A Dangling Man

William Cobbing Brian Griffiths Alex Gene Morrison

A Blackbird show on SuperRare.

Launches 6pm 20.10.22

A dangling man is one caught in a dilemma, facing the paralysing horror that some cataclysm awaits him together with the equally shattering fear that nothing will happen at all - he is captured, helpless and suspended, between inertia and catastrophe. Saul Bellow's "Dangling Man" swings aimlessly about in space, searching for the value of individual freedom and the demands of the social contract, but he ultimately chooses a loss of freedom through the regular hours and regimentation afforded by enlisting in the army.

It feels uncomfortably appropriate to compare our current times with those in which Bellow wrote his first novel – the world now also feels precarious and unhinged. This makes a familiar preoccupation with the existential dilemma feel like an indulgent absurdity at the same time as being an inevitable refuge - particularly for Western men, the perpetrators of so much of the carnage.

And so robbed of optimism, the dangling man waits, anticipating that the world, or his own life, will end in either a bang or a whimper. In the work of William Cobbing, Brian Griffiths and Alex Gene Morrison, their tragi-comic humanoids play out, again and again, this pathos and entropy – like the twentieth century on loop.

In William Cobbing’s videos, a clay wire cuts through the mass of a formless clay head, slicing off carpaccio layers to reveal those below.

With each new slice candy coloured paint oozes out, revealing eye and mouth-like orifices. Reminiscent of B movie horror films where limbs are cut open and blood pours out, here the glossy, coloured liquid imbues this slapstick action with more ambiguity.

There is an abject quality in the interior spewing forth, leaving the performances humorous but unnerving, and suggesting a dark entropy.

Appearing in a series of sculptural situations, often on the point of collapse, or running through some seemingly meaningless protocol, Brian Griffiths’ creation is a tragi-comic figure: a naked, puppet-like Caucasian male who seems not to know that his strings – if they ever held him up – have now been decisively cut.

Bald, blind, and with his pink paintwork and wooden body showing signs of wear and tear, this little performer clunks through his part.

For Alex Gene Morrison the symbol of a humanoid head functions as both a self-portrait and universal stand in for a human presence.

Morrison has filtered a longstanding interest in the archetypal imagery and mythologies that link modern and ancient man - totemic and primal imagery, through his love of early video game aesthetics and sub cultural graphic design, comics and animation.

In these three pieces his protagonist has been dropped into a virtual landscape, left to endlessly ponder the meaning of its existence.

Blackbird launches at 6pm on the 20th October.

Blackbird - a SuperRare Space on SuperRare.

Blackbird works with contemporary artists who have a critical and thoughtful practise away from the world of digital art. Using the SuperRare Spaces platform, and the crypto art audience which that provides, artists are able to reimagine their work and take it in unexpected directions.