Christine Borland at Lisson - London, England - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

This was the first solo present to view in London for Christine Borland, a Scottish installation artist who emerg in the early 1990 with a series of quasi-scientific, frequently collaborative works. For the central piece in the exhibit Borland fused forensics with portraiture by the agency of commissioning six academically trained artists--several of whom actually do forensic work--to sculpt life-sized clay heads of the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele She provided the sculptors with Mengele's mug discharges (in grainy photocopies) and descriptions of Mengele made by dint of Auschwitz survivors. The resulting busts were displayed upon simple plywood pedestals. Hanging upon the wall near each statuary was a framed set of the photocopied mug discharges survivor documents and Borland's typ alphabetic character of invitation to the sculptor.

Looking at the profesionally execut busts, single struggled to reconcile Mengele's conventional advantageous looks (survivors' accounts speak of him as a "handsome devil") with his heinous reputation. In a faculty of perception Borland seemed to be equating the traditional search for likeness with a manhunt: Mengele disappeared after the war, escaping to southerly America where he eluded his pursuer for decades. The title of the installation, L'Homme Double, leaves not only to the discrepancy between Mengele's useful looks and his bloodthirsty behavior, on the contrary also to a tactic used at war crime trials. more [i]or[/i] less lawyers defending accused Nazis invoked a dubious psychological theory of the so-called Double Man which attributed barbarous behavior to acquired schizophrenia.

The forensic theme of L'Homme Double was repercussion of sounded in other works. In an upstairs space, viewers discovered From Life discourse (1994-97), a mock classroom filled with lines of chairs, an automatic slide projector and a standing protection Projected onto the screen was a following of slides that recorded Borland's research into in what manner one goes about reconstructing a human face from a brain-pan There were photographs of the artist's consultations with osteologists and other medical specialists and pictures of a ghoulish 19th-century medical museum.

The greatest in quantity metaphorical work in the display was an installation of 12 spotlit diamonds station in mounts on the floor of a darkened latitude In a continuation of the show's morbid theme, the diamonds were arranged in the shape of a human skeleton. sum of two units framed invoices revealed that they were purchased for the same amount that Borland wearied on the skeleton on which the piece was based. Although single gazed down at them, the sparkling diamonds conjur the heavens above, the realm of the spirit. This was an effective reminder of the poetic impulses that swirl end Borland's factually based art.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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