ARTCHRONIKA, ¹3 / 2001 p. 121
Papa, Mama, and the Telly
Marat Guelmans' Gallery
The gallery's walls are hung all over with monumental-size color
prints of "talking heads" photographed from a TV screen -politicians,
cultural figures, TV presenters, and participants of loud scandals. They are
all equally recognizable, yet nondescript, blurred in the TV raster, reduced
to the status of wall-paper serving as the accustomed background of our daily
life going on to the noise of a turned-on TV set. In contrast to those random
ornamental shots is the centrally placed, distinctly printed, set up photograph:
"Papa" and "Mama" armed with a scythe and a hay-fork parody
a scene from the notorious painting "American Gothic". The photo is
carefully calculated and directed: the real, non-mass-media people are presented
as vividly as the perfect photo-optics permit. The portrait of obviously posing
"ordinary people" is contrasted with the snaps of TV characters taken
unawares, as it were.
In actual fact, we all know that uneasy feeling caused by TV images giving us
a sensation of being constantly watched from the TV screen. To catch a TV character
unawares would mean
that he/she is not looking at us at the moment. To become a voyeur just to make
sure of one's own invisibility.
But this is a vain hope - we'll never be able to see the back of the presenter's
head, to strip him/her of their mesmerizing one-dimension quality. The blur
of the raster will never obscure the vigilant stares of the "talking heads".
Gutov pulls the viewer into a veritable trap of scrutiny that can't be escaped.
The eloquent enraged look of the "parents" brandishing their weapons
is multiplied by the all-seeing eyes of the media phantoms.
Irina Kulik
ARTCHRONIKA, ¹3 / 2001 p. 121