Tentacles of capitalism

Martin Basher: Free Spirit No Interest
Starkwhite
10 March – 4 April 2009

This new exhibition by Martin Basher is radically different from his previous show at Starkwhite of paintings, though there are one or two of those included. This display is more like a sprawling installation of assemblages and wall hangings. It seems at first glance to belong to the dada collage tradition established by Schwitters as perpetuated by Rauschenberg, Stockholder and others. Some vertical sculptures are like Rauschenberg, but others are more scattered, but tidyish, in plastic bags, stacks and bundles.

It also has a superficial look akin to Dan Arps and Simon Denny. However Basher uses a different sort of syntax, a more individualistic ‘sentence’ or rebus structure preoccupied with consumer desire, capitalist global strategies, and the construction, wooing and milking of purchasing selves – usually youthful. Denny on the other hand is more interested mixing up disparate technologies and minutiae from design history, and Arps in creating a sort of nihilistic art lab where meaning can be stumbled upon by jamming opposites together or using unconventional mark making methods that bring up new blends of mental connection.

Most of the material Basher uses comes from Two Dollar shops, Warehouses, head shops and clearance stores, packaging as well as purchasable items. It functions not as material laden with seductive visual potential, but as symbol substance that is deliberately not broken down or dissipated. It’s left intact so it can be read. They usually function in figurative terms as synecdoche (where one part is used to signify a whole) or as metonymy (where things become linked by association, through usage), and are positioned in carefully allocated, internally resonating, groups.

In his examination of the omnipresent, pervasive drive of commerce to exploit a vast range of social, religious, tourist, aesthetic and bodily longings, Basher rarely fixes down juxtapositions for good. Items are placed thoughtfully in proximity to each other, perhaps taped one on the other – but never glued. It is as if it is part of the mercantile impulse to keep all options open. Never make permanent, in case that combination doesn’t sell and you are stuck with it.

Basher’s groupings are arranged, but not too much so. As groups of signs, their compositions are decisively clear but not super elegant. They seem to want to stick to the banality of their sources, and so don’t draw you in with formal sophistication, re the placement of their shape, colour and line.(Being in the space is a different experience from what the above images would suggest.) Same with humour. There is nothing too obvious. Amusing semantic connections could almost be accidental, but you are not quite sure. The work doesn’t seem to want to be too clever.

This is an unexpected sculpture show from Basher, one that is startlingly bold. From the point of view of reading his collected batches of tropes, there is too much in the room, but maybe that is a tongue-in-cheek comment on the commercial world - outside the gallery - that inspired the show.

The falling of water and light

Martin Basher: The Spectacular Fall
Starkwhite, Auckland
21 April - 17 May 2008

Waterfalls have long been a part of New Zealand Aotearoa’s landscape art subject matter, ever since William Hodges laid eyes on this country with Cook, and Hodges was an inspiration to McCahon when he began to paint the first of many waterfalls in the early sixties. Waterfalls of course are also an important symbol for Duchamp, blending his use of ‘fountains’ with the idea of ‘delay’, and apparently stemming from an occasion in 1915 when he got drunk at a party in New York, passed out on a staircase and wet his pants.

Though in his artist statement Basher ties his waterfalls with the American Hudson River School, they are really closer to Christmas card illustrations with their steep mountains and fir tree forests. The best ones have a wonderfully piercing yellow light in the tradition of the Romantic Sublime, most also having angular houses with steep rooves that look like ‘witch cottages’. (Some of these have solar panels.) The houses and skies are better painted than the trees and dew-laden cobwebs, which are comparatively clumsy.

The overall effect is saccharine mixed with the drama of great height - and seemingly without irony. I would (reluctantly) prefer to see Graham Sydney paintings to these, because Sydney is obviously more skilful, plus his emotion is more distanced - with nuance. These are over the top.

Basher’s work is therefore a close cousin to that of Saskia Leek. It’s a form of schmaltz, but compared to her, more spatially ‘realistic’ and spectacular. I dislike the sentimentality in his paintings but I appreciate his skill with light. They are worth seeing for that.