Borrowing their title from a snuff movie called 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick, the joint exhibition by artists Clémence de la Tour du Pin and Antoine Renard’s at L’Atelier-ksr , running September 16 to October 24, 2015, explicitly references the “cannibalistic story of pornographic actor Luka Rocco Magnotta, arrested after killing and dismembering his boyfriend.” The press release also includes a newspaper clipping from the event:
“On May 25, 2012, an 11-minute video titled 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick was uploaded to Bestgore.com, depicting a naked male tied to a bed frame being repeatedly stabbed with an ice pick and a kitchen knife, then dismembered, followed by acts of necrophilia.The perpetrator uses a knife and fork to cut off some of the flesh and gets a dog to chew on the body. (…)”
Intentionally placed within the nauseating reality of a violent murder, the show invites the viewer into a space of aftermath. Everything looks like its decaying from hedonism: rusty steel partitions divide the space into small rooms, setting the scene for a stereotypically horrific encounter. Coffee grounds and other unidentifiable detritus and stains are strewn across the space. A work titled ‘If you don’t like the reflection don’t look in the mirror’ is a tree stump wrapped in PVC rubber sheath on top of a fridge. The freezer door is open creating a makeshift plinth for an aluminium cast of a hand. Sexual party snapshots are stuck to the bottom. Half-empty coffee cups sit quietly on the floor in installation, ‘Life is the flower for which Love is the honey’. The accruing moisture included in the materials list begs for attention.
A broken pillow with strewn feathers sits in a corner next to a matrix of aluminium earplugs and wires that vaguely represent the shape of an arm. Another tree stump titled, ‘Could you juice me again? The colours are starting to fade’, sits in uncomfortable proximity to a steel box used to house toxic liquid. In another ‘unit’, a deep fryer-cum-garbage can is filled with steel tubing and a sneaker. Sculptural figures such as ‘Justin Bieber’ hang down above the scene and suggest a ritual that may have taken place. A red stain bleeds out onto the surrounding floor. The title, ‘I am you, Jun. I’m all you’ll ever need’, feels like an appropriated quote aimed towards a murdered lover. This sanitising of a reference steeped in malaise [through the theatrical nature of an art installation] is perhaps what gives the exhibition its disturbing undertone.
An oversized image of a generic sexy avatar girl found in many video games, fills the space of one of the metallic panels. This image immediately brings 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick into the realm of online gaming, darkened by a surrounding narrative that hasn’t seen daylight for months. The aftermath of excess and entertainment remains open-ended in its obscurity, entangled within the fermentation process of ‘going underground’. **
Exhibition photos, top right.
