Open Frequency
Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art. Selected artists are nominated by key curators, writers and artists from across the UK. Recently profiled Scotland-based artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson and Hayley Tompkins.
Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the arts council funded leading online resource for the contemporary art community.
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A sense of foreboding pervades 'Hello', (2006), a haunting image of a girl standing alone in a desolate, other-worldly landscape. The girl appears to be perfectly at home in this environment yet we have no idea why she is there or where she belongs. |
Delicately sketched in coloured pencil and graphite, the lilac tone of both figure and ground blur the differentiation between flesh and earth. There is a threatening but seductive quality to 'Hello', a classic trope of horror, sci-fi and fairy tale narratives: of being drawn to something which could potentially destroy or overwhelm.
'He lives in a state of pure contradiction between two urges: one for destruction, the other for order. The outcome is a form of delirium, which is caused by a mental disassociation: since I can only exist by being evil, I have to cut myself into two selves; a good one and an evil one.' Denis Duclos, The Werewolf Complex, (1998).
Duncan Marquiss makes drawings, paintings and videos that explore notions of a not quite humanised nature, drawing upon the cultural history of the uncanny and the sublime, and the failure to articulate it. He describes the broader context for his work as 'about ecstatic experience in its different forms'. He is particularly drawn to Aldous Huxley's book The Devils of Loudun (1953), an account of demonically possessed nuns in the 16th century - exposing it to be a politically motivated fraud - where Huxley describes many types of ecstatic experience, making no distinction between what he calls 'downward self-transcendence' (drug-induced ecstasy, sexual intoxication, the intoxication of a crowd, the intoxication through music) and religious ecstasy.
The works share as many similarities to the imagery of old folk tales as to the classic art historical themes of temporality, mortality, death and existence. Taking their subjects from cinema, particularly horror films, things often appear to be illuminated or in a state of entropic flux: 'the world is revealed as composed of a single matter; the characters and the environments they inhabit are ecstatic, where barriers between the individual and the world are suspended, depicting a desire to be reduced to organic matter and to be reunited with an innate yet ineffable other'. (Marquiss). Recent works often play upon our fascination and fear of the animalistic, reverting, as curator Michael Bank Christofferson notes, 'to an iconography of the lycanthrope, the symbolic gesture of man becoming animal, and through it, the becoming or return to a base and sublime state of raw drives and desires'. (1)
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Marquiss collates found images that for whatever reason fascinate or provoke him in some way, eventually becoming source material for the work. Images are juxtaposed and re-appropriated until they begin to resonate with each other in a poetic juxtaposition, or anti-synthesis, which attempts 'to evoke the unrepresentable. Many of these found images are chosen because they are problematic or I find them troubling in some way - my doubts become a reason to show these images'. |
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The source of the original image for the girl-figure in 'Hello' struck Marquiss as resonant of horror and sci-fi films The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) and Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky), which for Marquiss have been a major influence on many levels. They reference the incommensurable quality of nature and humanity's attempt to understand that which is beyond the scope of our comprehension and imagination. More specifically, both films feature personal phantoms which mirror the central character's repressed memories, and feelings of guilt and desire.
Solaris created a vision of a human encounter with something that exists but yet cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.
In the novel, the dead man Gibarian explains why there is a barrier to any understanding of the polytheres (phantoms) experienced by the crew members on board Prometheus: 'The polytheres behave strictly as a kind of amplifier of our own thoughts. Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there is no man, there cannot be motives accessible to man'. (Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, 1961).
Biography
Sorcha Dallas, Director of Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow states, 'I have nominated Duncan Marquiss at this time as he has reached a critical point in his practice. In recent months he has moved away from exhibiting seminal works like 'Roggenwolf' (2005) and has developed new works on paper and video. He is an interesting artist in Glasgow/ Scottish terms as he seems to operate outside of certain scenes or trends and has constantly forged his own very unique and distinctive path. I consider Marquiss to be one of the most exciting artists currently working in Scotland and feel that this year will see his profile being raised substantially on an international level'.
A graduate from the MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2005, Marquiss was the youngest of the eight Scottish artists selected for Zenomap, with his 12-minute film 'Seelenzustande Land' (2003), representing the Scottish Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. Recent exhibitions include Five Figure Position (Peter Kilchmann, Zurich and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, 2006), Where the Wild Things Are (DCA, Dundee, 2006) and Solitude (Upstairs Berlin, Berlin, 2006). His first solo show was at the Dicksmith Gallery, London in 2004 and a solo show is scheduled for March 2007 at The Changing Room, Stirling.
He is represented by the Dicksmith Gallery, London and lives and works in Glasgow.
(1) Michael Bank Christofferson, Solitude, published by Upstairs Berlin, Berlin, 2006.
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