Exhibition
MAT COLLISHAW : CREATION CONDEMNED - BLAIN / SOUTHERN - Blain Southern
Blain|Southern opens its London gallery with ‘Creation Condemned’, an exhibition of new work by British artist Mat Collishaw. For this show, Collishaw juxtaposes potent visions of the natural and supernatural worlds with traditional sculptural forms to explore creation and destruction, beauty and torture. In ‘Performance’, a swarm of butterflies are engulfed in flames as they take flight. The violence is unrelenting but has a hypnotic beauty, holding the eye like the embers of a fire. The film is set within an alterpeice: once a glossy display case for the celestial suffering of the saints, now a charred and melancholy acknowledgement of the malice it confines. Fire is used to different effect in ‘Auto-Immolation’. An imposing red orchid suspended in a glass sealed cabinet is licked by a creeping blue flame as it unfolds into life; its petals open to reveal a menacingly beautiful display of vitality in its deathly surroundings. Crimson sap cascades down the orchid’s stem and its labellum unfolds coquettishly. Unlike the butterflies, fire appears to give rather than take life, and yet the outcome is the same. Nature takes its inexorable path. The flower is corporeal; however brightly it burns in its lifetime it will go the way of all matter.
