Re-presenting and Recycling ‘Commercial Art’.Re-presenting and Recycling ‘Commercial Art’.
by Alexandra Hyde
The current exhibition of Jean Baptiste Mondino’s photography at Galleria Carla Sozzani in Milan follows the recent Testino exhibition at the Piazza Reale; art rooted in publicity and fashion. The exhibition is a re-presentation of "commercial art" as Mondino’s work is cleaved from the context of magazines and television and installed in neutral space. First is a series of videoclips of advertisements. Muted and played simultaneously on six screens in a white room, they gain significance as individual works of art. For Jean Paul Gaultier, Mondino manipulates the gray area of homosexuality, femininity in male and masculinity in female. The result is a disorientating portrayal of attraction between men and women constantly conflicting within social constructions of gender and sexuality. The stable factor is desire (sex sells).
The commercial aspect of commercial art is distracting. Mondino, Testino and others such as the British photographer Rankin, deal in currencies of public image and celebrity. Our recognition of public figures allows the accessibility responsible for the works’ popularity. The danger however, is that along with the changeability and precarious reputation of its subjects, the art itself loses long-term relevance and validity and in turn becomes disposable.
Testino and Rankin are blunt with celebrity. Testino’s photography is entitled simply according to subject, and as the exhibition title "CeleBritation" indicates, Rankin embraces it. In return they maintain control. Mondino’s portraits betray a naïve approach to fame. Bloody Bloke (1997) portrays a confrontational Robbie Williams, bloody nose and glimpse of tattoo conforming to a public image also present in portraits by Rankin and Testino. Mondino’s title strives for casual normality in denying gratification of the household name, only for Recognition to upstage any artistic aim as the viewer is distracted from what is before them by who is before them. Like Testino’s studies London, where familiar faces jostle for space amongst each other and champagne glasses, egos explode everywhere. The titles can do little to suggest anything solid beyond the superficial, and what remains is a slight sense of repulsion at the overt personality of it all.
Such intrusion is not always an issue, evident in artists’ treatment of the supermodel Kate Moss. Ironically, it is due to her recognisibility as an aesthetic form in herself that she proves a malleable subject. Mondino’s portrait of rugged face, bruised lip and black eye, hair scraped back and apathetic pose, exploits the subject’s token fragility and beauty. The title puns on corresponding ideas of desire and the criminal narrative of the image: Wanted (1993). The elements are mutually complimentary and form a more balanced, solid whole.
qually, in Freud’s Naked Portrait 2002, estranged from the medium through which she is most often perceived (a head-start unavailable to Mondino), Moss’s pregnancy, and the depth and indulgence of the process of Freud’s painting, creates a third dimension that subverts her status and familiarity. With these elements implicit in our view of the subject, and not explicit in the artist’s treatment of her, Freud conveys a sense of truth and validity.
Mondino however, is interested in the games to be played with truth and validity regarding beauty and sex, whether they are able to be classified, and why they need to be clarified. Thus the androgyny of Twin (1998), two brothers, sisters or possibly lovers, and the juxtaposition of repulsion and attraction in biological, sensory and social terms provoked by the image of a woman’s genitalia obscured by strawberries and cream in Dessert (2001). Away from the distractions of celebrity portraits, it is ironically the uncertain terms and changeability of works such as these that open up endless possibilities and prevent Mondino’s work from being disposable.
