Just
when you thought Salt Lake was a nice, quiet town, a sculptural installation at
The Leonardo will make you think again. Dangling over the foyer like Olympic Tower’s demonic sister, Hylozoic Veil by Philip Beesley creates
a dramatic addition to the museum and more generally, to sculpture in Salt
Lake. It also joins an international coterie of triffids threatening world
invasion.
Unlike
the protagonists of John Wyndham’s 1951 novel, Hylozoic Veil is more subdued, preferring to attach itself to the
bowels of the building, rather than traipsing around the city. Extending
vertically and horizontally from inside The Leoardo’s roof, a motley crew of
materials include plastic fronds, electric lights, vials and suspension wires.
Eight diagrams displayed on the top floor explain that these are really
“breathing pores, swallowing actuators, filter cluster drones, and silicon
tongue extensions.” Within this circuitry, a ‘liquid system’ purporting to
share properties of living organisms is housed in a network of alembics and
ampules. The purpose of these in relation to the rest of the sculpture is
unclear, and functions as a gratuitous (though beautifully antiquated)
chemistry set.
This
behemoth of gadgetry is linked by a ‘dense array of microprocessors, sensors
and actuator systems’ which lead to a master control board that activates Hylozoic Veil’s responsiveness. Manifesting as twitches,
ripples, contractions and light bursts, such manoeuvers are prompted by the presence
of a visitor. In this way, the work alludes to the riddle of whether a sound is
made in the woods, if nobody is there to hear it. "When you walk through this environment," Beesley explains,
"there are arrays of space sensors all the way through which track your
movement and know where you are. And they start breathing and rippling all
through the environment and it has a kind of a presence which is nearly
alive." Some have likened this to a ‘giant lung, breathing in and out
around visitors.’ How cool this would be if it actually worked. Hylozoic Veil was positively dormant
during my visit, despite the many kisses I blew. It left me feeling nostalgic
for the truly mobile work of Alexander Calder.
At
the heart of many Science Fiction fantasies lies the desire to replicate life,
or at the very least, to isolate its essence. Movement has long been the
philosopher’s stone of this pursuit, as witnessed by a long line of dolls,
automata and robots dating back to the Renaissance. (In fact, it really dates
back to the Golem who, activated by divine intervention, became Adam). As
roaming houseplants with a ferocious appetite for the British public, triffids
belong in this camp too.
Beyond
this mechanistic approach, artists conceived other criteria upon which to pin
their hopes. For years, mimesis was
the holy grail of the art world, and fueled by devices such as chiaroscuro and
perspective, contributed to the appearance
of Life. In this spirit, Zeuxis hoped to paint grapes so convincing, even the
birds would be fooled. A substrate of this paradigm ventures beyond the looking
glass, into the more emotive side of identity. Pygmalion desired a sculpture he
could love; Frankenstein a bride, the Tin Man a heart. Pinocchio yearned to be
a real boy, as did Leo Lionni’s wind-up-mouse. Blade Runner’s sultry replicant
Rachel clung to her false memories, in the hopes that she too might be human.
Here,
Hylozoic Veil is in good company. It
wants desperately to live, as evinced in the media statements generated by both
Beesley and The Leonardo. Moreover, the artist’s website states that his
environments pursue a “distributed emotional consciousness.” However hopeful –
and Orwellian – as this sounds, this collection of disparate systems remains
inert and impotent.
Hyperbole
aside, Beesley’s work has many other worthwhile attributes including a surfeit
of references that are enchanting as they are delightful. Basic geometric
shapes such as bell curves, tetrahedrons, ellipses and chevrons abound. Among
them, human morphologies such as tongues, limb joints, spine vertebrae and
eyelashes are evoked. Woven together with exposed wires and circuit boards,
this cyborg amalgam harbors three distinct landscapes. The system cascades down
the museum atrium with a kind of buoyancy, as if floating in water. This brings
to mind forests of seaweed or fluorescent jellyfish blooms suspended in the
darker recesses of the ocean, like the underwater paintings of Alfred Kubin.
With tendrils so crystalline and frozen, we could just as easily be peering
into the lair of an evil Snow Queen. Here, it may be useful to know that the
artist is a professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo, and
possibly referencing the formidable Canadian winter. Set against a pitch-black
background, we are also reminded of remote astronomical clusters, nebulae and
galaxies glimpsed at by the Hubble Space Telescope. Perhaps Hylozoic Veil depicts a rogue centaurian
system, the outer reaches of the Klingon empire, or a fragment of our own Milky
Way? Such references are sufficient to keep me transfixed : gazing and
wondering.
Wondering....
IS this a triffid? Should we take cover? To date, hylozoic replicants have set
foot in Venice, Montreal and New Orleans. Triffids tend to lie dormant for long
periods of time, preferring to hide in museums and masquerade as contemporary art.
Has Beesley truly imbued his work with Life? Does Salt Lake have a triffid problem?
Only time will tell. Not until Hylozoic
Veil breaks free from the shackles of The Leonardo, slithers up to Temple
Square to embrace the golden statue of Moroni, will we know for sure.
