Installation shots of “Dor and Oranur” at Fleisher/Ollman through February 18th.
There was once a man named Wilhelm Reich.
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who started out his academic career respected (working with the likes of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein) and ended his career as a mad-scientist type whose work was destroyed by the FDA.
Reich believed he discovered a primordial cosmic energy that he named “orgone”. The machines he built to harness orgone were called orgone energy accumulators and they had the appearance of a large, hollow capacitor. A patient, in need of healing, would sit inside an orgone energy accumulator. Sitting inside an orgone-making box would supposedly bring about health benefits of one kind or another. Press at the time seemed to think orgone accumulators were somehow sex machines that caused permanent erections and orgone energy was in fact a harnessed orgasm.
Reich bought land, 160 acres in Maine, that he christened “Orgonon”. On this land he built two laboratories dedicated to the study of orgone. One experiment conducted on Orgonon land was called “The Oranur Experiment”, which stood for ORgonomic Anti-NUclear Radiation. During this experiment Reich discovered that nuclear radiation “antagonized” orgone energy and turned it into Deadly ORgone or DOR. Dor apparently, is a really nasty energy that does horrible things to living organisms, even worse things then what a living organism could expect from “normal” radiation sickness.
It goes without saying that the current consensus of the scientific community is that orgone theory is a pseudoscience. Evidently you can purchase orgone equipment online: here, here, here and here.
The Wagner Free Institute of Science Fiction
The world created for “Dor and Oranur” is completely encompassing. It reads less like a commercial art gallery filled with sculpture and more like a hybrid of The Wagner Free Institute of Science, The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History, and what remains of the history of an ancient race still on view in the crumbling ruins of a museum set in a post-apocalyptic planet’s future. Much of this mood is accomplished through the use of lighting and sound, the gallery is lit by a combination of cool colored lights and the audible space is filled with a noise-alien-horror-movie sound track created by Paul Swenbeck in collaboration with Aaron Igler.
The sculpture itself reads as fossil or representation of actual organism, either earthly and from the depths of the ocean, or alien. Clues are dropped in the form of sculpture titles, revealing a mash-up of inspiration ranging from witchcraft, Wicca hippies, cultists, black metal, fantasy, pseudoscience, actual science, and science fiction. The tall, plant-like, “Silurian Sentinel” might reference a race of reptile-like humanoids from Dr. Who or a geologic period that ended some 443.7 Million years ago, give or take 1.5 million years. The small pokemon-looking “Wiwaxia” looks exactly as the fossil-record of the soft-bodied, scale-covered animals might indicate. Two pieces entitled “Dolmen” do not resemble the actual portal tombs or graves from the Neolithic period, though they seem rock-like and tied to a ritual use of unknown origin. Several small fossil-looking sculptures entitled “Familiars” which anyone who has read “Harry Potter” knows is an animal that hangs out with a witch or wizard, also send a mixed magical and biological signal.
It is tempting to wrap “Dor and Oranur” up in a neat little package labeled; “Institutional Critique, the kind that makes us question the origins of what’s in museums, that’s a bit Mark Dion and more Marcel Broodthaers, ‘Department of Eagles’ “. The specter of Wilhelm Reich’s biography hangs over this label, the fact that orgone was at one time considered an actual discovery, or the fact that his books were burned by the FDA, begs many questions. Who controls history? What do we believe now that is actually false? Why is some knowledge valued over other knowledge?
That heavy label might remove a lot of the pleasure of looking, and the feeling that the artist got a great deal of joy out of the making. Everything in “Dor and Oranur” is superbly crafted, made of a variety of materials, but mostly ceramics. The finish ranges from matte primaries, what could be florescent paint, and actual glazes in cerulean and more intricate secondary colors. The larger sculptures, composed of several pieces, might be held together by brightly primary sculpy or something else that resembles play dough. It is hard not to think of Tim Burton films, where dark themes and creepy critters are often cartoon-ish and colorful, made family friendly– as long as you don’t think about them for too long.
One Review a Month also reviewed the work of Paul Swenbeck in April, 2010.
