Time to Fear Contemporary Art (17-21 March, 2025)
exhibition poster featuring a work by SJ Fuerst
I.
Although my own interest in art that 'preys on our fascination with fear and plunges contemporary painting into the exhilarating world of horror' [1] doesn't have the same obsessive character as that of my esteemed frenemy Síomón Solomon, I still felt compelled to visit the exhibition currently showing at Gallery 8 and featuring work by a handful of artists [2].
Whilst relatively modest in scale, the exhibition has the grand aim of countering the recent trend of making art accessible and less intimidating. Whether it achieves this is debatable, but the artists on show certainly did their best to immerse visitors into the dark world of the queer-gothic imagination, showing us how beauty doesn't always have to be tied to the good and the true.
II.
Primarily, the work I wished to see was a small oil on panel (40 x 25 cm) by Lizet Dingemans, a London-based artist originally from the Netherlands, entitled Pediophobia (i.e., an intense and irrational fear of dolls and not, as some might mistakenly think, a fear of children).
Now, whilst I have several phobias and anxiety disorders, this, fortunately, isn't one of them; although, having said that, I can see that some dolls are extremely creepy and seem to have come straight from the Uncanny Valley. However, they don't scare me and I don't think they pose an actual threat - except Voodoo dolls, obviously, although that might be more related to my fear of pins and needles (belonephobia).
In fact, regular readers of this blog will recall that, if anything, I have a positive fascination with dolls and other human-like figures. Indeed, some might term it a fetish, although it stops just short of my wanting to have sexual relations with a doll or fall in love with a statue à la Pygmalion [3].
Anyway, returning to Dingeman's work ...
Pediophobia is only one of a series of phobia paintings included in the exhibition; the others being Ailurophobia, Arachnophobia, Ornithophobia, Phasmophobia and, last but by no means least, Thanatophobia.
Why anyone would be afraid of cats, spiders, or birds, is beyond me; ghosts (and other supernatural entities) I can understand - I can even, at a push, see why some people might fear death, although, as Heidegger pointed out, authentic being is a being-towards-death and Angst is a crucial aspect of this seeking for an ontological grasp of one's own mortality and the fact that being rests upon non-being.
Those who would in some way deny us our experience of Angst lessen Dasein's experience of life. In a sense, fear is a fundamental source of freedom [4].
III.
Whilst I was interested in and impressed by Dingeman's work - as indeed I was by the work of all the artists exhibiting - for me, the star of the show (and curator) was SJ Fuerst, allowing the dark undercurrent of her more colourful works of pop surrealism to finally surface, whilst, at the same time retaining her playfulness and sense of humour.
There were no inflatable animals or toy cars in this exhibition (as far as I remember) - and I suppose we might describe her new works as sugar-free - but, nevertheless, works such as Trixie in the Basement and Shattered Psyche made me smile; as did the very amusing and thought-provoking Objects in Mirror (see figure 1 below).
Objects in Mirror was obviously going to seduce me: firstly, as an object-oriented philosopher; secondly, as someone fascinated by the idea of mirror life (or homochirality) [5]; and thirdly, as someone who believes that behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation,
a defeated enemy lies concealed, just waiting to take their revenge [6].
As Katie B. Kohn says in her essay written for the exhibition, the figure in Fuerst's work seems to defy their own entrapment within the pictures as images. The fact that the female figure is painted (in oil) on a looking glass only enhances the effect and evokes "the spectral reflections of the Daguerrotype as well as the galvanic shocks of the phantasmagoria" [7].
Ms Kohn is also spot on to say that to regard a portrait of oneself too closely (à la Dorian Gray) - or a reflection in a mirror - is to trouble subjectivity; "to find oneself ever so subtly at risk of being unravelled ..." [8]
Nevertheless, that's precisely what I thought I'd experiment with when standing in front of Fuerst's Objects in a Mirror (see figure 2 below) - attempting to see if Bram Stoker was right to suggest that when we look into a mirror it is mistaken to think the figure we see is ourselves; "the glass is a window; on the other side lies a stranger" [9].
Oil paint on mirror over interactive video installation, 51 x 73 cm (framed size)
Figure 2: SJ Fuerst's 'Objects in Mirror' as viewed by S. A. Von Hell (2025)
Notes
[1] This from the Gallery 8 website: click here.
[2] The five artists whose work is shown in the exhibition are Luca Indraccolo, Lydia Cecil, Lizet Dingemans, SJ Fuerst, and Svetlana Semenova. Here, for reasons of space, I shall only discuss the work of two of the above: Lizet Dingemans and SJ Fuerst.
[3] For those who are interested in agalmatophilia, there are several posts on Torpedo the Ark which touch on the subject: click here. For posts which specifically refer to sex dolls, click here and here. Readers might also be interested in the following paper presented at Treadwell's in October 2012: The Pygmalion Syndrome: Sex-Dolls, Solipsism, and The Love of Statues - available on request.
[4] I'm guessing that SJ Fuerst understands this, which is why she included a picture in this exhibition entitled The Anxious Thinker (oil paint on mirror, 37.5 x 43 cm).
[5] For a post dated 21 December, 2024 on the idea of homochirality, click here.
[6] For a post dated 22 December, 2024 on the revenge of the mirror people, click here.
[7] Katie B. Kohn, 'Exhibition Essay' - available to read in the exhibition catalogue: click here.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Bram Stoker, 'The Judges House' (1891), quoted by Katie B. Kohn in her 'Exhibition Essay', op. cit.
