Press Release
Loraini Alimantiri Gazonrouge is very pleased to present John Kleckner’s first solo show in Greece. The title of the exhibition takes as its starting point Eva Hesse’s homonymous piece of 1965 (An Ear In a Pond).The piece, a hybrid construction, stands between a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional space, while alluding to contradictory forms such as organic/mechanical, male/female. Her work’s inherent, absurd allure stems from the temporariness and the fragility of the materials.
Kleckner himself considers the human body as such, ephemeral and finite, though this finitude implies a transformation into the organic matter of nature. In his representations, the decaying bodies return to their roots, which do not stand merely as metonymies of decline and abjection, but also of genesis and blooming. In the exhibition An Ear In a Pond, A Tooth In The Wall, A Knife In The Socket, throughout a series of paintings and a video-installation, the artist centers upon conceptually indiscernible images-symbols (an ear, a tooth, a knife, electricity), while challenging the viewer to explore their form and meaning throughout a game of the gaze, similar to a peep-show. His references are grounded on Polanski’s ‘The Tenant’, Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ and a personal, repressed memory from his own childhood. All three of them deal with the basic interests that the artist explores.
Alienation, as the fundamental experience of an unexpected, persistent alterity within oneself, the uncanny feeling, caused by the sight of disbounded members of the imaginary wholeness of the body and voyeurism.
