Modern Neon Lights: Simon Tyszko: A Text by Peter Suchin

“Yellow and then black in the wink of an eye and then yellow again”: this line from Claude Simon’s The Battle of Pharsalus, reads like a description of a moment in the pattern or cycle of a neon work by Simon Tyszko, for whom that medium has taken on a paradigmatic role. [1] For neon is the signifier of the Modern par excellence, the ever-present yet ethereal element of illumination, of a saturation and penetration of light to all spaces and places where Capital – that is the motive force and social system we call “Late Capitalism” or “Post-Industrial Society” – has penetrated. Neon – the name itself, from the Greek, means “new” – exemplifies ultra “cool” technology, it is the “mechanical” gift of the gods that makes the contemporary city shimmer and glimmer like no other technology of light before it. Paradoxically glamorous and mundane at one and the same time, neon both illuminates the western world and renders it opaque, hides in its folds and waves of brightness the falsehoods perpetuated ad nauseum by the advertising industry. The technological wonder that is neon itself makes this evident and visible through its functional action of illumination, but its use within advertising and within the very fabric of the city itself is its means of disguise, pretending to the apparent neutrality of a utilitarian device whilst its snazzy ubiquity makes marketing, glamour and glitz appear as natural (as opposed to entirely partisan) modes of presentation, influence and address. Claude Simon’s description of a shift from yellow to black, from colour to darkness or void is not merely akin to the physical features of Tyszko’s fluorescent constructions; it is also aligned with the moment of realisation in which something appears, in this case literally, in a different light. Tyszko, although not born within that generation which invented what has now become somewhat reified as “Conceptual Art”, is an artist who, first and foremost, takes ideas as the point of departure for his work, and not materials, processes or techniques. This can be seen when one inventories the approaches and forms used by the artist to date: neon, photography, film and video, sound recording, books, computers, fabrics, cocaine and other “found objects”, language, and, perhaps most notoriously, architecture and installation in the case of his project Phlight (2006), in which a copy of an actual size Dakota aircraft wing was permanently installed within a West London council flat, slicing the living areas into awkward zones of indeterminate potentiality, and creating a hybrid form, part museum, part private residence, in the manner of Kurt Schwitters’ Hanover Merzbau or London’s Sir John Soane Museum. But if the devices and techniques he employs in the making his work are multifarious, determined by the particular contexts and resonances Tyszko aims to address, these latter are consciously and consistently focused: advertising and glamour and their irritating but powerful attributes (control, influence, addiction), the structure and framing of art, the family and the “autobiographical” sense of self. What runs through all these diverse but interrelated areas of concern is the connecting thread of the political, by which I mean a determination on Tyszko’s part to examine how our present culture constructs, manipulates and inscribes value, both within the broader structure of society and in the microcosm that is the world of aesthetics and art. The title of a very recent neon (2011) is also a phrase that succinctly describes the universe: Invisible tremblement des atomes (the invisible trembling of atoms); in an earlier piece Tyszko has presented neons in the shape of letters of the alphabet that flicker on/off like the components of a secret cod awaiting the viewer-reader’s decipherment. Red, yellow, blue and other coloured letters materialise then fade to black. A third type of neons assembled by the artist have been put together as panels on which four or five tubes run in parallel along the support. The rods are of different colours and lengths, an arrangement that foregrounds colour itself (as produced with the variations and colour influences that the juxtapositions produce); this material immateriality of colour may be regarded as one of Tyszko’s formal devices, separating, in a sense, the light emitted from the tubes that generate it. One recalls Roland Barthes’ remark: “If I were a painter, I should paint only colors: this field seems to me freed of both the Law (no Imitation, no Analogy) and Nature”. [2] This gratuitous deployment of colour, an indulgence, in both senses of the term, is a way of using the glamour of the neon (with its convenient, conventional symbolism) against itself, a disruption of the message signal through an emphasis of signification in its pure state. More particularly, each piece in this third category has its own “colour signature”, its own specific alignment and mood. Seeing several of these assemblages together allows one to grasp the subtlety of individual works. The beautiful brightness of the illuminated tubes has its melancholy side however; something about the sadness of the loss of Tyszko’s photographer brother when the artist was just ten years old, seems to hover about them. The trace of this loss is inherent within many of Tyszko’s works, in the neons but in many other pieces too. Absence, disappearance, or the impossibility of adequately pinning down the passing of time runs like a leitmotiv through Tyszko’s work. Highly detailed photographs of long-playing records in which every groove, together with the scratches across the record’s surface and the dust caught in the tracks, engage the viewer in a paradoxical encounter wherein the sonic is rendered mute, and the particularity of a given experience of listening is translated into a visual image. We are not told which records Tyszko has photographed but the sense that these individual objects hold (or held) deeply personal meanings for a specific listener is very strong. The scratches and dust only serve to heighten the intimacy of an individual’s encounter with a work of art. Tyszko’s practice operates at this finely and rightly tuned level of engagement: the subjective and the idiosyncratic becoming the foil, the ground and the condition of a highly meaningful exchange between public and private frames of reference. Most recently, Tyszko has produced a series of works in which pictures borrowed from his own family’s photograph album have been grouped together in hitherto unexplored arrangements, moving the images from their initial domestic context and placing them in the public domain. Tyszko has added blocks of transparent colour to these retrieved images, giving another dimension to their force of signification. Another new work, one which will decay over the duration of the exhibition, is a memorial wreath bearing a long text relating the deep personal loss involved when someone one loves dies or disappears. Normally the bearer of nothing more than the deceased’s name or familial identity (“Mum” or “Nan”), on this occasion a more convoluted text has been used, one demanding an active reaction from the viewer. This survey exhibition is, then, a kind of snapshot of Tyzsko’s work to date, together with a number of pieces that develop this in new directions, reactivating it but also expanding what is already a diverse, complicated and ingenious field of objects, references and ideas. Peter Suchin 2011

