Isaac Lythgoe – I am getting sicker
14 February – 4 April
residency: 27 January – 13 February
residency: 27 January – 13 February
Almanac is thrilled to present I am getting sicker by British artist Isaac Lythgoe, a solo exhibition emerging from the residency programme Almanac Inn, Turin.
In an architectural journey as well-planned as an episode of MTV Cribs, the artist has laid out the gallery as a home for the segmented gaze. The go-go dancers’ presence might well carry the same signification as the hall of mirrors in Versailles – a multiplication of desire, insecurity and self-worth, bouncing off the walls to establish an uncomfortable flattening of space and personalities.
The Day-Glo whites of sports bras and tank tops form beacons of youth, channelling the promise of Scarlett Johansson’s opening scene in Lost in Translation, only slightly interrupted by the hieroglyphic verticality of each pose. Both are symbols, after all.
Once introduced to these guardian spirits, they follow us through the rooms, floating through portals of contemplation: the glass panes, wooden screens, moving images. Or rather, they are in each place at once and nowhere at all, the image diffused.
The attraction of the image-object-screen elicits a state of kaleidoscopic slow motion. The temptation of the veil is the experience of static movement, entering and passing through each translucent barrier, moving closer to the true face of beauty that is never the ultimate goal. On the other side of the windowpane we find nothing more than the repeated reflections of Blade Runner’s cyborgs and mannequins.
In the back room, mood-lit by the flicker of low-intensity life forms, symbols are rearranged into digital images, which proceed to circulate and collapse into resinous skeletons. In this realm of transubstantiation, brand names and sponsors take on the role of spiritual guardians, while the myths of our time are left to need translation from the shortened perspectives of Go-Pro cameras and drone footage.
Luxury problems: while attempting to navigate the geometrical architectures of information, you feel increasingly disconnected from your avatars, your projected selves. The idols polished for public display are overlapping into an unrecognizable pattern, endlessly swirling like a blizzard of cherry blossoms.
The purity of the image is realized in its decay. That which does not rot cannot ever crystalize.
Isaac Lythgoe, Almanac, London, Turin
http://www.almanacprojects.com/isaac-lythgoe-i-am-getting-sicker/