Damage Control Art and Destruction at MUDAM Luxembourg

My Orchids. Cattleya "De-Struction". Photo Studio Avant-Garde ET

Damage Control Art and Destruction at MUDAM Luxembourg

The ritual piano destruction.

Under the Patronage of the Embassy of the United States in Luxembourg.

Art makes a statement. The art of Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Professor in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, has meaning beyond the act. On the occasion of his solo performance on July 11^th at the MUDAM, the artist was clearly speaking through his work, renouncing the too conventional protective eyewear prescribed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, actively promoting a subliminal cause revealed by this virtuoso of the visual narrative of piano destruction.

Raphael Montañez Ortiz’ Art is an allegory or metaphor – This is art that contains more than one meaning, and possibly several. It uses symbolic imagery to deal with more intangible human issues, and yet the artwork should still work as a visually appealing creation. His solo show jumps at our deepest unconsciousness. In his statement Ortiz claims that his quest is to give integrity to the musicality of the instrument and the complexities of our life. Many have a simple view of life, though things are in another way than they understand them, and the shock, existentially, uncovers the kind of revelation that the piano Concert unleashes. After this clarification, the art speaks for itself in its fulfilled intent, as its meaning lies beyond just the incomparable Maestro’s act, in his improvised performance. 

Whether you are aware of it or not, there does seem to be in that visual narrative, a poetic kind of connotation in the artist’s transcendental exploration of his subject. It starts with a statement, the distinctive formal juxtaposition of a chlorophyllian green axe and the red handled one. They make this work menacing/playful because of the way the aura of the facture makes resonant its essentially transitional quality. The axes’ bleeding edges, playing and titillating the piano’s chords make it difficult to enter into this work because of our own cultural acquisitions, and because of how the mechanical mark-making of the sexual signifier seems very disturbing in light of a participation in the critical dialogue of our times.

The use of a power saw, a depressively blue Makita XRJ03Z 18v LXT Lithium-ion Cordless Reciprocating Saw however is ambiguous and goes beyond average references. The obviousness of the artist’s struggle, his gestures that suggest doubt, the internal dynamic of the gesture amphenated by the machine’s variable speed motor delivering 0-2,900 strokes per minute, contextualize the substructure of critical thinking in a musical discourse spanning from Adagio to Allegro. It has to be mentioned here that the hebeniation of the biomorphic forms, exemplified by Makita’s ergonomic shape, its easy grip and control, and its compact and convenient lightweight at less than 8 lbs, verges on codifying the accessibility of the work. As an advocate of the Synthetic Organic Polymer Aesthetic, I feel that the purity of the saw line visually and conceptually activates the work’s essentially transitional quality, in its expression of desire.

An effeloffiated crowd of connoisseurs witnessed the instrument’s complaints in dark thick timbres, as the performer, wearing bourgeois black tie as if he were in a fictional double occurrence in this ritual destruction. The black tie was conceptually de-amplied by the sartorial protest of the progressive amateurs present, who were not wearing a tie to this liturgical happening. I would have however extended the structural conceptualization to the point where the spectators become an intrinsic part of the event, by dropping their vests and tearing their shirts into pieces, a sort of angstful climax as in a Béjart inspired obsessive Bolero of Ravel.

On a superior level lies meaning beyond just the act, another fictional double occurrence that is also human existential struggle and tragedy. Ortiz and his work are a metaphor for the fragility of US social security insurance that forces this precarious 80 years old to still work for a living. It is a metaphor also of US withdrawal and isolationism, through the sacrilegious destruction an instrument of influence in the world, the self-inflicted unilateral abandonment – the trusses swept away- by the US itself of its perennial world interests.

I’m glad my Luxembourg and my US tax dollars (yes I pay both), were wasted on a needy octogenarian that a failing US social security safety net condemns to make a living while making his desperation known in wasting a piano (made in China).

Egide Thein

Editor in Chief, “Péckvillchen” Cultural Blog. “When I hear the word culture, I grab my Péckvillchen”™

Art Critique, emeritus

NOTICE: Please be advised that piano donations are gladly accepted. Consult with your tax advisor for possible tax deductions.

FINAL NOTICE AND WARNING: This tribute has merged the ethereal sensibility and intuitive communion of all effeloffiated participants in this special point in time warp, and though segregated by a double fictional tri-amplied wall from the sub-effeloffiated category of non-participants, both categories can easily conceptualize the critical thinking of the destructive/constructive discourse polarized herein.