Lot Essay
All is not what it seems in the world of Mark Wallinger. For over twenty years, Wallinger - a Turner Prize winner in 2007 - has created a panoply of works that, upon first inspection, seem to be simple enough representations of various subjects but which, upon closer examination, reveal themselves to be slippery, shifting paradigms that question the mechanics and semantics of representation and meaning. A self-portrait seems innocuous enough, until one realizes that one of the eyes is a real glass eye; a life-size, hyper-realistic rendition of a racehorse mesmerizes the viewer, but then our gaze is troubled by the fact that we are looking at two halves of two different horses. His artistic world is one inhabited by text pieces that are readable only in mirrored reflection; installations where the principal elements are configured upside down; video works where the comic qualities of a bear outfit clash with the eerie, frightening shadows of a vacant building at night; a life-size figure of Christ rendered as an ordinary man on a grand plinth in Trafalgar Square or an outlandishly large white horse placed in the middle of the English countryside. Wallinger places his image, and their various indices, in all sorts of flux - sometimes playful, sometimes unexpectedly dark. Whether it is composition; perspective; representation or any other visual parameter by which we try to understand the hegemony of the object, Wallinger manipulates that to curious effect. By doing so, the viewer can never be sure of any trajectory of signification he seems to suggest with each and every work. The visual, intellectual and, often, physical flux that Wallinger subjects his work to becomes our own flux so that the act of looking and reading the work is often the same as unravelling code.
This act of manipulation is nowhere more profoundly executed than in Wallinger's celebrated video installation, Angel. Here the artist, dressed as his alter-ego 'Blind Faith' (bringing in to play questions of religious belief), occupies the majority of the screen and recites the opening five verses of the Book of John: "In the beginning was the word and the word was God ". He is dressed in sober-looking clothes; white shirt, black tie with dark glasses and a white cane which he swings from side to side throughout his reading. Behind him we see figures ascending and descending escalators. However, all is not what it seems. The rather garbled sound made by the artist when reciting the biblical text as 'Blind Faith' is because, in real time, Wallinger has learned to recite the text phonetically - and backwards, so that when the film is looped backwards itself, the phonetic sounds become, relatively, understandable. As such, a myriad of antagonisms come in to play here: he assumes the role of 'Blind Faith' and yet he is not blind; he swings his cane and yet is not actually moving (rather walking forwards on an escalator moving in the opposite direction); the text is delivered 'backwards' and played 'backwards' but is presented to the viewer in reverse, which, ironically, allows the viewer to understand. The figures on the escalator go up when they go down and vice versa. What we believe to be real is clearly not, and Angel thus uses its own means of making to question the dynamics of faith.
Angel was executed at Angel tube station, chosen deliberately by Wallinger because it is the largest escalator in the London Underground system. After delivering his reading of the Book of John, Handel's Zadok The Priest, traditionally played at coronations upon the anointment of a new sovereign, is played with great flourish and the figure of Blind Faith is transported upwards, as if an angel flying to Heaven or, as often depicted in art history, a laureated King joining the Gods. Angel can be seen as Wallinger's 'Last Judgement', but, of course, with a twist. The lost souls heading down are actually going up; those going up are in fact going down. Good becomes evil and vice versa. The act of judgement now becomes uncertain and our faith in that act is questioned.
This act of manipulation is nowhere more profoundly executed than in Wallinger's celebrated video installation, Angel. Here the artist, dressed as his alter-ego 'Blind Faith' (bringing in to play questions of religious belief), occupies the majority of the screen and recites the opening five verses of the Book of John: "In the beginning was the word and the word was God ". He is dressed in sober-looking clothes; white shirt, black tie with dark glasses and a white cane which he swings from side to side throughout his reading. Behind him we see figures ascending and descending escalators. However, all is not what it seems. The rather garbled sound made by the artist when reciting the biblical text as 'Blind Faith' is because, in real time, Wallinger has learned to recite the text phonetically - and backwards, so that when the film is looped backwards itself, the phonetic sounds become, relatively, understandable. As such, a myriad of antagonisms come in to play here: he assumes the role of 'Blind Faith' and yet he is not blind; he swings his cane and yet is not actually moving (rather walking forwards on an escalator moving in the opposite direction); the text is delivered 'backwards' and played 'backwards' but is presented to the viewer in reverse, which, ironically, allows the viewer to understand. The figures on the escalator go up when they go down and vice versa. What we believe to be real is clearly not, and Angel thus uses its own means of making to question the dynamics of faith.
Angel was executed at Angel tube station, chosen deliberately by Wallinger because it is the largest escalator in the London Underground system. After delivering his reading of the Book of John, Handel's Zadok The Priest, traditionally played at coronations upon the anointment of a new sovereign, is played with great flourish and the figure of Blind Faith is transported upwards, as if an angel flying to Heaven or, as often depicted in art history, a laureated King joining the Gods. Angel can be seen as Wallinger's 'Last Judgement', but, of course, with a twist. The lost souls heading down are actually going up; those going up are in fact going down. Good becomes evil and vice versa. The act of judgement now becomes uncertain and our faith in that act is questioned.