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| pepe mar |
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by: David Castillo
“No hay angustia comparable
a tus ojos oprimidos,
a tu sangre estremecida dentro del eclipse oscuro,
a tu violencia granate sordomuda en la penumbra,
a tu gran rey prisionero, con un traje de conserje.”
(Federico Garcia Lorca, “El Rey de Harlem”)
Mar’s technique is complex, bizarre, and vicious,
infusing his works with color, glamour, and fashion.
His collage monsters are like mannequins—slowly “painted,” coiffed,
dressed, undressed, beautified, colorized, and “monstrosized”.
He incorporates the detritus of everyday consumer life
into his work.
The artist’s monsters present a serious addition
to the discourse of art by presenting something known
(collage, assemblage, ready-mades) in an enlightened
way. Collage has been described as subterfuge because
it functions as something that it is not physically:
paper as painting or paper as traditional sculpture.
It deceives, like Mar’s monsters, in its completed
form. Alfred H. Barr was among the first in America to
draw serious attention to collage, calling it “not
merely a surface enrichment but an emphasis upon the
sensuous tactile reality of the surface itself.”
An exemplar of early collage, Picasso’s collages
signified something autobiographical, as does Mar’s
collage work. One readily sees Mar’s life-long
fascination with dressing up and playing with clothes.
Each monster, as the artist refers to his pieces, is
a self-portrait exploring aspects of the artist’s
personality, such as escapism and the artificial highs
and lows that come with life itself. Beyond collage,
the theory of Camp applies to Mar’s work as it
emphasizes artifice, irony, a shift of context usually
involving a questioning of gender roles (she, he, it?),
and an aggressive element.
The artist’s work is directly informed by Basquiat
and Warhol (a master of consumer culture and what it
encompassed best: money--- “Dollar Signs,” 1981).
The aggressive nature in Mar’s work is reminiscent
of such Basquiat works as “Notary,” 1983
or “The Italian version of Popeye has no Pork in
his Diet,” 1982. Further influencing his work is
Mar’s need to shop idly, strolling, and randomly
selecting from consumer culture. There is also a direct
influence in his art from circuit music. Losing oneself
in the trance of dance music in a club is directly related
to losing oneself in collage: there exists a musicality
of color, form, and movement.
Mar’s art expresses a hybrid of emotions—from
the fun of dressing up to the desperation of staring
blankly, unable to do anything else. His monsters are
escapists, fleeing from their points of departure, and
allowing the viewer to escape through them into a fantasy
of color and form. His individual objects transcend their
origins to become objects of contemplation as whole sculptures.
Mar’s work places objects of desire on display,
objects that are a legacy of our culture and a “cut-up” critique
of the fetishes of our affluent world.
“I think ‘twas
slaughtered animals first made
the blood run hot upon the spotted blade”
[Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)]
Mar’s work brings mass culture and consumption
down to a recycled scale. While recognizable as the artist’s
sculptures, each piece is also its own little world.
He takes humble objects and creates a hyperbole of glamour.
The monsters are all hiding behind their collage masks:
perhaps hiding from reality in their pretend happiness.
While we cannot metaphysically hear their tale, the monsters
appear to scream, move and impact us with a powerful
story. Fine art has long been informed by music and vice-versa.
Some of Rauschenberg’s works, for example, are
influenced by the experimental composer John Cage (1919-92).
Mar is fascinated with circuit music: a seemingly crazy
setting, but with a calculated, repetitive, and entrancing
rhythm. Just as the composer pays attention to the activity
of sound, the artist must pay attention to the activity
of color, movement, and form.
In some of his installations, we find a “Gesamtkunstwerk,” which
in the aesthetic theory of Richard Wagner, is an ideal
combination of performing arts (including music, drama,
and décor) into a kind of total theater, such
as the gallery setting. There exists in this work, elements
of Camp: the theatrical, pretending to be what it is
not, as Susan Sontag described it in her famous 1964
essay, “Notes on Camp.” “Being-as-Playing-a-Role
is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor
of life as theater.” The collage monsters are also
metaphors for life as theater. His art strives for the
point of no return, as a reflection of cultural excess
and human subversion.
“Quel color che vilta
di fuor mi pinse
veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta,
piu tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse.
Attento si fermo com’uom ch’ascolta;
che l’occhio nol potea menare a lunga
per l’aere nero e per la nebbia folta.”
(Dante’s INFERNO, Canto IX: 1-6)
Mar knowingly and unknowingly by the use of his sensibilities,
talents, calculations, and inspirations is creating a
discursive history (of camp, collage, and sculpture).
The historian Joan W. Scott has argued that discourse
itself is one process by which identities are ascribed,
resisted, and embraced. Mar’s work accomplishes
all these theoretical functions. His work can be ascribed
to two dramatically opposing forces in culture: a “calculated
insouciance” of color, design, and execution; and
a second force of silence, submission, and masquerading.
“Calculated insouciance” because the work is not entirely carefree,
give a damn to all, as it also has elements of carefully constructed form: how
a face develops for example, is contingent upon the artist’s feverish dash
for materials: a perfect find, an expensive purchase, fabric, hair, and objects
of every color and shape are reworked.
The second force of silence, submission, and masquerading
is evidenced in all the monsters’ faces, depicting
a sensibility of death. Those quiet, introspective eyes
are a part of faces that are otherwise about to explode
or swallow us for lunch with their sharp teeth, open
mouths, and arms in corrupted and vicious movements toward
the spectator.
These haunting faces speak silent volumes of the dynamic
of chosen and/or inflicted silence on entire populations,
which like these sculptures, eventually explode into
a loud Gemeinschaft, where the common relationship between
people whether of feelings, kinship, or membership becomes
spoken, debated, and demanded. In the same way, Mar’s
monsters speak, debate, and demand our attention. They
seem painfully aware that silence shall equal death for
them, and therefore constantly remain in flux of form,
size, color, and motion.
Mar’s work points to a profound artifice. The drama
is present throughout the work. By delighting and frightening
at the same time, the works cut away at basic modes of
thinking about beauty and monstrosity.
Mar presents us with a spectacular game of identifying
parts, but the work as a whole, force us to lose the
parts, creating a monstrous Gestalt. There is a tragic
vigorousness to his work, full of anxiety, as well as
an obsessive nature revealed in the constant mutations.
His style is primitive and aggressive. With Camp, monsters,
and music in mind, Mar’s work uses the superbly
artificial to discuss the superbly profound, examining
cultural constructs such as music, consumption, identity,
loss, and just dressing up.
© 2005 David Castillo |
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