Daedalus Flucht Kirstin Simpson
Produzentengalerie am Rödingsmarkt 27,
20459 Hamburg
7.4.2013 – 30.4.2013
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.
Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents
Daedalus Flucht (The Escape of Daedalus), by Kirstin Simpson, involves not only the escape from the labyrinth, but also the very human desire to escape the limits of our own bodies - to become other, to become animal, or perhaps divine. In the labyrinth, the mind is confused and the body loses its foothold on the earth; our secure connection with environment is disrupted and we become ‘placeless,’ floating beings. The importance of location in our sense of identity becomes evident. Also apparent is the fragility and unreliability of our sense of perception. Daedalus’ solution is to craft wings for himself and his son, thus acquiring super-human abilities and by inference, a new perspective on body in relation to space.
A brilliant inventor and craftsman, Daedalus nonetheless remains in the realm of the mortal by virtue of his flawed character. When his nephew, Talos, shows signs of exceptional talent, inventing the saw from the jaw of a snake, Daedalus is overcome with jealousy and hurls him from the top of the Acropolis. In some accounts, the nephew survives by turning into a partridge (Perdix) and flying away. One can imagine this bird taunting Daedalus in his later trials and even, conceivably, precipitating Icarus’ later fatal fall during the flight from Crete.
Creating and destroying, entrapment and freedom, capabilities and limitations, desire and the fantasy of becoming hybrid are all ideas explored in Daedalus Flucht. An ongoing exploration in the work of Kirstin Simpson is that of our embodied relationship with space as well as the embodied nature of aesthetic experience. In previous work, she has explored this through other media such as installation, sculpture, sound and performance (www.kirstinsimpson.com). In Daedlaus Flucht, elements of this preoccupation continue, albeit in 2-dimensional work. The materials and techniques used in making the pieces reflect the fragility and contingency of the image. Methods used involve layering, perforating, scraping and peeling back, revealing - combining, sewing, pinning.
The representations of the myth in historical paintings are explored. In Rubens, the fall is an athletic tumble, in Duerer, a clumsy dive and in Landon, there is a strange sense that Daedalus is pushing his son to his inevitable demise. In Breughel, the indifference of the world to the trials of others is revealed - the tragic fall of Icarus is marked simply by his white legs disappearing into the sea.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure…
W.H.Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts
Daedalus, despite his exceptional talent, represents the endless capacity for invention that characterizes all of humanity. However, this capacity has its disadvantages. As Freud says:
‘During the last few generations mankind has….established his control over nature in a way never before imagined….[however,] this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier’
Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents
The work in Daedalus Flucht ultimately contains a warning - the simple, fragile and sometimes inadequate or mismatched materials are symbolic of the ultimate inadequacy of all human attempts at mastery over a universe that is outside our comprehension, and certainly outside our control.
Produzentengalerie am Rödingsmarkt 27,
20459 Hamburg
7.4.2013 – 30.4.2013
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.
Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents
Daedalus Flucht (The Escape of Daedalus), by Kirstin Simpson, involves not only the escape from the labyrinth, but also the very human desire to escape the limits of our own bodies - to become other, to become animal, or perhaps divine. In the labyrinth, the mind is confused and the body loses its foothold on the earth; our secure connection with environment is disrupted and we become ‘placeless,’ floating beings. The importance of location in our sense of identity becomes evident. Also apparent is the fragility and unreliability of our sense of perception. Daedalus’ solution is to craft wings for himself and his son, thus acquiring super-human abilities and by inference, a new perspective on body in relation to space.
A brilliant inventor and craftsman, Daedalus nonetheless remains in the realm of the mortal by virtue of his flawed character. When his nephew, Talos, shows signs of exceptional talent, inventing the saw from the jaw of a snake, Daedalus is overcome with jealousy and hurls him from the top of the Acropolis. In some accounts, the nephew survives by turning into a partridge (Perdix) and flying away. One can imagine this bird taunting Daedalus in his later trials and even, conceivably, precipitating Icarus’ later fatal fall during the flight from Crete.
Creating and destroying, entrapment and freedom, capabilities and limitations, desire and the fantasy of becoming hybrid are all ideas explored in Daedalus Flucht. An ongoing exploration in the work of Kirstin Simpson is that of our embodied relationship with space as well as the embodied nature of aesthetic experience. In previous work, she has explored this through other media such as installation, sculpture, sound and performance (www.kirstinsimpson.com). In Daedlaus Flucht, elements of this preoccupation continue, albeit in 2-dimensional work. The materials and techniques used in making the pieces reflect the fragility and contingency of the image. Methods used involve layering, perforating, scraping and peeling back, revealing - combining, sewing, pinning.
The representations of the myth in historical paintings are explored. In Rubens, the fall is an athletic tumble, in Duerer, a clumsy dive and in Landon, there is a strange sense that Daedalus is pushing his son to his inevitable demise. In Breughel, the indifference of the world to the trials of others is revealed - the tragic fall of Icarus is marked simply by his white legs disappearing into the sea.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure…
W.H.Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts
Daedalus, despite his exceptional talent, represents the endless capacity for invention that characterizes all of humanity. However, this capacity has its disadvantages. As Freud says:
‘During the last few generations mankind has….established his control over nature in a way never before imagined….[however,] this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier’
Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents
The work in Daedalus Flucht ultimately contains a warning - the simple, fragile and sometimes inadequate or mismatched materials are symbolic of the ultimate inadequacy of all human attempts at mastery over a universe that is outside our comprehension, and certainly outside our control.