SHOW REVIEWED: Paul Swenbeck “Dor and Oranur” at Fleisher/Ollman
Installation shots of “Dor and Oranur” at Fleisher/Ollman through February 18th.
There was once a man named Wilhelm Reich.
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who started out his academic career respected (working with the likes of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein) and ended his career as a mad-scientist type whose work was destroyed by the FDA.
Reich believed he discovered a primordial cosmic energy that he named “orgone”. The machines he built to harness orgone were called orgone energy accumulators and they had the appearance of a large, hollow capacitor. A patient, in need of healing, would sit inside an orgone energy accumulator. Sitting inside an orgone-making box would supposedly bring about health benefits of one kind or another. Press at the time seemed to think orgone accumulators were somehow sex machines that caused permanent erections and orgone energy was in fact a harnessed orgasm.
Reich bought land, 160 acres in Maine, that he christened “Orgonon”. On this land he built two laboratories dedicated to the study of orgone. One experiment conducted on Orgonon land was called “The Oranur Experiment”, which stood for ORgonomic Anti-NUclear Radiation. During this experiment Reich discovered that nuclear radiation “antagonized” orgone energy and turned it into Deadly ORgone or DOR. Dor apparently, is a really nasty energy that does horrible things to living organisms, even worse things then what a living organism could expect from “normal” radiation sickness.
It goes without saying that the current consensus of the scientific community is that orgone theory is a pseudoscience. Evidently you can purchase orgone equipment online: here, here, here and here.
The Wagner Free Institute of Science Fiction
The world created for “Dor and Oranur” is completely encompassing. It reads less like a commercial art gallery filled with sculpture and more like a hybrid of The Wagner Free Institute of Science, The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History, and what remains of the history of an ancient race still on view in the crumbling ruins of a museum set in a post-apocalyptic planet’s future. Much of this mood is accomplished through the use of lighting and sound, the gallery is lit by a combination of cool colored lights and the audible space is filled with a noise-alien-horror-movie sound track created by Paul Swenbeck in collaboration with Aaron Igler.
The sculpture itself reads as fossil or representation of actual organism, either earthly and from the depths of the ocean, or alien. Clues are dropped in the form of sculpture titles, revealing a mash-up of inspiration ranging from witchcraft, Wicca hippies, cultists, black metal, fantasy, pseudoscience, actual science, and science fiction. The tall, plant-like, “Silurian Sentinel” might reference a race of reptile-like humanoids from Dr. Who or a geologic period that ended some 443.7 Million years ago, give or take 1.5 million years. The small pokemon-looking “Wiwaxia” looks exactly as the fossil-record of the soft-bodied, scale-covered animals might indicate. Two pieces entitled “Dolmen” do not resemble the actual portal tombs or graves from the Neolithic period, though they seem rock-like and tied to a ritual use of unknown origin. Several small fossil-looking sculptures entitled “Familiars” which anyone who has read “Harry Potter” knows is an animal that hangs out with a witch or wizard, also send a mixed magical and biological signal.
It is tempting to wrap “Dor and Oranur” up in a neat little package labeled; “Institutional Critique, the kind that makes us question the origins of what’s in museums, that’s a bit Mark Dion and more Marcel Broodthaers, ‘Department of Eagles’ “. The specter of Wilhelm Reich’s biography hangs over this label, the fact that orgone was at one time considered an actual discovery, or the fact that his books were burned by the FDA, begs many questions. Who controls history? What do we believe now that is actually false? Why is some knowledge valued over other knowledge?
That heavy label might remove a lot of the pleasure of looking, and the feeling that the artist got a great deal of joy out of the making. Everything in “Dor and Oranur” is superbly crafted, made of a variety of materials, but mostly ceramics. The finish ranges from matte primaries, what could be florescent paint, and actual glazes in cerulean and more intricate secondary colors. The larger sculptures, composed of several pieces, might be held together by brightly primary sculpy or something else that resembles play dough. It is hard not to think of Tim Burton films, where dark themes and creepy critters are often cartoon-ish and colorful, made family friendly– as long as you don’t think about them for too long.
One Review a Month also reviewed the work of Paul Swenbeck in April, 2010.