SHOW of the Week: Albion Jeune Honours The Transformative Power of Performance Art In New Exhibition

For many, the 1970s are thought of as a decade of artistic integrity and austerity in equal measure: the avant-garde thrived as inflation and unemployment famously reached a post-war high. Throw in some glam rock and disco and you have yourself a kaleidoscopic whirlpool of colour and style that still infiltrates today's fashion scene. However, when it comes to the arts, the 1970s also belonged to those looking to hone in on the transformative power of performance art. Think Martha Rosler's 1975 parody short Semiotics of the Kitchen. Think Marina Ambramović's torturous 1974 experiment otherwise known as Rhythm 0. Think Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik; when these artists first emerged in the performance arts space, there was little to go off and so they made it their own, setting the precedent for the next 50 years. And yet, in 2024, performance art is alive and kicking harder than ever before all thanks to Albion Jeune's latest standout show Twenty Four Twenty Four, featuring the work of Douglas Gordon and Miles Greenberg - both of whom honour the 70s performance art glory days, but that's not all.

Reflecting on Gordon’s 1993 24 Hour Psycho film and Greenberg’s twenty-four-hour durational performance, Oysterknife (conceived in 2020) in response, Twenty Four Twenty Four not only highlights each artist's exploration of the body but also the relevance of performance art today - especially when viewed in its cultural and political context.

For Greenberg, Oysterknife is a purpose-intended love note to what came before - a message the artist elaborated on in a 2021 New York Times interview. 'Oysterknife acts as a love letter to the great Black pioneers of endurance such as Senga Nengudi, Pope.L, David Hammons', he's quotes in the piece. It's these characters, more so than the Onos and Abramovićs of the period, that have helped Greenberg form his own identity as an artist as well as the spiritual and transformative qualities he imbues his work with. 'Endurance work, at a certain point, necessarily involves a degree of spectacle around bodily deterioration', Greenberg continued. 'I feel my body being consumed every day. I’m within my comfort zone so long as I have agency over the poetics of that consumption. But here, I wanted to let go of that, just to see what would happen. This is real physical pain — it always is — but this time, that pain isn’t wrapped up in metaphor.'

The pain may not be wrapped up in metaphor but the themes underpinning Twenty Four Twenty Four are, particularly in relation to society's endless consumption of images, namely, famous ones - and there's no better example of great cinematic imagery than in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), where Gordon's work takes its name from. Although Hitchcock's masterpiece has been interpreted quite literally In Gordon’s work, audiences are treated to a much slower duration: 24 complete hours to be exact (the same amount of time as Greenberg's Oysterknife). It's this piece that marked the start of Gordon's ongoing interest in what we know as doubles: altering, monumentalising, and alienating the iconic cultural images that shape our memories. Presenting the footage in such a way as though it's devoid of sound, Gordon's unique process shifts Hitchcock's original proposal of horror (as we so clearly know Psycho to emit) by making it free of narrative, meaning all concentration is focused upon a single frame, nothing more. No stories, suspense or climatic horror are present, making even the most disturbing scenes of violence in Psycho nothing more than an image worthy of envy due to their crystal clear sculptural qualities.

In addition to the myriad of references deconstructed, Twenty Four Twenty Four also nods to French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theory of physical time and duration. In his all-encompassing definition, the former can be measured with a watch or the movement of the sun whereas the latter unfolds in the subconscious mind and is independent of surrounding space. By juxtaposing Greenberg's meticulously disciplined endurance performance against the dramatically slowed-down nature of Gordon’s film, psychological mania is presented on a plate for all to witness and ponder, 24 hours a day. How? Viewers can experience both seminal films inside the gallery, during opening hours, and through the glass façade when the space is closed, meaning the exhibition never sleeps - another form of mania reinhabited.

Honouring the ever-expanding limitations of performance art and its way of opening up our own perspectives, the exhibition was celebrated in a conversation between Greenberg and international curator and artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Arts Club on Dover Street earlier this week.

Twenty Four Twenty Four will be open to the public at Albion Jeune until July 28.