- Venue
- Chapter Gallery
- Location
- Wales
S Mark Gubb might not be an angel but certainly he is an advocate of peace. He coolly watches us from high up on the Cardiff rooftops, contemplating our collective journey as we go about our daily routines. His brow furrows as he considers the antagonistic and corrupt forces that affect our lives. He is no Bruno Ganz but the installation he delivers is just as vital and complex as Ganz’s performance as Damiel.
Gubb’s posters dwarf us in their size and scale by offering paradoxes that I attempt to decipher. It is easy to feel ambushed by the sheer overbearing weight and monumental size of the work despite its two dimensionality. The text is comforting in its familiarity, resembling commands, assumptions, persuasions or the convictions of governments, religious doctrines and advertising campaigns. Is this propaganda or harmless brainwashing? I am unsure but fixated.
I gaze up at the voluminous white letters against the expanse of the black billboard with revolutionary red rectangular trim. The words “You are not alone” and “Get better” stare back at me I tentatively balance the deeds from my day, then my week considering the balance of my good and bad decisions. Heavy with such existentialist introspections I roll back on my heels feeling for the comfort of the art gallery, my substitute church and I curse the multiple ways that it makes me think.
The cunning roughness in which the posters have been pasted provides a double meaning indicating that these posters will be covered up or ripped down. They are temporary as we face up to the ‘here now gone tomorrow’ reality of our own existence.
In inviting us to reflect on our own principles we naturally question those of the wider world. What can we change in our own lives to set ourselves apart from the prolificacy of capitalism and materialism. Or should we just “Have Fun and Stay Alive”? In his conflicting combination of poster and floor plans, Gubb forces us to move our heads, first up towards heaven then bowing down towards hell.
I follow the outline of an abattoir marked in black acrylic across the herringbone parquet flooring leading to a smashed light box that reads “What can be smashed should be smashed.” This is a quote from the Russian philosopher Dmitri Ivanovich Pisarev which suggests that from the ruins a more equal and fair society can be built. Tellingly, Pisarev believed that ideals should only be individually fitted and claimed moral judgements were expressions of individual preference. Pisarev drowned while swimming in the Baltic Sea at the age of just 28.
I stumble backwards and come across a small fragment of rock cast in bronze. I mull over whether the rock is from the Berlin Wall or outer space. It is in fact from the launch ramp of Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump of 1974. Knievel ludicrously wanted to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle but was stopped by the US government. Undeterred Knievel bought his own canyon and built a ‘sky cycle’ that would carry him across the canyon before he deployed a parachute that eventually landed him on a sort of pogo stick. Knievel’s jump almost ended in his own death but extraordinarily he only walked away with minor injuries.
This bittersweet allegory, like Gubb’s installation, holds up mankind’s magnificent dreams but does not conceal its ultimate failure to unite East to West.
The title for the exhibition comes from Wim Wenders’ Wings of desire. A troubled trapeze artist, Marion questions her place in the world and her role in life. She asks ‘How should I live? Maybe that’s not the question.” “How should I think?”
In Gubb’s work, as in Wings of Desire, I am aware of a celebration of the transient and fragile moments of being human. In these simple, open proclamations it is in our own interpretation and what we do with it that counts.
I exit Chapter and make my way home it’s cold and I can see my breath in front of me. All I can think is I’m here. I’m free. Maybe it is the power of human spirit and the daring of our own collective thought that will inspire our next magnificent failure.
S Mark Gubb How Should I Live? (Maybe That’s Not The Question) runs until Sunday November 7th at Chapter, Cardiff.
Mark will discuss his work with Ellen Mara de Wachter, Curator for Zabludowicz Collection in a gallery walk and talk on Nov 5th at 6pm.
