Eddy Frankel: BLOB
Shae Myles - 25th April 2022
I gently stumbled across the TJ Boulting gallery in 2018 when I was in London for two weeks with nothing planned but to walk around. Not only did it bless me with a stunning Juno Calypso exhibition (this was my first encounter of her work, which ended up inspiring my practice massively), TJ Boulting also presented itself to me in a way that was comforting, relaxed and approachable, despite being a typical white cube space. So I knew I wanted to go back when I was visiting the capital last weekend.
We were lucky enough to catch the last day of an exhibition titled BLOB, which consisted of work by nine different artists in response to a short story written by art critic Eddy Frankel. We viewed the work having not read the story, which was silly because it felt like I was experiencing BLOB backwards. I’ll get over it though. I kinda wish that the words had been sprawled on the walls or we were forced to read them in some way.
Anyway, the show was intriguing, disgusting, and made me wince. The work demanded that I step a little bit closer; peering into the depths of the folds of skin, figuring out if that’s an ear or a dick, trying to work out how much pain you have to be in to make a face like that…
Being in the gallery made me feel like I was intruding on something, probably because the work was accompanied by an awful wailing sound coming from behind a curtain. A roll of toilet paper and a battery emerged from under the curtain. Someone was in pain, sobbing loudly, so much so that it was still ringing in my ears even after we left. It was relentless. It made us giggle to begin with, when we walked down the stairs to the show - making us feel uncomfortable and catching us off guard completely. In all honesty, it was the icing on the cake of the show for me; tying together the themes explored in the short story and the fleshy work that hung on the wall. The sound created a discerning stench that hung in the air like a heavy fog.
As for the text, the short story that inspired all these beautiful works, I read it while we were taking a moment to pause and relax back in our hotel room later that day. It’s a story laced with shamefulness and honesty, about a man’s repulsion for his ageing body and humiliation at things he has done. It made me feel a special kind of sad, I felt sorry for the blob. He spends his time reminiscing, full of regret and riddled with a sense of loss for his former blobless self. His fully formed, human, younger self. Beautifully written, intimately abrupt and painfully funny, reading it made me giggle but also pitiful. A gorgeous addition to the book is that, as the story progresses and the blobiness grows, the text becomes more distorted and difficult to read. This added to the awkward beauty of the story, highlighting the unravelling and deformation of the protagonist.
I think the work that lingered in my mind as I read the story was a quadriptych by Olivia Sterling. The work encapsulated the insecurity that seeped out of the blob, with Sterling’s up-close-and-personal snapshots of a man spiralling out of control… spilling beer down his chin while aggressively drowning his sorrows, cupping, squeezing and loathing his body, sheepishly cumming into his own shadow. One of the works, I Love Your Little Belly, It’s Cute was directly inspired by one of my favourite parts in the story. The protagonist is angry that his girlfriend’s hand glides down and cups his belly while they’re intertwined in bed. This makes him feel emasculated, “I didn’t want to be cute. I wanted to be virile, powerful, confident, attractive, a rock-hard being of muscle and erections and pungent, intolicating sexuality,” and he leads himself to believe that this is her way of ridiculing him, reminding him of his ageing body; that he’s merely the shell of the man he used to be. This stood out to me. We all have insecurities surrounding our appearance, the thought of growing old is fucking terrifying. Sometimes we don’t know what to do with that. We get wrapped up in our own head and our mind spins out of control, so we take it out on our partner, who most likely probably does in fact love our little bellies. Sterling captures the blob’s miserable descent so well; it’s uncomfortable to see so much of someone’s flesh poking you right in the face and commanding your attention. Like a car crash… just can’t look away. Sterling’s loose style and striking use of colour only added to the sickly story, really bringing it to life for me.
Blaine’s favourite piece was Luke Burton’s An Intimate Pearing, a beautiful oil, acrylic and emulsion work on linen. It depicts a small suburban home, complete with a picturesque blue sky and a perfectly manicured hedge right in the centre of the canvas. Around the little scene that you might find in a storybook, lie fleshy blobs. Some of which are elongated, thin and sprawling, others are protruding and bulbous. They look like wonky fruits, but the consistent skin-like colours and textures suggest otherwise, each topped with a dark stalk shaped like a snake's tongue. Blaine told me he thought the painting portrays the protagonist’s relentless shame crowding in on him. He can’t escape the way his body feels, the way he feels, despite having made a good life for himself.
An Intimate Pearing - Luke Burton
This show has been persistent in my mind, lingering like the blob’s disgust for his own flesh. I love the openness, the raw tackling of such intimate issues. The story was deep and dark, commenting on things people rarely disclose to others, let alone admit to themselves, and the work seemed to be devoted to opening the door to these conversations, these insecurities, and making private thoughts public.
Georgia and I have talked about the beauty of ugly art in a JAWBREAKER before, and the same ideas we discussed extend to this show. Grotesqueness is something that I’ve always been drawn to because of its ability to shock you softly. It’s easy to relate to, hard to talk about, and even harder to witness. We’re all a bit gross sometimes.