permanently installed like a gigantic remnant of a
near-forgotten world in a cavern-like space at the far reach of the
gallery’s warren-like interior.
For those not familiar with Hirst’s version of the Crucifixion, the figures
representing the climactic moment of Christian guilt and redemption are
borne not by images of the human, but by the skinned and eviscerated bodies
of three sheep, the nakedness of their twisted flesh and wrenching posture
eternally preserved in embalming fluid. In a flash, Saint Thomas and Pandora
fuse in the agony of Hope, and we cast our minds back to the entrance
courtyard, to Begg’s narrative of duality, and the moment separating
aspiration and despair.
In the end, it is the brilliance of Begg’s apprehension of what this gallery
contains, and her staging of our penetration to its core, that moves one to
shudder in awe and wonder. What takes one’s breath away is how profoundly
Begg occupies this epic story to advance not only her own complex narrative
of the body, but to provide us as well with a twist that turns us back out
into the hurly-burly of Mexico’s special relationship with the dread of
Fate. No longer simply an exhibition by a British artist known as Torie Begg,
she opens up for us an unforgettable Pilgrim’s Progress into the heart of a
culture.
YVONNE LAMMERICH IS AN ARTIST BASED IN MONTREAL