Devon DeJardin makes superbly rendered photographs of what look to be deliberately constructed piles of rounded stone varieties. He makes use of a really refined color palette and chiaroscuro to mannequin work of statues of a convincing bulk and heft. The varieties sit open air, in landscapes, illuminated by dramatic Caravaggesque mild. The sunshine is otherworldly, unfathomable, it doesn’t appear to return from the climate. They appear to be they’ve been there endlessly, wherever there may be.
The varieties in DeJardin’s work look strong and dependable. They appear acquainted. Someplace between pre-historic monolithic sculptures and a baby’s multicoloured constructing blocks. They really feel modernist, like a component from a portray by Tanguy sculpted by Henry Moore. Or an Eduardo Chillida sculpture portrayed in a portray by Fernando Botero. Have been historic stone sculptures such because the Easter Island heads painted, like polychromatic Historical Greek sculpture, earlier than 1000’s of years of climate washed the color away. Is that what they’re? They could possibly be from the longer term, or a latest pasts’ concept of the longer term. You realize that movie Zardoz? The one with Sean Connery toting a revolver and carrying solely purple underpants and thigh size leather-based boots. Or a monument from an unlimited South American metropolis that was designed by a single architect mixing influences of European brutalism with native Aztec heritage. They could possibly be remnants from a former Soviet totalitarian regime.
Their bodily presence appears enormous however not confrontational, extra comforting by some means, benign reasonably then daunting. The artist refers to them as Guardians. What they’re is photographs, work, concepts. Substantive fictions. Let’s take a phrase that everyone knows however can by no means fairly bear in mind. Pareidolia – the tendency to see faces in random visible patterns. That is the place these work get actually fascinating. They clearly have that high quality, we see the faces one second and the following, it’s only a pile of colored blocks once more. The fascinating half is that they act as pareidolia for our creativeness. We will see all kinds of issues in them, past faces. We see swathes of artwork historical past, cultures, religions, perception techniques, all in the identical place on the identical time, like layers of tremendous gauze, barely shifting to disclose totally different truths. There’s a idea, proposed within the 1970’s by Julian Jaynes, that humanity solely developed consciousness round 2500 years in the past. Till that time, Jaynes argues, we understood the ‘voices in our head’ to be exterior, Gods or ancestors. We ‘heard’ the voices of our deceased family members lengthy after they died so we preserved their our bodies and continued to take care of them. We constructed statues that turned the mouthpieces for the voices and took recommendation from them. The Gods and ancestors addressed us immediately, guiding our decisions, correcting us, chastising us. Jaynes referred to as this the Bicameral Thoughts. Nice artworks have been made throughout this time, guided by the voices of Gods, that have been really within the maker’s thoughts. Because the bicameral thoughts broke down, heading in direction of consciousness, the Gods now not communicated immediately with folks. It was throughout this era that intermediaries turned their spokespeople. Gods outsourced the supply of their phrases to second occasion messengers – muses, oracles, angels, mediums.
When and the place do DeJardin’s work happen? What are the sculptures within the work made from? They’re made from themselves. They’re simulacra – precise copies of originals that by no means existed. This posits the sculptures in a peculiar ontological place. The work and the objects in them appear to be the originals, if we absolutely immerse ourselves of their constructed actuality. They aren’t work of the sculptures which DeJardin has not too long ago made, reasonably it appears to be the opposite method round. The sculptures are actual world manifestations of the fictional objects within the work, like a Madame Tussaud Sherlock Holmes. A simulacra of a simulacra? The very tangibility of the sculpture additional questions the fact of the entire constructed world and by some means it nonetheless manages to carry collectively, if we go together with it. In its authentic kind the phrase, simulacra, referred primarily to pictures of a God. So, probably these are triple simulacra. Photographs of photographs of Gods all the best way down. The artist talks concerning the Guardians as drawing collectively components of assorted faiths and perception techniques. They appear to me to be nearer to inspecting and testing our religion in photographs, illustration, fact, actuality, artwork. There is no such thing as a referent, nothing to make a illustration of, but right here they’re. Like faith they’re kaleidoscopic, a corridor of mirrors, reflecting solely reflections. —David Risley, Copenhagen, 2024
https://kostyal.com/exhibitions/pareidolia/