Search for the Spirit

In the exhibition ‘Search for the Spirit’ a series of documents attempt to capture transcendent experience, through images of asceticism, bodily manipulation, magic, glamour, metaphysica labstraction, and the dissolution of the self into nature, colour and light. Proto mystical contentappears in works that are mostly serial and indexing something difficult to grasp. The title comes from an exhibition by the Canadian artist group General Idea which took place at the Galerie Gaetan in Geneva in 1976 and featured thirty six ‘show cards’ in a serial format of image, text and rubber stamps on identical mounts. These cards develop the motif of the ‘General Idea Beauty Pageant’ and explore the group’s interest in glamour as a physic force, able to move people to do unusual things, and as a metaphor for art and its power to transform.

Starting with the show cards by General Idea, the exhibition features a range of archivalmaterials and artists’ works. This includes the Canadian artist group Image Bank’s sculpture ‘Colour Bar Research’ (1971) three thousand wooden blocks painted primary colours and greyscale, which were floated down Robert’s Creek in British Columbia, and the video ‘Light On’ (1971) showing two naked men in nature exploring each other’s bodies with the light of a handheld mirror. Company Paintings from the mid Nineteenth Century depict Sadhus performing feats of physical prowess and endurance, which reflect the British attempt to visually document the customs and traditions of colonial India. A set of gouaches and architectural plans from Eileen Gray produced mostly in Paris during the 1920s, translate the vocabulary of high modernism, reminiscent of Supremacist painting, into interiors, carpets and screens, and communicate an idea of cosmopolitan life. Stitched works by psychiatric patient Johanna Natalie Wintsch from the Prinzhorn Collection, also from the 1920s, spell out the names of the doctors inher clinic and suggest a symbolic language influenced by her interest in Theosophical ideas.

Two contemporary artists develop themes in the exhibition through commissioned works. Luis Jacob in a series on paper which reproduce paintings by Mark Rothko, using typewriter keys to simulating qualities of light and shade, depth of field and emotional intensity, and Yael Davids documentation of circus skills and magic workshops, undertaken with prisoners at the Mechelen Municipal Prison during the run up to the exhibition. Works in the exhibition, which is located in the early 20th Century theatre of a Catholic boys school, are displayed using an exhibition structure designed by the artist Luca Frei, based on drawings of angels by Paul Klee, the shape of which becomes visible when looking down on from a balcony that runs around the hall.

 

Exhibition images, the Scheppersinstitutt, 2009, photography Christine Clinckx