Spotlight: David Acheson: Honey in Paradise
When David Acheson showed Honey Clock, a 92-inch-high glowing honey bear, in last years "Persona Volare" exhibition in Toronto, the sculpture had to be wiped down every evening after the exhibition closed. Not only were there finger- and palm prints but also the occasional lip mark, at child height, where visitors had been unable to resist caressing the glowing icon. Like many of Achesons works, the piece is deceptively simple: the shape of the familiar plastic honey jar, complete with angled top where scissors might have cut a hole, is an endearing child-happy sign we all recognize. Yet there are layers upon layers that reveal themselves on closer scrutiny. The title refers to a clock and indeed, a red light turns at the base, and the level of the honey is low, indicating that an end of sorts is near as time winds down. Through the serenity of the Buddha-like figure, calm and luminous, Acheson subtly intones its opposites: lack and death.
This play with icons and signs so familiar that they have emerged to signify nothing beyond themselves is one edge that Acheson employs to address issues of science, utopia and spiritualism. From the earlier signage piecesuniversal headless figures reminiscent of traffic signsthrough his oversized yellow happy face, Curious George, Superman and Wonder Woman, Acheson gives us the joyfully childlike and familiar. We respond with delight to these images, which have acquired an identity that extends beyond their original context. The artist captures us through this happy recognition, so that we can view more closely what lies underneath.
Acheson's head- and sexless figures are reduced to the most basic human sign. Only by imposing gestures upon them or an internal body state can any meaning be attributed to them. Neutralized to the limit, they are reminiscent of generalizing terms such as "mankind." The artist's early signage series from 1995, Theory of Pain Control, works, however, to expose an idea of interior life. The figures, whose heads are disconnected and often oddly placed in relation to the body, have been reduced to the linear. Different bodily interiorschests, heads, or segments connecting hand to headare shown as coloured, moving masses. This disquieting living turmoil is revealed to be an interior that is indefinable and opaque.
Similar figures are also at the centre of Achesons 1996 Universalman series. One sculpture shows a small kneeling figure. One arm is extended to hold a lamp that illuminates his backside. Wickedly humorous, the headless sign figure careens to catch a glimpse of his internal workings. Is it that simple? To lay bare the insides, as science does, to dissect and piece together in order to understand the workings of the larger whole? Or is it narcissism that is addressed here? Or sex? The intricate workings of the body, both physical and emotional, are severed in these figures from brain functions. In discussion with me in his studio, Acheson makes the wry comment that "the head is the only part not joined to the body. Is that just a graphic convenience? No, I never took it that way."
The fusion of man and machine into one cyborg is the idea behind that strangely hybrid being in the piece entitled Zoophyte, where one gangly animal stands close to the wall facing a brightly lit and oversized yellow smiley face hanging there. The vegetable animal is headless, with long spindly legs, and is made up entirely of bright fruit, as if fashioned from the dessert course in a Bacchanalian orgy. Sheer exuberance shines onto this creature from the happy face on the wall, but despite this joyousness we wonder at the reduction of this strange being to a vegetable state. It might remind the viewer of an onion; the layers peel away, one after the other.
Underlying the strong emotional force of David Achesons work is the artists interest in science and popular culture, and how these things inform the way we make sense of the world around us. His toppled Superman, Flowers for a Future Past, is aching in its innocence, a figure of nostalgia from a world where good and evil are easily defined. Yet he looms larger than life, and is recognized by all. Overhauled, what does he now signify? His make-up, rooted in a destroyed planet and powered by paternalistic wisdom, is obsolete in the face of the heroes we are left with now, who represent a darker, more ambiguous symbol: more Batmans Gotham than Supermans Metropolis. Who mourns whom? Or, what is it that we are missing, what lesson that we still have not learned?
Where the Universalman figures are equivalent to signage, Achesons larger-than-life sculptures, like Superman and Wonder Woman, are based on diverse sources which culminate in a male/female hybrid. This fusion contributes to the utopian dimension of his work and yet, as we know from historical utopian experiments, a chilling element often underlies such experiments. With objectivity and neutrality there is the danger of a loss of identity. When we lose categories, we risk giving up individuality and the self. This creates unease when we face Achesons idealized sculpted figures.
While the artist sees most of his previous work as containing a science-informed view of the world, he is now more interested in myth and spirituality as generators of meaning. A recently exhibited installation entitled no9 Paradise shows this shift quite prominently. Made up of four different pieces, the installation includes two sculptures and two wall pieces. Nine intertwined headless figuresrecalling the Universalman formsare placed near the top of a planet-like red circular mound of molten-like material. Opposite is a large digital print showing an eerily utopian view of Paradise that Acheson lifted from a Jehovahs Witnesses Watchtower pamphlet. Intrigued by the balance between corniness and the deep appeal the image holds, Acheson says the image reminds him of British Columbia and he sees it as emblematic of Canada: mixed races, lambs with lions, and a concentration of landscape. Pasted into the background are nine entwined figures which, from a distance, look like a mushroom cloud on the horizon, threatening this serene Eden. We have the collision of a scientific vision of the future and one informed by religion, each infusing the other. Is this, then, a more appropriate and surely more dire warning of where our world is headed?
The contrast of utopia and loss of identity, ruled by the scientific world view found in earlier pieces, is even more prominent in no9 Paradise as Acheson pits technological advancement against a new-age kitsch ideal. He neither gives nor seeks easy answers, but exploits the commonality of popular-derived imagery, presenting large, allegorical themes within its small grasp. He pinpoints ambiguity rather than any conclusive consensus as to what the images may mean.
Since his high school days, Acheson has lived with an ongoing sense of crisis. He believes that the threat of a nuclear holocaust is firmly entrenched in our historical consciousness. His question is: how does art address any of this, and what, then, is the relative value of art? When we penetrate the layers of his work we move through joy, criticality, science and religion and begin to recognize how strongly popular icons inform our perceptions and interpretations of the world. We are shown how easily we move amongst icons that dictate to us an uncritical stance in the worlda world driven by consumer and political/economic forces that are so quickly deemed out of our control, and thus out of our realm of interest.
Playing these forces against each other, offering us the familiar riddled with the skewed, humorous, wry or cynical, Acheson does indeed address crisis and core aspects of our precarious walk across a tightrope threatened by absolutes, simple solutions, technological advancement and passivity.
Winter 2001
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
