Mars Hesseling

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

The (un)Well (touch me)

Through my work I invite the viewer into my body. This body (of work) consists of what seems to be disparate jumble of things which allows it to be many things at once. It is roadkill, as a source of guilt and desire, exploring the parallels of flattening and embodiment. It is a jelly that bites back when you try to eat it. It is the body, amorphous limbs sutured into creatures, skin folds, sweat and bathtubs; a site of confliction, both comfort and discomfort, purity and deviance, its vulnerability and frailness are beautiful but violent simultaneously. 

It is a creepy-crawly in a suburban pool, a disembodied wing on my pillow, the walls of a basement, headlights against dry grass, a cracked egg in the sink. It is layering facets of myself over each other, playing with opacity, allowing myself to bleed onto or interfere with my surroundings. Ultimately it is a self-portrait in which I make and remake and unmake myself. It is inviting you to look into the well of my skin; what it tries, and fails to contain. I represent an understanding of myself as transparent to a degree. At times I superimpose images over each other, some on tracing paper, some in gelatine. I want to invite the viewer to lift and touch and give meaning to the relationships I’m creating. Under the layers of my skin, which make up the surface of these composite art objects, the spectator will not find what I hold within myself, but elements of abstract kinship; the teeth of a geode, muscles of crumpled plastic, the guts of a fish, blood vessels of rippled water or branches of a sea frond, bones of shattered glass. 

Everything which rationally should be contained by the body is in fact incongruous with what is contained by the skin of each piece. For my photographs I perform versions of myself, all of them ‘not-quite’; I set scenes of relation which culminate in theatre. Each ‘self’ performs in a unique setting, dictated by its surroundings, responding to itself, its audience and its backdrop. This concatenation of images which layer, rub against and conflict with each other is itself a performance of self or an embodiment of a genre of art often separated from bodily experience. The wall or space as an entire exhibition area becomes the image. 

Since the images as standalone art objects are merely moments of ‘truth’ it is the curatorial work that sutures these truths together, that creates the dynamics between performer, spectator and scene. The curatorial work is what threads and weaves and nuances. What is contained in an image becomes almost secondary, it is about what is outside of containment, about what leaks out and spills onto and stains. It is a constant process, which looks simultaneously forwards and backwards. It wholly lacks finality and completeness just as I feel ‘not-quite’. It is continuous making and remaking in spirals, rubbing against itself, indistinguishable.