VISUAL ARTS:Early last year, the German artist Lothar Hempel borrowed one of his titles, Effetti Speciali, from Fellini's film Fellini's Casanova because, he explained to an interviewer, the term seemed to imply something more along the lines of subtle master craftsmanship than "American special effects".
And hence, he elaborated, it seemed like a good description of his own work. No false modesty there, for sure. He was evidently pleased with the effetti speciali, and Fellini, and Casanova, because his Douglas Hyde Gallery show, Casanova, is inspired by the film - or largely so, as it does incorporate some other pieces of work as well.
Hempel is an odd, eclectic and almost wilfully discursive artist. He has come out in the past as being against rationalism and logic, which apart from being a handy alibi when he's called to account, might tend to make him, like a lot of artists, a latter-day romantic - except that too many things about his work militate against the "new romantic" tag. It's bitty and spiky and often comes garnished with the term Brechtian (as in, alienation). Earlier figurative paintings have the appearance of being theatrical costume designs, and various forms of theatre, especially the more formalised, stilted and stylised ones, clearly remain close to the centre of his concerns. Dance and film are also cited and all are evident in the Casanova work. But he refers to theatre, dance and film rather than working in them.
Hempel is quoted as saying the tableaux he constructs in his sculptural installations "have a dreamlike quality". Well, they may be like his dreams, but apart from their arbitrary juxtapositions and cryptic elements, dreamlike is not a description that springs to mind. He does have a very distinctive feeling for form and materials, and seems to be trying to combine imagery and objects in a lively, provocative way with the aim of energising his ideas, like a latter-day Joseph Beuys - the inclusion of a wooden sled in one piece presumably name-checks Beuys, because it was one of his trademark icons. Often, Hempel's work comes across as a residue or aspect of something else, something like the performance of the drama or the dance that is referred to but ultimately lies beyond the static work in the gallery.
Perhaps he would view that performance as just one segment of his sculptural vision, or perhaps he likes the way another, implied dimension keeps the tableaux in a provisional, inconclusive state.
They - the tableaux - have been termed "theatrical possibilities", yet that implies that they are viable as theatre, which is conspicuously unproven. As a sculptor, in the way he uses and arranges materials, he comes across as a frustrated shop-fitter or interior designer, and his pieces would not look out of place and indeed might be very interesting in the context of a cutting-edge boutique or nightclub. In a gallery, their self-conscious eccentricity is already sanctioned, which is not to say that they don't engage you in the gallery: they do, but in a haphazard, incidental way. "Mildly diverting" is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but that's about as good as the show gets.
The dramatisation of identity obviously engages him, hence, presumably, the decision to show a number of self-portrait photographs by Claude Cahun in the Hyde's Gallery 2 at the same time as his show. Cahun, the name adopted by Lucy Schwob, is a remarkable figure whose work has gradually been rediscovered in the last 20 years or so.
Inhabiting the deliberately androgynous persona of Claude Cahun, she explored gender and sexuality. Her photographic self-portraits are a series of dramatisations of self. The images are small, and the most surprising thing about them is their quietness and their air of gentle introspection, though some are genuinely unsettling in their sheer strangeness.
PHOENIX PARK, AT the Kerlin Gallery is a showcase for the work of six emerging artists, recent and not-so-recent graduates, some of whom already have appreciable track records. We expect something out of the rut, and certainly the show is strikingly installed. One piece dominates by virtue of its sheer bulk. That's Seamus Nolan's Get in the back of the fuckin' van, which comprises bales of cardboard packaging arranged in the form of a life-size Garda van, complete with working sidelights and steel grills. Is there an implied equivalence between the discarded cardboard and society's human detritus? Nolan was responsible for Hotel Ballymun, a popular and well-attended cultural intervention in the tower block landscape of Ballymun in the process of transformation, and Phoenix Park includes another piece of his, a disco ball embellished with monetary holograms.
In one of his works, Clive Murphy also takes a discarded cardboard box. He reshapes it as a bulging inflatable form - consumerist desire? - that looks as if it might burst. His main piece Untitled (never gonna be alone) is an audio drawing installation in which a kinetic landscape image is endlessly formed by a found spool of audio tape which includes the poignant title phrase.
Vera Klute's animation Hair in my soup is clever and nicely done in a laid-back way. Aoife Collins makes a speciality of unweaving the blossoms of artificial flowers and letting them bloom anew in explosive bursts of liberated thread. Her two shrine-like installations recall public expressions of personal grief, though one of them bears a pointedly cruel title, If looks could kill, I'd watch you die, that isn't particularly borne out by the piece itself. Her method works on individual plants as well.
Eoin McHugh's Wallpaper rebels against the constraints of repeat pattern and becomes a series of individual, cryptic vignettes, augmented by a group of surreal images in his familiar retro-illustrative style. Sonia Shiel's paintings develop individual motifs out of grounds built up and scraped back. These motifs, including The Swan, and The Wolf, mingle elements of myth, fairy tales and the prosaic with, at best, a slightly disturbing air of wild fantasy.
There's a cruel note to some of her images as well. It's a show that manages to be both slick and roughhewn at the same time.
Casanova, Lothar Hempel, plus Claude Cahun Photographic Self-Portraits, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, until Mar 6; Phoenix Park, six emerging artists (Aoife Collins, Vera Klute, Eoin McHugh, Clive Murphy, Seamus Nolan and Sonia Shiel), Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin 2, until Mar 15
