Sweet Ecstasy
10 Jun - 15 Jul 2006
Sweet Ecstasy
Opening hours:
Tue - Fri 9.30am - 6pm
Sat 12 - 4pm
Galerie Nicola von Senger is pleased to present the group exhibition Sweet Ecstasy. Ecstasy is a loaded term with many religious connotations and, since the 60s at the very latest, a word with a predominantly sexual meaning - the cheap thrill of a brief encounter. “Sex sells” marketing strategies and the proliferation of morally dubious images have penetrated contemporary culture and were quickly echoed in art. Albeit religious, the picturesque description of the stigmatisation of Saint Francis of Assisi from the early 13th century may just be the best text on the subject:
It was as though the heavens were exploding and splashing forth all their glory in millions of waterfalls of colors and stars. And in the center of that bright whirlpool was a core of blinding light that flashed down from the depths of the sky with terrifying speed until suddenly it stopped, motionless and sacred, above a pointed rock in front of Francis. It was a fiery figure with wings, nailed to a cross of fire. [...] And the wounds in the hands and feet and heart were blazing rays of blood. The sparkling features of the Being wore an expression of supernatural beauty and grief. It was the face of Jesus, and Jesus spoke. Then suddenly streams of fire and blood shot from His wounds and pierced the hands and feet of Francis with nails and his heart with the stab of a lance. As Francis uttered a mighty shout of joy and pain, the fiery image impressed itself into his body, as into a mirrored reflection of itself, with all its love, its beauty, and its grief. And it vanished within him. Another cry pierced the air. Then, with nails and wounds through his body, and with his soul and spirit aflame, Francis sank down, unconscious, in his blood.
The passage has all the trappings of ecstasy. Through a small number of substitutions, such as Jesus with the girl next door, the text quickly takes on the character of a (not) altogether different ecstasy à la Basic Instinct, a sweet ecstasy (which happens to be the title of an erotic 1962 drama starring Pierre Brice and Elke Sommer). The stigmatisation of St. Francis had an impressive impact on art. Giotto painted powerful frescoes about the event in the Upper Church of the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. Caravaggio’s more subdued St. Francis in Ecstasy is a well-known successor. Jiri Georg Dokoupil’s Madonna in Extasy (in the exhibition), which directly likens religious to sexual ecstasy, performs the exchange of protagonists and bridges the gap to modern times and the sweetening of ecstasy into its commodified, contemporary state. As Guy Debord remarked in The Society of the Spectacle: “The fetishism of commodities reaches moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism.” This exhibition surveys the near-religious “fervent exaltation” of sweet ecstasies.
Gregor Staiger, May 2006
Opening hours:
Tue - Fri 9.30am - 6pm
Sat 12 - 4pm
Galerie Nicola von Senger is pleased to present the group exhibition Sweet Ecstasy. Ecstasy is a loaded term with many religious connotations and, since the 60s at the very latest, a word with a predominantly sexual meaning - the cheap thrill of a brief encounter. “Sex sells” marketing strategies and the proliferation of morally dubious images have penetrated contemporary culture and were quickly echoed in art. Albeit religious, the picturesque description of the stigmatisation of Saint Francis of Assisi from the early 13th century may just be the best text on the subject:
It was as though the heavens were exploding and splashing forth all their glory in millions of waterfalls of colors and stars. And in the center of that bright whirlpool was a core of blinding light that flashed down from the depths of the sky with terrifying speed until suddenly it stopped, motionless and sacred, above a pointed rock in front of Francis. It was a fiery figure with wings, nailed to a cross of fire. [...] And the wounds in the hands and feet and heart were blazing rays of blood. The sparkling features of the Being wore an expression of supernatural beauty and grief. It was the face of Jesus, and Jesus spoke. Then suddenly streams of fire and blood shot from His wounds and pierced the hands and feet of Francis with nails and his heart with the stab of a lance. As Francis uttered a mighty shout of joy and pain, the fiery image impressed itself into his body, as into a mirrored reflection of itself, with all its love, its beauty, and its grief. And it vanished within him. Another cry pierced the air. Then, with nails and wounds through his body, and with his soul and spirit aflame, Francis sank down, unconscious, in his blood.
The passage has all the trappings of ecstasy. Through a small number of substitutions, such as Jesus with the girl next door, the text quickly takes on the character of a (not) altogether different ecstasy à la Basic Instinct, a sweet ecstasy (which happens to be the title of an erotic 1962 drama starring Pierre Brice and Elke Sommer). The stigmatisation of St. Francis had an impressive impact on art. Giotto painted powerful frescoes about the event in the Upper Church of the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. Caravaggio’s more subdued St. Francis in Ecstasy is a well-known successor. Jiri Georg Dokoupil’s Madonna in Extasy (in the exhibition), which directly likens religious to sexual ecstasy, performs the exchange of protagonists and bridges the gap to modern times and the sweetening of ecstasy into its commodified, contemporary state. As Guy Debord remarked in The Society of the Spectacle: “The fetishism of commodities reaches moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism.” This exhibition surveys the near-religious “fervent exaltation” of sweet ecstasies.
Gregor Staiger, May 2006