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Is This It? Mark Siebert The Project Space, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia February 17 - April 3 2005  Integral
to Mark Siebert's exhibition 'Is This It?' is paper. Whether it be
stacks of paper (reams of the stuff), heavy watercolour papers pinned
to the wall or daggy torn paper drawn on and glued onto stretched
canvases, it is paper in some form or another. Perhaps this is because
paper lends itself to lots of things: jotting, documenting, sketching,
painting, big piles of loosely stacked pages that suggestively appear
as if they have floated down into one neat heap, rough jostling sounds,
crinkled corners, unrepairable tears and mind-maps. Paper is a material
of the everyday. It is a part of analytical processes such as study,
reading and planning and the transferring of information; all examined
by Siebert in this exhibition.'Is This It?' is a show of disparate ideas linked by a mind-map of sorts. The mind-map, a learning tool associated with the 80s (though they are still used now), can bring different worlds together through even the slightest of connections: a six degrees of separation for the mind. They are a place of infinite possibilities where an apple can connect with Thomas the Tank Engine or a shell with The Alps. Here the Simpsons, Iron Chef, Futurama, The Strokes, Seinfeld, Nick Cave, Frank Stella and Lascaux and Chauvet (caves discovered from the Palaeolithic era) become linked through the past, the present and the present's future (in the case of Futurama). 'Is This It?' brings ideas together that are interconnected within Siebert's mind, and our own after seeing the mind-map style diagram on the back of the list of works. The links amuse and make some sort of orderly sense- full of visual puns and witty connections.  Perhaps
the wittiest aspect of all is Siebert's use of watercolour on paper
to render popular cultural TV programs. Watercolour, a medium often
stereotyped as used by slow-paced and elderly artists painting landscapes
has been contemporised, revived and sped up to accommodate for the
mass of fast-paced imagery one encounters daily. Siebert uses watercolour
to paint such things as the spines of a Futurama series of DVD's or
imposing portraits of Saturday night's Iron Chefs, 'Chen-san, Sakai-san,
Kobe-san and Michiba-san'.With his use of watercolour and his processes of documentation Siebert has pulled to a halt the fast paced information of contemporary culture. In the work 'transcriptions', he has written out the entire transcript from an episode of Iron Chef. Sitting in a neat stack of paper, page after page, word after word has been carefully written and documented from the hour-long TV program. Nothing can slip past Siebert in this way of making, is it a thorough examination of his subject. This is an exercise in documentation, a pulling apart of the subject, a desire to see the end result, and more than that, this is an exercise in self-discipline. This process reinstates each episode beyond the slicked up hour-long show that flits past on a Saturday evening. 'Rack' is a more personal piece of Siebert's, relating to his own sense of order and documentation of his own personal belongings. Each page of this small square pile is painted with copies of each of his CD's. This pile works more as an inventory. Each painting links with a CD, then a memory, a connection with the music and a time past, but only for Siebert, and maybe for us if we know that particular CD too. Perhaps Siebert's series documenting the Seinfeld DVD's show the most that his style of organising, recording and celebrity sketching are thorough exercises that lack any relenting. In this series, Siebert has painted every angle of his DVD collection; the front covers, the back covers, the inside covers, the DVD's, the sides, the spines. The Seinfeld set, as well as the other works featuring Futurama, The Simpsons, The Strokes and Iron Chef, are clinical in their examination. They are taken from popular culture, but lack the hype often associated through hysterical fans and paraphernalia. Although Siebert has documented popular cultural icons, ones that most people can relate to and find connections with, these examinations seem personal. This is more of an examination of self through ones collections. This is Siebert's world. Yes, this is it.  |
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