Thomas Rehbein

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
Charlie Chaplin

Tina Hage’s exhibition explores concepts of never ending actions, signals and seemingly hollow acts as a starting point from which to consider ideas within contemporary art today. The images she refers to from the media, history, art and popular culture as well as her own photographs are loaded with hidden messages that are cleverly re-appropriated and reconfigured to create new and surprising meaning. These new configurations are lighthearted yet considered to suggest the infinite possibilities in which even the most timeless gestures can be seen anew. In this exhibition, Hage collects three different bodies of work where figurative, landscape and abstraction culminate in photographic, sculptural and installation gestures. Care has been taken with the placement of these works to ensure that unexpected new relationships between the work can exist and indeed thrive.
When viewing the “Rehearsal” pieces, the viewer is reminded of a bygone era of silent films and theatre. Actions that appear funny but somehow tragic are reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s quote “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” Chaplin, a master of gesture himself was always aware of the power of the body’s language. That like in any language, nuances are the key that can hold true meaning. The figures we see in the various configurations suggest a formal relationship. It is unclear whether they are performing to entertain or for duty as while the poses are impressive, ridiculous and impossible in equal measure, the expressions of the figures are sometimes pained, non-plussed but most often vacant allowing the viewer to constantly re-assess what exactly these figures are rehearsing.
The “Scene from Above” are a series of small scale models made out of folded photographic prints mounted on to white board. This series is based on aerial photography which was either originally shot by Hage herself or referenced by founds images of other photographers on Google images and by satellite from outer space on Google Earth. The subject matter is varied and include terraced post war housing in the United Kingdom, areas of Amazonian rainforest and aerials shots of swimming pools in Los Angeles. Yet the models themselves appear much closer and present by virtue of being reduced to simple shapes and colours. These reinterpretations of the original images allow the viewer to imagine what these original images could have been. The gesture of democratisation of photographic imagery into a sculptural format creates a humorous yet uncomfortable situation whereby not only the subject matter is reassessed but also ideas of ownership, copyright and the photographic image itself are challenged. This friction is epitomised by “Horizon” which is a large format photograph of the landscape around a nuclear power station in Dungeness in the UK. Like many pieces in this show, the work appears light and playful in appearance, the underlying friction permeates through the works when viewed critically.
While the photographic imagery from the “Scene from Above” series are abstracted to pure forms of colour and shape, the pieces in the series entitled “The place here” are hyper real, highly detailed renditions of images that Hage has taken and then abstracted through sculpture and installation. The scenes which once existed as a photograph now invite the viewer via a physical gesture of form to enter the image reinforcing the immediacy that Hage has created throughout this show. This is particularly apparent in the curves of the paper that replicate the sensation of water in the swimming pool of the Golden Lane Estate, London, while the connective nature of the Niteroi bridge is highlighted through the use of seemingly unrelated yet intrinsically connected materials. It is this combination of the familiar and unexpected use of gesture that allows the viewer to constantly find new ways of engaging and negotiating new connections between the different pieces within the show. While many of the pieces within the show are studies and interpretations of gesture, it is Hage’s own gestures of playfulness and consideration of selection and hanging which drives the concept of the show.

Text by Keh Ng / The modern language experiment