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Exerpt from: Hamilton Magazine - Issue: Spring 2007, March 2007 Mysterious Gaze Marianne Reim and Fiona Kinsella share penetrating visions By Tor Lukasik-Foss Malcolm Caldwell wrote an article in the New Yorker recently in which he examined the difference between the words “puzzle” and “mystery”. A puzzle, he argued, was something with a definite solution that could be arrived at after unearthing a series of hidden clues. In the case of a mystery, the information is available, but understanding it is a matter of speculation. If people have problems “getting” contemporary art, it's usually because they're approaching it as a puzzle and not a mystery. Fiona Kinsella and Marianne Reim are two local mixed-media artists unveiling new exhibitions this spring. The raw, natural elements of Reim's steel constructions and the delicate, macabre confections of Kinsella's work are at opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum. Yet they're both steeped in spiritual energy and defiantly committed to the notion of mystery. Fiona Kinsella Figurines of infants are laid on elaborately decorated cakes that are covered in virginal white fondant, adorned with sugar flowers and set on a bed of hair. The figurines have a strips of icing across their midriffs and their necks, as if to repair a break. The end of a guitar string pokes out from the side of a cake, perhaps signaling chaos trapped within. The art is very still and solemn, yet there are such swirls of unconscious sexual, historic and religious energy about it that it's hard to avert your eyes. The works, by artist Fiona Kinsella, will be part of the Wilderness, an exhibition opening at the transit gallery in late March. The Wilderness refers to a place where humans wander to confront God, the devil or the very heart of themselves. One of the central stories that has informed this series of works, says Kinsella, is Plato's allegory of the cave. In this parable, a number of prisoners are chained in a cave and can only interpret the world by looking at the shadows casts by the fire. When one prisoner breaks his shackles and observes the wider world, he returns but can't relate what he has seen to in terms that the other prisoners will understand. Kinsella sees her art as a similar kind of private untransferable experience and is therefore very protective about how she describes it. She wants to understand each exchange between her art and it's audience as a kind of solitary pilgrimage. This is why Kinsella remains careful in revealing the meaning behind any one piece, and why she coyly suggests it might be about “everything”. I'm interested in beauty, in beauty's effect on someone,” the artist explains. “I'm interested in the idea of a pilgrimage to a shrine. I want to know why people would travel such long distances just to stand in the presence of something meaningful or beautiful to them. The cake is a set-up: It's a familiar thing to most people and they understand it on very personal terms. They relate very personal moments of passage with this kind of cake. Cakes are a marker of time, a marker of the journey.” Kinsella's work is beautifully executed. There are no cracks in the presentation, no hints of the mechanics behind the mysteries she's creating. In past exhibitions she has lovingly set her cakes in antique display cases, on draped shelves, heightening their formal ritualistic air. The art's descriptions read like poetry, further encouraging the audience to take a romantic approach to the work, rather than a scientific one. There are countless readings of Kinsella's art It's an homage to early Surrealism, picking up the same vibe as Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup. It invites the same uneasiness about consumption. An investigation of feminism through the traditionally feminine concepts of baking, babies, and frivolous decoration, it suggests a lady's cabinet of curios, and intimate sphere of meaning. And it ultimately remains mysterious, even to the artist. “The thing that guides me is materials,” she admits. “I didn't make a kind of logical decision to work with fondant and royal icing. It was more that I was struck with a desire to work with sugar. I just had to use it somehow. The items that I dress the cakes with are the same. My materials compel me to do something with them. It's just a matter of letting the work reveal itself.” Hamilton Magazine - 2007 |
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