Ambiguity as Idea: Words Made Flesh
The artist begins not where the author began. Context is removed from the sharing. Instead of narration born from the lips of Coleridge’s Mariner, the words are remastered to become those of the maker. His is the voice that speaks, made agent by the rephrasing and reordering of the original text. Appropriation and interpretation walk hand-in-hand on the road to creation, till the source is seized with recontextualised ideas and becomes a thing of greater significance.
When looking westward,
I beheld something in the sky.[i]
At first, I was reluctant to write on this exhibition.[ii]
Take this first phrase for example.
Wielki begins his performance by setting the scene. Westward is significant. It is the place where the sun sets. It is a supernatural direction. It is where the realm of Hades lies. An evil direction. Something coming from that way takes on a form that is otherworldly, unknown, and not simple.[iii]
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.[iv]
So how to approach a work such as this?
To my eyes the text is critical. It is the direct link between Coleridge’s poem and the indirect translation done by Wielki. Borrowing from the essence of literary analysis[v], the artist takes Coleridge’s text as dynamic in its possible interpretations and engineers a situation where the two major discourses surrounding the work- the moral supernatural interpretation[vi] and the ecocritical interpretation[vii]- are intertwined into a menagerie of supposition, causation-correlation effect, and object-concept relationship.
According to the artist, The Reckoning uses the material language of found and manipulated object, classified as the detritus of human activity, to investigate the material representation of a literary scene in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Citing the scene where “…deathly supernatural figures arrive to decide the fate of the Mariner and the ship’s crew after the Mariner kills one of God’s creatures…”, Wielki questions in his statement “whether human forces oppose nature, or whether the opposite of nature might be something else entirely, perhaps something supernatural”.
I have some problem with this line of thinking on the part of the artist. Such a grandiose statement, harkening to an even more grandiose conceptual idea does not necessarily correlate with the actual visual languages on display in the installed work. The artist is telling rather than showing.
The philosophical question being raised is one of interest and corresponds with the ambiguous character, spoken of earlier, that Wielki adopts[ix]. Upon closer inspection however there appears to be too great a distance between idea and object to make a close viewer (myself) content with the premise of the conceptual stance that has been adopted to contextualise the work.
Coleridge’s text already delves deep into the relationship between humanity, the supernatural, nature, and the divine. The act of creation by Wielki does not truly add anything to this discourse, at least not in the way of added scholarship about the philosophical questions raised by the text. If anything, rather than reinforcing the work in its visual associations, the statement acts as a separate entity apart from the object, connected more with Coleridge’s original text than the output of Wielki’s hands. It is not so much a contradiction as it is dross that can be skimmed off a stagnant tidal pool. An alternative discussion (or even an obscuring discussion), that contains a hinted-at conceptual facade that is misplaced and hiding the true depth of interest to be found in the associative knowledge encompassed within the physicality of the installation. [x]
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel![viii]
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that night-mare’s[xi] mate?[xii]
The strength of this work lies in the composition and material choices made. This is its concept. The gallery is laid out like a scene of a classical painting but depicted in abstract; something that could be as at home in a gallery of fine art as in the piles of flotsam that one finds on every coastline near (and not so near) to human populations. A sunset background in a colour that makes the eyes vibrate till they hurt. Humanesque objects, manmade things seemingly naturally formed. Objects with the presence of sandcastles built and abandoned at the seaside for the tide to slowly weather away to flatness.
Creatively they are whimsical ideas, anthropomorphised objects shaped and manipulated to form abstracted scenes, figuresque things one makes as a child in play but as an adult would shun as trivial or grotesquely imaginative. They walk the line between object and being, created versus made. That uncanny valley between the superstition of imbued life and the reality of them being dead things.[xiii]
Scenes depicting the Mariners Rime have hardly been uncommon since its first publication in 1798[xv], the most popular of these visual translations being the illustrations by Gustave Doré.[xvi] This circumstance does not detract from Wielki’s work but rather gives it greater context. Instead of doing something profound or novel the work simply exists as the translation of the two dimensional into the three. The text and image are made object and imbued with presence merely due to association[xvii]. These references, alongside the material choices and craftsmanship on display make for the conceptual foundation of the work. It is a solid foundation that when supplemented by the associative discourses referenced from Coleridge’s Rime, allows for an ambiguity of opinion and object: a trait desired by many an artist for the contextualisation of their practice[xviii].
As stated previously, this is Wielki’s strength, this hinting and asking rather than telling. The stagnancy of a conceptual idea solidified in the coaxing out of an exhibition statement does not do justice to the greater complexity to be gleaned by allowing the work to speak for itself. No one would accuse the artist of not being conceptual. But I would lay the accusation that that the practice is the concept, and the work is its statement. That the voice of the artist need not be present in language to still be understood. Evidence of this is seen clearly in the artist’s adoption and claiming of the character of the mariner, the illustrator, of that of the theatre director, the poet, and of the creator. But where things fall short, though they undoubtedly could have been much worse, is in the voice and character that is himself.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
“The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!:”
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.[xiv]
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.[xix]
[i] Part iii, lines 147-148.
