Chris Hammerlein: Skin
& Bones•
AMO, Amanda M. Obering, Los Angeles, California
The seven sculptures and 14 groups of
drawings in Christopher Hammerlein’s “Skin & Bones”
exhibition were at once diametrically opposed and inseparable. The multitude
of stylized, semi-narrative, hieroglyphic-like drawings were hung in grids
of 25 and nine. They depict a world of mythological creatures—part
human, part animal, part vegetable—in various forms of sexual and/or
cannibalistic activity, hung en masse from bare trees, or crucified on
brittle branches. Others illustrated broken vessels and statues, ritualistic
masks, and building block formations. Overall these ink scrawlings on
red-lined rice paper appear to be a celebration of the “grotesque
body.” Meanwhile the sculptures, which clearly had origins in the
building block drawings,were reminiscent of classical figures from the
Hellenic period.
In the introduction to their book The Politics & Poetics of Transgression,
Peter Stallybrass and Alon White write, “The classical statue has
no openings or orifices whereas grotesque costume and masks emphasize
the gaping mouth, the protuberant belly and buttocks, the feet and the
genitals. In this way the grotesque body stands in opposition to the bourgeois
individualist conception of the body, which finds its image and legitimation
in the classical. The grotesque body is emphasized as a mobile, split,
multiple self, a subject of pleasure in processes of exchange; and it
is never closed off from either its social or ecosystemic context. The
classical body on the other hand keeps its distance.”
Hammerlein’s mythical figures in the drawings were nearly perfect
illustrations of this grotesque body. Their bellies protruded, their genitals
were often in states of arousal, and they were often all mouth, swallowing
a beastly creature or fornicating doggy-style with each other. Grouped
in grids, they could have been read loosely as a narrative, like cave
paintings. But the contemporary bent Hammerlein accorded his cast of characters
keeps them from slipping into that category.
The leap from drawing to sculpture seemed natural in this body of work,
but the results were very curious. Larger-than-life figures were cobbled
together from pieces of dyed shaking aspen tree trunks. Stacked building-block
style, the carved pieces of multi-hued but monochromatic wood were at
once raw and refined. Their proportions were bulky and appeared unstable,
as if they might tip over, but their gestures were dignified and classic.
Therein lies the profound perversity of this work. Classical form was
referenced, but was immediately detoured to a child’s toy in dream
scale and proportion: a cross between the Incredible Hulk and a Kouros.
But Hammerlein did not seem interested in debunking classicism so much
as humanizing it. De-idealizing the figure allowed him the flaws that
were the most satisfying passages in his work.
His process began with gathering fallen tree trunks, an act which in itself
reflected humility in the face of nature and time. king and butter, two
pieces crafted from unfired porcelain, drove the point of limited lifespans
home. They were not archival and could never be fired. Both were piles
of like objects: balls of various sizes that formed a spire, and brick-like
shapes in a mound, respectively. Although their forming harkens back to
the first sculptures, they were somehow timeless. Their impermanence called
attention to experience in the present moment; nothing lasts forever,
no matter how archival its ingredients.
Possibly Hammerlein does actively deflate the ideal image of the classical
body that Stallybrass and White align with bourgeois individualism, but
his enterprise seemed more recondite and compulsive than consciously political.
He appeared to view himself simply as one of a long line of storytellers
who recognize that in the end, we are just skin and bones.
Timothy Nolan
Los Angeles, California
1995