Last night i went to a talk by Asier Mendizabal at Raven Row, the gallery owned and run by Alex Sainsbury. I am quite perplexed by the whole evening, it kinda makes me wonder if a gallery, even one as accommodating as RR - is the right place for Mendizabal's work. The works seem like props for a narrative that can only be told by the artist, or a select group 'who are in the know'.
Perversely I think this performative, story telling approach would work quite well within the confines of community based work. Whereby a working group develop a set of props and
a narrative, and the performance on this becomes is the work, the story would then (ideally) be retold and mistold, making its transition from object to symbol mmmmm
sort of - It also struck me that most of his works come from a world which might considered - analogue - the punk movement, 50's abstract expressionism. Its like a music fan who refuses to listen to music after 1973, the narratives that Mendizabal develops are not complicated by the confusion and multiplicity caused by domestic access to computing and digital networks, the references he uses seem, in comparison to the contemporary moment, quite fixed.
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