Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
MeIf you’re worried that romance is dead, look no further than Lindsey Mendick new show he will assure you that he is very alive. Just a little wear and tear. Well, grumbling is an understatement. The English ceramicist paints a picture of love that has been distorted and distorted, wet and ugly. This is love like a physical danger, love like a drug, trust like a nightmare.
The entire show is inspired by her love for her lover, artist Guy Oliver, and her black pug, Telly. Flashy Polaroids in the opening room find Lindsey and Guy hugging and strapping, arms wrapped, fingers in each other’s mouths, naked bodies writhing, tongues teasing nipples, feet pressed against bare statues. It’s such a deep insight into their relationship, so full-frontal that you feel like someone you want to watch.
And you’ve only scratched the surface. Mendick portrays herself as the Virgin Mary on a vase, and Telly the pug as the newborn baby Jesus. Guy’s face screams from another vase, horns sticking out of his head like he’s transformed into a fawn or a satyr. It’s both cultural and religious, as if Mendick is writing a fairy tale about his relationship.
The table is set with ceramic toys that have taken an organic, womb-like shape; Telly is trapped in the intestines like a newborn. There are toothbrushes with two handles, soft bristles. This is ostensibly about love and adoration, parenting concerns, the ups and downs of relationships – but it’s very confusing and uncomfortable.
The last space is filled with sculptures of Lindsey and Guy’s faces woven together, the two sharing a rib cage, a womb with tiny feet sticking out of it, a heart with a hand around its valves, pumping blood. The two lovers are so closely related, they have become one evil form, linked forever. The ceramics are pure, displayed as in a medical laboratory. Mendick is a modern Dr Moreau, combining a hybrid creation created with true love.
Sounds good, sure. But the panels on the wall tell a different story. On all the pictures of seahorses, slugs, wombs and bones of conjoined twins, Mendick wrote the words: “I’m sick at the same time and I can’t live without you”; “I’m sure you’d be happy without me”; “Can’t you see I’m drowning?” This love is poisonous. It’s as destructive as parenting is, as painful as it is necessary. Not because their love is special, but because Mendick has realized that it is love. It’s two people who are so close that they need each other, and so close that they can destroy each other. The line between love and hate, toxic and healthy, is very thin.
The vases are not spectacular: their simple beauty seems not only good, but the whole exhibition is good: personal art, very transparent, atmospheric, stable. There is more to it than thought Tracey EminEmotional insecurity (the two artists are friends and both live in Margate) but it’s not bad. Mendick has taken more of Emin’s plot and pushed it into the realm of Cronenbergian horror and Prozac Nation millennial malaise.
The show is perhaps Mendick’s best work to date: funny, poignant, perplexing, brilliant and unabashedly poignant about the romance that defines his life. What’s not to love?
