Mirrored
For the Mirrored series, Maslen & Mehra appropriate imagery of people, whose silhouettes are then made into mirrored sculptures. By placing them into the landscape and photographing them in this new context, Maslen & Mehra forge an unusual synthesis at first sight: the juxtaposition of highly urban people and wide-open spaces. The result of these forced symbioses raises issues of the human existence and alludes to the impermanence and fragility of mankind.
Mirrored The Photography of Maslen & Mehra
by Eugen Blume, Chief Curator Hamburger Bahnhof Museum Berlin
The pair of artists Tim Maslen and Jennifer Mehra attained international recognition through their large-format colour photography, which most often presents landscapes. For these photographs, they have developed special light-boxes which, in contrast to the backlit photographs of Jeff Wall, for instance, mostly stand upon the ground and extend the perspective of the picture, as if in an extension of the pictorial space, right into these landscapes. Through their metal framing and rounded corners, they clearly recall the framed pictures of fine art, the discipline of painting which was the first to free itself from the wall and to lay claim to a frame for the demarcation which was henceforth deemed to be necessary. These details, however, constitute only incidental aspects in the works of Maslen and Mehra. It is in the silhouetted figures placed directly into the landscape that these artists, each still less than forty years old, have found their distinctive language. These figures, whose outlines render human shapes exactly, possess no interior structure but are cut in two dimensions out of mirrored aluminium. With their approximately halfway life-sized proportions, they are positioned within the landscape in such a manner as to convey the impression that it is a matter of full-sized figures, which, by means of their clothing, pay homage to a special camouflage technique. Of course, the aluminium mirror takes on those aspects of the landscape which are reflected upon it but which, because of the degree of inclination assumed by the two-dimensional figures, do not necessarily correspond to that which surrounds them in the landscape. From time to time, the blue sky is mirrored within an expanse of green grass, so that the figures emerge crisply out of their surroundings, in their colouration as well. They issue a reminder of the flat shapes of traditional silhouettes, which, however, by means of a black hue that is complementary to the mirroring aluminium, induce the viewer to reconstruct mentally the interior reality of the delineated figures. Strangely enough, this black hue functions in a manner similar to that of the mirrored aluminium. Even though nothing was represented upon its dull surface, still the viewer's memory associated all the pertinent details, so that a poor king limned in silhouette was nevertheless richly attired. One could even surmise his robe lined with ermine. In the animated films developed during the 1920s, there was mirrored - if one were inclined to range far afield - albeit with narrative intention, but closely related on an essential level, the spiritual dimension of an icon of Modernism, the black square of Malevich. This black colour functioned as well as a blank space, in a spiritual sense as the Divine Void, which has been described by both European and Asian mystics.
The mirroring figures of Maslen and Mehra play a role similar to that of these shadowy figures, even if the reflected segments of nature impart an interior delineation to them and the viewer comes to fantasize real clothing for them, for example, the weapons and uniforms of the figures which are often thereby made recognizable as soldiers. There is a simple explanation for the reason why human vision reacts in this way. The landscape reflected upon the shape is not considered to be real by the normative criteria stored in our consciousness. It is automatically replaced by an interior structure, which is more appropriate to the exterior figuration. The human being flows out of his natural limitation, as it were, into these diverse, occasionally magnificent landscapes. He is completely assimilated by the reflecting surface, absorbed into something out of which he was originally driven. The metaphor of a mirror-man awakens nothing other than the primal longing to be connected once again in an integral manner to nature. Human beings in the landscape are a quite common topos, which extends throughout art history. They refer to the primal scene, to the banishment from the paradisiacal garden through the knowledge of good and evil. Ever since this original exile, humanity has striven to reduce the intervening distance, to attain once again the homeland from which it became alienated through the mind, through cognition. A critical observation of the present era does not, however, lead to the uplifting conclusion that humanity is currently embarked upon the path of coming to understand itself as both nature and spirit in equal measure. The human violations of nature are too severe. It is as if humanity