The KrySTaL WorLD - Arts University Bournemouth

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Exhibition catalogue includes an essay by
Dr. Anna Middleton
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Viewfinder Photography Gallery
52 Brixton Village
London SW9 8PS
www.viewfinder.org.uk
Joel Lardner
Dan Tobin Smith
Photographs by:
Supported by:
Joel Lardner
jlardner@aucb.ac.uk
The Arts University College at
Bournemouth
Dan Tobin Smith
dan@dantobinsmith.com
Curated by:
Kathleen Brey
kathleen@viewfinder.org.uk
Catalogue essay by:
Dr. Anna Middleton, Arts University
College, Bournemouth
Published by:
Viewfinder Photography Gallery
52 Brixton Village
London SW9 8PS
www.viewfinder.org.uk
Edited by:
First published December 2010
Lisa Robertson
editor@viewfinder.org.uk
Design by:
Mandana Ahmadvazir
designer@viewfinder.org.uk
Also available as a colour,
e-publication:
www.viewfinder.org.uk/shop
© The artists and authors.
The views expressed in this
publication are not necessarily
the views of the publisher or
the editors.
Catalogue essay by:
Dr. Anna Middleton,
Arts University College,
Bournemouth
The Krystal World (Cordyceps) is a collaborative project initiated by
Joel Lardner with the still-life photographer Dan Tobin Smith. Smith’s
photographic archive provides a seductive sequence of images from which
new meanings are formed and new worlds explored.
In his book Postproduction (2007) Nicolas Bouriaud, argues that the
artistic imperative is no longer: “what can we have that is new?” but “how
can we make do with what we have?” Cordyceps fungi provides a way of
understanding this creative process and the discourse associated with
transformation and decay that permeates through this body of work.
Cordyceps is a type of parasitic fungi found mainly on insects and other
arthropods, a few are parasitic on other fungi. When a Cordyceps fungus
attacks a host, the mycelium invades and eventually replaces the host tissue,
while the elongated fruiting body may be cylindrical, branched, or of complex
shape. These organic, unusual and beautiful shapes are created by the
parasitic fungi invading the host body.
There is a parallel here with the visual outcomes of this collaborative project.
The photographs of Dan Tobin Smith are transformed and transmuted into
different forms by the illustrative work of Joel Lardner in an expressive,
organic and intuitive response to the original photographs. These organic
forms evolve out of the photographs and depend upon them for their
development in much the same way as the Cordyceps fungus invades and
exploits its host for its own development and survival.
The visual worlds created by Tobin Smith and Lardner are dualistic; dark,
sinister and decaying yet evolving into something new, beautiful, strange
and organic. The effect is of capturing a moment in time; the movement and
dynamism of the evolving organic forms grow into and out from the original
photographic montage.
This dialectical tension in the work reflects an almost alchemical
transformation of matter. Conceptually the integral dynamism in the work
is maintained by the dialogue between the forms and by the two artists and
their work.
The fungal-like tendrils and evolving organic forms are complimented by
the crystallization of the image. Photomontage images of rock crystal seem
to engulf and transform the original visually created world into the Krystal
World of the exhibition title. The reference evokes both popular cultural
forms such as Ballard’s novel The Crystal World (1966) where the protagonist
encounters an apocalyptic phenomenon that crystallizes everything it
touches, as well as the Aristotelian concept of crystal spheres that made up
the universe - almost worlds within worlds. Lardner’s dialogic visual response
to the photographic elements develops further this element of secret worlds
and hermetic encoding of the visual space.
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The alchemical transformations of Tobin Smith's photographs represent a
dialectical process - and again invoke the Cordyceps analogy; out of decay
comes beauty. Like alchemists turning base-metal into gold, the ugly/profane
into the beautiful, Tobin Smith and Lardner create worlds in which the visual
images are in tension, not wholly resolved as to meaning or signification.
Tobin Smith’s exquisitely photographed objects engage with the beauty of
the commodity, almost fetishizing it. From commodities as diverse as a gun
or a handbag these elements are photographed in a sensual, almost erotic
way. The illustrative transformation of the original photographs brings into
question the 'commodity fetishism' and the seductive qualities of the object
and consumerism more generally. This creates a dialectical tension, the
corrupted, darker signification of the fetishized/eroticised commodity being
subverted by the beauty of the more organic illustrative forms. The final
images do not, however, resolve that dialectical tension - the signification of
desire and allure of the commodity and of beauty remain, but the darker more
sinister and organic forms intervene and make more complex the viewer's
relationship with the images and what they may signify.
The Krystal World of Tobin Smith and Lardner reflects what Bourriaud called
‘alter-modernity’, the formation of something that is ‘on the move’. For
Bourriaud, alter-modernity refers to
a totality of cultural and artistic practices that connect the modern spirit
with the world in which we live. The open enemy of Modernism was
Traditionalism, and it made strategic use of industrial aesthetics to reach
its goals. What might be its new, current enemy? Unification, levelling,
product-making. Today differences and singularities are the weapons
opposed to this huge standardisation from economic globalisation. The
need for ‘diversity’ replaces Modernist universalism...with a generalised
exoticism, a global nomadism. Artists make strategic use of the
vocabulary of the media and the economy, which are the two dominant
languages of our times (Nicolas Bourriaud, 2007).
Thus, to enter the Krystal World is to engage with the transmutation of form
and meaning, with beauty and decay, with the seduction and transgression
of the visual image and ultimately to encounter the hidden worlds created by
Lardner and Tobin Smith.
November 2010.
Joel Lardner
Dan Tobin Smith