Visual Arts

The day after Thomas Hirschhorn’s tape, foil, and cardboard cave opens in Heart of Darkness, the exhibition Cameron Jamie closes, darkening another cave, Jamie’s Maps and Composite Actions. Well worth a visit–the show closes October 22–the gallery-sized installation is a steep path through a landscape made from chicken wire embedded with clay (sold only in Europe, it is used to make curved walls in housing construction, says Walker assistant curator Yasmil Raymond). The path is dark and so narrow that only one person, carrying a lantern, can experience it at a time. The entry and exit to this cave are the same, and at the bottom of the twisting, bumpy walk are drawings and collages of a distinctly Halloween flavor.

The work’s label explains that it’s part of an ongoing project by Jamie that started with a series of late-night performances in which the artist, dressed as a vampire, rode a horse through California's San Fernando Valley or visited bars, strip clubs, and 24-hour convenience stores, picking fights with strangers:

There is no visual record of these actions, only the verbal testimonies of his accomplice, which were transcribed into text. This series of drawings, inspired by extracts from those unverifiable accounts and made by the artist in collaboration with a Parisian street-portrait artist and Dutch cartoonist Erik Wielaert, gives form to a ‘myth’ in the making.

The work is one of most arresting–thanks to the disorienting walk along a trail none to easy to navigate, and the eerie sense of discovery when you hold a lantern up to images mounted on precariously leaned boards–in a show that’s sparked a range of great responses (notably, the wide-ranging and thoughtful review “We Can Be Heroes” by Minneapolis sculptor Jeffrey Kalstrom). Did you experience it? If so, what did you think. If not, get to the Walker before Sunday to walk the winding path.

Coming soon: An audio interview with Thomas Hirschhorn on his immersive work Cavemanman, which can be previewed Friday night.

A hybrid of dorm room, al-Qaeda cave, hermit’s lair, philosopohical nerve center, and subterranean beer-drinking hideout, Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation Cavemanman is taking shape in Galleries, 4, 5 and 6 for next weekend’s opening of Heart of Darkness: Kai Althoff, Ellen Gallagher and Edgar Cleijne, Thomas Hirschhorn. Nearly complete, the winding tunnel–made of wood, cardboard, and packing tape–is lit by blinding fluorescent lights and decorations including posters of Che Guevara and a topless Pamela Anderson, wall clocks showing time zones in various cities, videos showing other caves, and filled trash bags. The installation completely transforms a gallery where just a few weeks ago Diane Arbus’ photography appeared in a clean, solemn, museum-y space. The effect, even half-finished, as I experienced it today, is remarkable. As the Village Voice commented when the artist installed the piece in 2002:

There’s a primal satisfaction in walking into a haughty, high-stakes, white-cube Chelsea gallery to find that you’ve entered a messy, makeshift cave. The cavernous labyrinth of lumpy tunnels, nooks and crannies, rocky pathways, and culs-de-sac, all clumsily made of cardboard, aluminum foil, and miles of shiny mud-brown wrapping tape, is preposterous, slapdash, sort of womb-like, and vaguely intestinal. Its bumpy ground is littered with very fake rocks. Cans of Sprite and Coca-Cola litter the floor and overflow from gold foil garbage cans. Xeroxed pages from books about justice and democracy are taped to the walls. And in addition to us transient viewers, stumbling along its paths disoriented and bemused, the five-room cave is inhabited by clusters of aluminum foil figures and foil-wrapped shopwindow mannequins, who are linked by foil cords to make-believe explosives or books. Hostages or terrorists, throwbacks to the past or refugees from the future, these figures also evoke, quite by chance, the recent episode in a Moscow theater, but Cavemanman was in the works long before that site of cultural production was overtaken or stormed. The slogan scrawled repeatedly on the cave’s walls, “1 man = 1 man,” has to do not with terror but with absolute equality.

Hear Hirschhorn speak at a free gallery talk tonight, and while you’re here don’t miss our other cave, a winding hilly path only wide enough for one lantern-bearing visitor to navigate at a time, installed in the exhibition Cameron Jamie (closing October 22).