were attempting to establish an objective overview in the very act of retaliating for its banishment by means of a total annihilation of nature. The fundamental process, which has been unleashed, especially by the global industrializing endeavours of the twentieth century, is an all-encompassing destruction of the environment. In spite of various oppositional movements, this process cannot be stopped, but on the contrary, it is speeding up more and more. Humanity has begun, instead of recalling in a productive manner its origin within nature, to transform itself into a nature-less mirror-mankind. It is not by chance that armed soldiers arise in the magically photographed landscapes of Maslen and Mehra, without it ever becoming clear what goals they are pursuing. They as well are occupied by the landscape in an utter lack of distinction. They lose their subjectivity in a reflection, which is projected onto the figures. By means of the fixed delineation of their surface, they are at the mercy of nature, even while they cling to the mistaken belief that it is they who project their image onto nature. All military goals remain secondary in the face of the omnipotence of natural processes. The figures summon up reminiscences of the conquerors, the conquistadores, the foreign legionnaires and soldiers whose role it was to shore up the colonial ambitions of the European and American powers. This penetration of strangers into a strange land for the purpose of violence, such as was described so forcefully for the Belgian Congo by Joseph Conrad in his book The Heart of Darkness, is doomed to failure, as is announced metaphorically by the mirrored images. Nature is much more vast and mighty. It marks the human beings living within its realm, and not the other way around.
Of course, the works of Maslen & Mehra may be read, beyond these sombre considerations, as un-constricted, aesthetic play, even as a photographic paraphrase of Surrealism. Salvador Dali and René Magritte once painted similar reflecting figures, which could not be distinguished from nature to which they belong. Especially with Magritte, there are pictures in which the silhouette of a figure merges with the surrounding landscape. The mirror is an especially important metaphor for Magritte. He was the first artist to cut out figures and to project the surrounding landscape into their interior surface. In his case, however, it is a matter of a fantasized image of painting, a surreal action. Maslen and Mehra, on the other hand, are much more concerned with investigating the ways in which such shapes could function in reality itself. The effects are astounding where, within the reflecting figures in a manner quite similar to that of René Magritte, that which surrounds them is mirrored halfway, for example, a field of debris on the bank of a river. We could extend the sequence of associations even further to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, where Alice passes through a mirror to enter into an enchanted world in which all relationships and proportions seem to have been inverted. But here the figures placed within the landscape do not pass through a mirror into another space but are instead themselves a mirror, through which or upon which the landscape is reflected. The human being dissolves at the most intense instant of reflection and becomes indistinguishable from that which surrounds him.
The camouflage is a perfect success. The figures, whose visible weapons suggest soldiers, are of course particularly suitable for allowing the idea of camouflage to emerge into prominence. Soldiers camouflage themselves in order to no longer be seen by the enemy. The mirror seems to provide an ideal camouflage, inasmuch as it reflects nothing other than that which surrounds it. And yet the figures remain strangely visible, mirroring something incalculable and only in the rarest cases reflecting that which, with camouflage in a military sense, would be necessary for a successful attack. It is especially this military aspect which calls to mind the films of Terrence Malick, especially The Thin Red Line, a war film which takes place mostly out in the landscape of nature, in high verdant grass through which soldiers move as if they were mere vacant mirrorings.
Translated from German
MASLEN & MEHRA by Edward Lucie-Smith
Science Fiction is probably the most under-rated literary genre of our time. Thousands of people read it, and find in it the nourishment for their imaginations that they do not find in so-called ‘quality fiction’. Maslen and Mehra, artists basing themselves in London, have invented a way of seeing that is closely related to one of the favorite tropes of the science fiction writer. What they offer, essentially, in their large-scale staged photographs, is a series of glimpses into a parallel universe. By placing reflective cut out silhouettes in various landscape and architectural settings, and recording the result, they suggest conjunctions that might otherwise go unnoticed. The silhouettes are visitors from another world, and their reflective surfaces make them only partly visible.
