ART
Paul Chan: Sade for Sade's Sake at Greene Naftali Gallery, NYC
/ Thom Donovan
12.10.09
Why the squares/windows? Chan's playing on scale and abstraction through use of geometric shapes seems to derive from Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings. At one moment the squares are windows along the facade of a fortress (perhaps the prison that held the Marquis de Sade?); at another they are falling off the walls (picture frames cartoonishly coming unhinged). The squares also represent objects in the foreground and background (space is flattened by Chan's iconoclastic use of these black and colored squares on a white background). Finally, these squares represent objects carried by the slaves who appear in the video silhouetted, entering and exiting the left and right sides of the video projection as though upon a stage.
Seeing Chan’s recent work, I am also reminded of Kara Walker’s signature silhouettes. When one sees Walker's drawings, paintings, and animation, one immediately recognizes Walker's referent––antebellum Southern slaves and their white masters. These images are both negatively stereotypical and historical. As such, they compel their viewer to feel outrage, empathy, and to come to terms with one's own complicity with legacies of slavery (when I saw the Walker retro at The Whitney in 2007, I was in fact struck by the reverence of the crowd; the sheer quantity of Walker's reiterative works gathered together had an overwhelming force). Chan's figures, derived from Sade's masterpiece The 120 Days of Sodom, have no obvious historical referent other than Sade’s book. They are mythic and archetypal depicting the generalized slave of Sade's work, the slave as Sadeian concept. Unlike Walker's figures, Chan's own would seem to have neither racial or class feature. There are men and women slaves, though only men get to be masters. I am admittedly suspicious of this de-historicizing (if not de-politicizing) effect of Chan’s video.
Throughout the video we see the slaves moving heavy objects across the screen. Since there is no depth of field to the figures or the objects they carry figures and objects tend to flatten one another. The projection has a slight blur to it. Whenever I encounter a blur in film, painting, or photography I immediately sense a deformation is occurring––something being returned from form to formlessness. Insofar as Sade himself intends to deform God as a referent for “natural” order and “normal” human sexual behavior, Chan's blur seems appropriate.
Seeing Chan’s recent work, I am also reminded of Kara Walker’s signature silhouettes. When one sees Walker's drawings, paintings, and animation, one immediately recognizes Walker's referent––antebellum Southern slaves and their white masters. These images are both negatively stereotypical and historical. As such, they compel their viewer to feel outrage, empathy, and to come to terms with one's own complicity with legacies of slavery (when I saw the Walker retro at The Whitney in 2007, I was in fact struck by the reverence of the crowd; the sheer quantity of Walker's reiterative works gathered together had an overwhelming force). Chan's figures, derived from Sade's masterpiece The 120 Days of Sodom, have no obvious historical referent other than Sade’s book. They are mythic and archetypal depicting the generalized slave of Sade's work, the slave as Sadeian concept. Unlike Walker's figures, Chan's own would seem to have neither racial or class feature. There are men and women slaves, though only men get to be masters. I am admittedly suspicious of this de-historicizing (if not de-politicizing) effect of Chan’s video.
Throughout the video we see the slaves moving heavy objects across the screen. Since there is no depth of field to the figures or the objects they carry figures and objects tend to flatten one another. The projection has a slight blur to it. Whenever I encounter a blur in film, painting, or photography I immediately sense a deformation is occurring––something being returned from form to formlessness. Insofar as Sade himself intends to deform God as a referent for “natural” order and “normal” human sexual behavior, Chan's blur seems appropriate.