[ii] Previous experience had taught me that this artist’s work was complex and engaging, but annoying to put into any easy categorisation that one could cast judgment onto. Performative in its nature, though generally sculptural in its object, the artist in the past had left me with impressions of amusement, contemplation, and disbelief: this last particularly as I always wonder if he is taking the proverbial piss out of the viewing audience.
[iii] See gloss of xix.
[iv] Part iii, lines 153-156.
[v] Literary analysis operates using schema as means to interpret texts. These lenses are fallible in their scope and credibility but do offer an interpretation of the truth/meaning behind a work to be had, usually based in the context of a wider conceptual position.
[vi] Singh, Manju. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A Study on Symbols, Imagery, Supernatural Elements, and Reflection on Modernity.” International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts, Vol 9, Issue 12, December 2021, p. 231-242. https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2112565.pdf
[vii] Abbasi, Pyeaam and Homa Pourkaramali “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: An Ecocritical Approach.” The Criterion, Vol.5, issue ii, April 2014, edited by Dr Vishwanath Bite, p. 1-15. https://www.the-criterion.com/V5/n2/April2014.pdf
[viii] Part iii, lines 167-170.
[ix] Speaking in binaries, there are two types of artists. The first imbues meaning in a work, leaving in it a message desirable to be told. The work is a manifesto, a document, an essay, and a representation of the conceptual idea/ideas that the artist dictates. The second artist makes work that is allowed to speak for itself, and does not imbue, outside the realm of the hand and the aesthetic choice, any deeper meaning than what is interpreted by the viewer. These are classically represented by mountain paintings, craft objects, and lowercase art, things generally not recognised or accepted by many a contemporary fine art institution. Paradoxically, amidst this binary there lies the spectrum of artists that walk the line between these two extremes. This is a fluctuating hit or miss zone for good or bad art. When successfully navigated by the artist, the work can leave a viewer pondering the mysteries of an idea without the easy certainty of a straightforward path laid for them by the artist who proposed it.
[x] This is very similar to this piece of literature. Connected but unnecessary, and by far more dull than the actual artwork being spoken about.
[xi] The artist substitutes the original “woman's mate” for “night-mare’s mate”.
[xii] Part iii, lines 188-189.
[xiii] This could be seen as being reflective of the creation process by some divine being. If Wielki here is acting in the role of the maker, or “God” figure, these imagined creatures are not merely artistic creations referencing Coleridge’s Rime, but on a psychological level, become objects that elicit a response to life from the viewer. They become the grotesque things desired by Wielki, within and without the context of the Rime. This is a good success in the art of abstract representation by the sculptor.
[xiv] Part iii, lines 195-198.
[xv] Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Marinere” Lyrical Ballads 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London Duckworth and Co., 1920, p. 1-27. https://archive.org/details/lyricalballads00worduoft/page/26/mode/2up
[xvi] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner_by_Gustave_Dor%C3%A9
[xvii] And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us. John 1:14
[xviii] See ix for an understanding of the ambiguous artist.
[xix] Part iv, lines 236-239.
[xx]Quote by Bex Snoddon.
It was a simple act, an easy squeezing of a crossbow trigger that condemned the mariner and his crew to their fate. Even more so, it was a straightforward idea that the artist showcased in the gallery space. But these both, in their simplicity, were catalysts for thought that is ultimately profound.
Do more with less is how the saying goes. Not all art needs to masquerade as capital “A” art to be capital “A” Art. One hundred percent clarity is not needed for an idea to pose a question and then make a personal statement. The Gallery Coordinator for this show told me once that “Meaningful ambiguity is a great way to describe the purpose of art, which is to provoke thought and emotion in the viewer that can be blended with the experiences of the author to create further shrouds of meaning. Not every exhibition we present is as vague and openly interpretable or leaves as much space for teasing apart intention.”[xx] The Reckoning could therefore be seen as a supposition, a proposal of a theory rather than a declaration of a manifesto. It uses the language of the dramatic theatre, the film still, the soliloquy, the classical painting, the anthropomorphising of objects, and the impersonality of the artist as a thinker rather than auto-biographer to make for an experience that leaves many questions unanswered, and many more daring to be asked.
Jonathan Creese works as a writer, facilitator, craftsman, and artist in Calgary AB. He uses writing as an instrument for the transformation of perception in his being. Each manuscript is an opportunity for challenge, a site where new thought can be expressed and where the identity of his current understanding can be shared for the scrutiny of outside opinion.
Visit the archive page for Jeff Wielki’s The Reckoning here: Jeff Wielki - The Reckoning