A new series of these images, made in a particularly propitious environment, the city of Rome, is full of both historical and ecological echoes. One should perhaps begin with the image of the European wolf, seen against the background of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. This evokes the myth of the foundation of the city, when the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus, sons of the war god Mars and the Vestal Virgin Rhea Sylvia, were carried to safety in a wicker basket by the swollen River Tiber and were then suckled by a she-wolf. The Castel Sant’Angelo, seen in the background, was originally built as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. After many vicissitudes, it was remodeled as a papal fortress, residence and prison. In 1527 Pope Clement VII took refuge there from the ferocious sack of Rome by an army of German landsknechts.
Another image shows a wolf confronted by a mouflon in the via della Renella. In the background are aggressive graffiti and defaced posters – Rome, which has never been a tidy city, now abounds in both. They are as characteristic of the Roman urban environment as the city’s great architectural monuments, such as the Castel Sant’Angelo. The significance here seems to be the contrast between the urban wilderness and the true wilderness that creatures like the wolf and the mouflon inhabit in reality. Mouflons are the wild ancestors of all domestic breeds of sheep, and as such represent the eternal contrast between the wild and the tamed. The mouflon image reappears, this time in isolation, in another work from Maslen and Mehra’s Native Rome series – this time perched on a parapet in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. On the retaining wall below the creature the word ‘Genesis’ appears in large Gothic letters – the kind of typeface that might head an Old Testament text in some massive Victorian bible. Reflected in the creature’s metallic body is the tower of one of Rome’s innumerable churches.
The images just described come from a much larger series, or series of series, photographed in different parts of the world. All the images show creatures that might once have existed, in another epoch, in the location shown. Very often, like the wolf that makes its presence felt in Rome, they have a specific symbolic value. They are intended to remind us of the continuing, if often ghostly, presence of what is wild within what is at least nominally civilized. In this sense they are an updated version of a favorite student slogan from the Paris ‘evenements’ of 1968: “Sous le pave, le plage.” [“Beneath the pavement, the beach.”]. The frequent inclusion of urban graffiti in these images also serves to stress the often feral quality of the modern urban environment – the sense of danger that it all too frequently encapsulates. Other images reflect – often very literally – the essential character of some of the other great cities of the world. A mountain lion paces the street near one of the entrances to the New York subway, neon signs flashing on its body as an emblem of urban danger. And a Kangal dog – a lion-like breed native to central Anatolia, where they are used to guard the flocks against wolves – is seen in Istanbul’s great church of Aya Sofia, with an image of a protective Virgin shining on its flank.
Another large series, Mirrored, reverses the equation. Here the mirror sculptures are silhouettes of typical city dwellers, ranging in type from businessmen to skateboarders, who have been miraculously transported to wild locations. The figures can be seen, on the one hand, as the inhabitants of a lost Eden that now exists only inside their own heads, or on the other hand as beings who are pathetically ill-equipped and ill-prepared for this sudden return to nature.
The Native and Mirrored series are directly photographic – that is to say, the mirror sculptures are placed in the chosen setting, and photographed in situ. Other, related series, make use of collage. Under Construction, for example, asks questions about the relentless spread of building into landscapes that were formerly considered to be sacrosanct. Endangered Americans contrasts ghostly images of gas-guzzling American automobiles with drawings of endangered American plant species rendered in autobody paint.
Finally, the mirror sculptures are sometimes used, when occasion offers, as items displayed in ‘real’ settings, without photographic intervention. It is clear, however, that all the series, including the installations, form part of what is an absolutely coherent, and at the same time, a surprisingly flexible graphic language.
