Walter Benjamin first used the term phantasmagoria to describe opulent consumer-driven capitalism. It has since, as with many of his other disambiguations of the late 19th century, become one of those terms that only properly self-defines within the context of contemporary art.
Like flaneurism, it is understood and presented in one way by the artist and an entirely other way by dictionaries and writers.
Here, the term is explored both as in Walter Benjamin’s intention and in its raw state. Both linking at the word John Bunker, this exhibition’s curator, picks out: opulence.
Paint as a tool for opulent emotive expression in, around, and of objects. It’s a brutal presentation of a simple idea and even in the desperate ring of the Cornerstone’s upstairs gallery encompasses you with objectively beautiful things. Brought together from what I can tell by a unifying drive for self-reward by artists pursuing the pleasure of application of their chosen medium.
On mass, that’s what you’ll take from this – gratification and opulence. But each work is layered and patient. Each is about as far from the complacency of 19th-century phantasmagoric French malls as it gets.
Karen David’s ‘Redux (Season 5, Episode 1)’ is so intricately pieced together, physically and narratively. Painted on the cover of Jane Goldman’s ‘The X-Files Book of the Unexplained’, and named for the actual episode title of season 5, episode 1 of The X-Files, it speaks well to this idea of opulent phantasmagoria.
The paints, selected at random, are squeezed through an applicator, mixing randomly to create the final swirled ice gems that adorn the book’s cover. It is utterly opulent, and random, but not quite to the point of complacency.
The rest of the work in the exhibition feels more intentional, more decisive, so Karen David’s stands out for that. It has the nearest relationship with what Walter Benjamin was criticising, but it owns it so that it becomes a purpose, rather than a product.
Together, the works in this show are a sweet shop of deeply desirable texture and form, waiting to be cooed over.
I’ve not seen iterations one and two of this series, but part three is mesmerising, and a useful tool for the students filing past the exhibition to understand how their work plays in a group, as opposed to how it presents its own worth.
This show absolutely deserves to be seen. It’s part of Angel Field Festival, the annual interdisciplinary arts programme hosted by Liverpool Hope University’s Cornerstone Campus. The rest of the festival ended on 25th April, but the exhibition stays up until 12th May.
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(contemporary) phantasmagoria 3: Paint-Thing is open at the Cornerstone Gallery, L6 1HP until 12th May
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith
