Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Beaconsfield, London 30 May – 7 July
Reviewed by: Morgan Falconer
It is always either invidious or insulting to compare one artist to another and Markus Copper probably wouldn't want comparisons to the perhaps corny, rather commercial Swiss Surrealist HR Giger. But it isn't just the sheer eccentricity of his sculpture and accompanying technical drawings that prompts the parallel. Copper's world is a harsh, unpredictable domain of biomechanical forms – both fantastical and historical in the way of all science fiction – and it has that touch of goofiness that you can't take seriously. The star of the show is Archangel of seven seas, the work which won Copper the Scandinavian Ars Fennica prize, making him one of Finland's leading lights. It is a vast whale-like construction combining conventional woodcarving, organ pipes, electronics and sub-sonic noise. At the gallery entrance it looks like a caged dinosaur, the bastard child of a primitive jet engine and a mythical beast. Step forward to examine it and it fires up with a roar of heavy breathing and rhythmic clicks as air drones though its gill-like pipes and threatens to crush you with its rumbling presence.
Outside, making consummate use of the damp, pitchy darkness of one of the area's disused railway tunnels is Rose garten, Copper's newest piece. Inspired by the minefields laid in the north Atlantic during WWII it comprises five suspended iron barrels strung up in a circle, lights searching out of them through holes in the centre. Step into their line of fire and they click, pop and bang with awesome power. Like all of Copper's work and like his inspired and comical mechanical drawings, Rose garten suggests a thwarted, violent machine. He takes Marcel Duchamp circa 1915 – where Dada's absurdity meets Futurism – and constructs the machines Duchamp only dreamt of.
Writer detail:
MORGAN FALCONER
is a freelance journalist.
Venue detail:
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