My Gallerist Made Me Do It ,2012
Provenance :
Exhibited : Another example from this edition exhibited at the FNB Joburg Art fair, 2012.
Literature :
Notes : Susan Stewart, in On Longing, describes why we love miniature or gigantic versions of the familiar (Stewart, 1993). These evoke a sense of nostalgia and often stand in for the thing represented when miniaturised as well as give pleasure because of their ‘familiar unfamiliarity’. My Gallerist Made Me Do It is a self-portrait of the artist rendered in highly realistic sculptural detail (right down to the hirsutism for which Ed is well known) but at a scale that presents the figure at 79cm. He is shown hanging, naked save for a pair of cute pink sockies from an oversize bolt protruding from the wall. Ed appears to be a bit hung-over, as if he has just woken up and is, both literally and figuratively, ‘hanging’.
The title begs the question of what exactly did his gallerist make him do? Making the work in the first place would be an obvious answer but perhaps another, more subtle meaning embedded in the title is that his gallerist made him make a work that is highly reminiscent of the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan or Australian Ron Mueck, both of whom have made realistic self-portraits of themselves. Perhaps the most obvious answer would be that he was instructed to make a nude portrait, a self-reflection that displays the artist in a position of vulnerability and (over-) exposure. Thus, I would offer, this is a work about misunderstandings and expectations that simultaneously can and cannot be fulfilled. The viewer and the gallerist can see what they want and interpret or misinterpret, as they will. I am reminded of what Picasso once said about nudes and people seeing that they want in them: ‘Each person will make for himself the kind of nude he wants, with the nude I will have made for him’ (Ashton, 1972).
Andrew Lamprecht
Condition_report :