Notes 1. Claude Simon, The Battle of Pharsalus, Jonathan Cape, 1971. These words constitute both the first and last lines of the book. 2. Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, Hill and Wang, 1977, p. 143.

Peter Suchin is an artist and critic, contributing to Art Monthly, Frieze, Mute and many other journals. http://www.theculture.net/moderneonlights/

SIMON TYSZKO: MODERN NEON LIGHTS

Friday 29th April - Saturday 7th April (By appointment only)
For further information please contact: molsplace@hotmail.co.uk



http://www.theculture.net/moderneonlights/

Mark Scott-Wood's soundtrack for the Art Party {No.1}

Visual and performance artist Mark Scott-Wood has created a Spotify playlist of music included in his ritualistic performance for The Art Party {No.1}'s fantastic evening event!

Please follow the link:

http://open.spotify.com/user/markscottwood/playlist/0dM1Onk4uPwsV6CvEuZ1SP

For more information on Mark's work:

http://www.markscottwood.com/

Review by Jennifer Cavanagh, My Village

Art Party No1 @ Mol’s Place

Launching a series of events the inaugural The Art Party {no1} kicked off in grand style at the Covent Garden home of art aficionado Jan Mol. The extraordinary Grade II residence of this private collector serves as exhibit space for co-curators Melissa Blanchflower and Katy Orkisz several times a year and is a work of art to behold in its own right.

The much anticipate Art Party served up an interactive experience transporting guests beyond the controlled and artificial settings of traditional white-walled galleries. Some came for revelry, some for art - all were immersed in both.

These ambitious soirees combine installation, performance and all manner of artwork with live music, an arty entourage and lashings of champagne. Setting the tone for the evening was Simon Tiszko’s red neon sculpture Serious Fun hung above the DJ decks heralding the tenor of the night to follow. Video works by Kate Hawkins and Eloise Fornieles played - Mal Gusto enacting an entertaining conflict of a female fashion/etiquette faux pas. Slowly and smoothly seemingly disparate work’s of these handpicked artists began to work together to provide a mosaic tapestry for the event.

Everyone was at their sartorial best though none outshone the Rodnik Band’s (an art/clothing collective) “Venus in Sequins” art dresses hung on the wall and modelled by Benjamin O’Connor. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to pull off a Urinal as haute-couture and this boy has it in spades.

Performances began with Bedwyr William’s InDreams a recital for the pondering crowd’s consideration. William’s work will never be overly-accessible and this performance stretched expectations and experiences as would other work to come.

The crowd chatted and mingled effortlessly around Oliver Ashton’s Kaleidoscope installation. The interactive quality of this and other pieces providing talking points for animated discussions amongst revellers. Paul Sakoilsky’s newspapers The Dark Times is as relevant as it is colourful. Deconstructed media messages create a timely and entertaining work that explores wealth, consumerism, greed and anarchy. Approaching the bright flag-like display my eye was drawn to dark images and a headline “Black Monday * “YoYo Life” that made a banker take drugs”. With interest piqued there was much to discover and exhibiting this work within the confines of a multimillion pound space raises the interpretive challenge a point that Sakoilsky, working in the rarefied art world, is surely aware.

We are Birds of Paradise provided a visual musical feast. Their set was performed in fantastic bespoke costumes custom-made for this party. Towards midnight Mark Scott-Woods intervention, a fantastical bagel-eyed parade of sorts with a banner “This is only a distraction from the inevitable” again picking up the theme of media’s mixed messages. There was more to explore yet this lady needs to sit and chat and the only thing missing from this evening was alas available seating.

We left exhausted, exhilarated, clutching goody bags and anticipating The Art Party {no2}.

http://london.myvillage.com/place/mols-place

http://www.jennycavanagh.com/