It has often struck me, in recent, years, that an increasing weakness of contemporary art is that the manner of saying something – the style, or worse still, the gimmick – increasingly takes primacy over what is actually being said. This is one reason why art from formerly exotic locations, China for example, has played an increasingly prominent role in the artistic cosmos. Art from China tends to have a readily identifiable range of subject matter, which is connected to the country’s industrial success and consequent sudden rise in status. Similarly, recent years have seen a steep rise in prestige for feminist art, symbolized by the creation of a specialist feminist art department at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which now has an extension especially designed to house Chicago’s iconic installation, The Dinner Party. To put matters succinctly, both leading Chinese artists and leading feminist artists have marked out a territory for themselves and have created a visual language or group of languages that enable them to communicate directly with an non-specialist audience. This is not something one can rely on elsewhere. Too often there is a disconnection between the imagery the artist has chosen and what that imagery is supposed to mean. After the long Modernist excursion into an exploration of purely ‘formal’ values – an excursion that came to a logical conclusion with the Minimal Art of the late 1960s and early 1970s, art has tended to return to the allegorical and the narrative, which are territories that it fully inhabited before the rise of the Modern Movement. Too often, today, the supposed allegories lack inevitable meaning, and the narratives stutter into nothing.
That is clearly not the case here. One of the difficulties of writing about the work of Maslen and Mehra is, paradoxically, that it doesn’t need the elaborate explanations that now seem to be chief business of the critic. The intended message is not at all difficult to disentangle from what you see. On the other hand, it isn’t obvious in the sense of being banal. A fascinating thing about the duo’s use of mirrors is the way in which this usage resonates in different ways. They resonate purely physically, through the ways in which the various mirrored surfaces pick up their surroundings. Sometimes this involves a near-disappearance of the sculpture itself, which melts into the surrounding landscape or townscape. The image of Milton Keynes and the cities use of reflective glass in its master-plan, for example, presents this aspect particularly well. The sculptures also resonate metaphorically, creating a situation where we perceive them as being simultaneously present and absent. This absence, in turn, creates the sense of otherness that is the emotional core of the work.
The otherness makes its impact not only through our sense of the strange and the magical – at the beginning of this essay I suggested a comparison with the parallel worlds of Science Fiction – but also through its impact on the collective conscience. These are undoubtedly high-tech artworks, made using means that, only a short time, ago, would not have been available to artists, or, indeed, to anyone else. This aspect, as soon as we recognize it, inevitably draws our attention to the underlying moral. High-tech artworks can only be produced by societies that threaten a fragile ecological balance.
Yet this is not simple preaching. The Native series, in particular, continually draws the spectator’s attention to the historical context, and to the long process of evolution that has brought us, as human beings, to the place where we stand now. Though we worship, at any rate in theory, virginal nature, this worship springs from a sophisticated urban sensibility. This sensibility is not new. It was already finding expression in the 17th century, in the paintings of Claude Lorraine. Typically, Claude’s most faithful patrons came from the leading figures in the hard-working bureaucracy that surrounded Louis XIV. His paintings reminded them of all the pleasures they had given up in order to serve the monarch.
Lying behind both the Native images, and the images of the Mirrored series that are their antonym, lies a longing for an Edenic world that perhaps never truly existed in fact. I think it is part of the fascination of these works that they both preach a certain kind of morality, a morality of respect for nature, and at the same time question it. You can inhabit these scenes, but only as a ghost. The problems they pose are ultimately insoluble – there are no slick solutions to be found here.
EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH is an art historian, art critic, curator, poet and photographer who has written books on contemporary art published in many languages. Among his best-known titles are 'Movements in Art since 1945', 'The Visual Arts of the 20th Century' and 'Art Today'. He curated the survey exhibition 'New Classicism in Art', at Palazzo Forti in Verona. Among his many books is a monograph on the American feminist artist Judy Chicago [published in May 2000], and 'Art Tomorrow' [published in October 2002], a survey of the most recent developments in contemporary art, which includes work by Maslen & Mehra.