Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, 2001, stainless steel, MDF, electric light. Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery. Pic © the artist, 2008
Exhibition: Mark Wallinger Curates: The Russian Linesman, The Hayward, London, until May 4
In one corner of the Hayward hides a moment captured by Ernest Eugene Appert, a 19th century painter manqué. Portraying the assassination of two French Generals in front of a wall, it looks like a standard scene from the Paris uprisings Appert was compelled by – except it’s not. Their execution took a 15-second spree of bullets, and the doomed pair were shot consequentially, one after the other.
Next to this skewed snapshot of contrived reality hangs an x-ray of Titian’s The Death, with alterations to the position of Diana’s arms and reworkings to Actaeon and the accompanying dogs, furious rehashes exposed with a veracity which could reassure any student who has pondered Titian’s veneer of flawlessness.
A revealing x-radiograph of Titian's The Death features
On the other side, cut footage from news agency archives of the Balkan wars in the 1990s has been sequenced by Dutch experimentalist Aernout Mik.
Detached from the stern commentary of a reporter, it’s impossible to tell whose side the trucks, armed snipers, darting children and furrowing photographers are on, if any. At once comically chaotic and violently dangerous, it challenges everything which might be real, a vein Mark Wallinger’s exhibition runs wild with.
Joanna Kane, William Blake (1757-1827), C-Type digital photograph of life mask. Courtesy of the artist. Pic © the artist, 2008
The Russian Linesman, of course, changed the course of history by validating a dubious, crucial English goal in the 1966 World Cup final (Wallinger is a firm football fan), but even the long-held title Tofik Bakhramov’s nationality has coined is wrong – he was from Azerbaijan.
At least history granted him a kinder fate than the prone combatant shown in A Dead Soldier, a 17th century painting offering an eerie reminder of the brevity of life and futility of human achievements.
It’s no use trying to credit the anonymous creator of this haunting portrait, although Manet joined a number of critics who apparently thought it was by Velasquez when he used it as inspiration for The Dead Matador.
Monika Sosnowska's Corridor is an exercise in vertigo
Still, not knowing the identity of the subject or painter seem like trivial hindrances compared to losing track of where the original work itself is, as befalls us in To Fix The Image in Memory, where Latvian-American Vija Celmins has recreated every last nick, crater and fade in a jagged mound of rock, crafting a bronze replica of fiendish precision.
Wallinger reckons he knows which one is the genuine article, but you might as well toss a coin. It instantly chimes with his own lifesize counterfeit of a protest display opposite parliament, but the 2007 Turner Prize winner’s playground of peep holes and weird constructions gleefully drown any pre-occupations with the person behind them.
“I can’t stop smiling – this is so good,” tweets one excited visitor. He’s just come out of Polish spatial artist Monika Sosnowska’s mini-structure within the exhibition, a brightly-lit, carpeted tunnel with patterned walls winding round to a sharp right and off up a wall.
It makes you want to scale the ceiling or, for the less immediately adventurous, feel mildly vertiginous. Guardian art critic Adrian Searle admitted he nearly fell over when he saw it, and you can see why.
Vija Celmins, To Fix The Image In Memory XII (1977-82), stone and painted bronze. Pic courtesy Mckee Gallery, New York, © Vija Celmins, 2008
Wallinger is an unassuming host, reflecting on the lengthy, stamina-demanding process his cultivation of such an eye and thought catching show has constituted.
He’s fully aware of the list of artists criticised for their curatorial efforts – there are even a couple of Doctor Who fans muttering about his mysterious mirrored tardis here, which looks like it might disappear in front of the watching cameraman at any moment – but as a peek inside his inner processes this is gloriously strange, incisive and occasionally profound.
Renato Giuseppe Bertelli, Continuous Profile (Head of Mussolini) (1933). Pic ©Renato Bertelli, 2008
Wallinger was recently announced as the winner of a competition to create a southern version of the Angel of the North in the exotic setting of Ebbsfleet in Kent. With influences like these, the commission is in good hands.
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