John Russell “Well”

John Russell “Well”

Bridget Donahue

This event has ended.

And all the Saved in paradise
Can look down on the Suffering
Through the glass floor of heaven,
As part of their reward
For being virtuous
In their lives.
And all the people in Hell
Can look up
And see the Righteous
looking down at them
And laughing.

Entwining and disentwining,
As the voluptuous cross-articulations
Of desire, transference and transduction
Of coagulated labour time,
These smooth surfaces present
The lustrous exterior of murderous annihilation;
Sliding in the succulent slippage of banal ecstasy,
As the aesthetics
Of re-calibrated congealed circulations
Of unnamed multitudes;
Transformed,
Juicy
Remote investment palliatives,
Bleeding like snakes,
Or vines
Curling,
As a Mirroring
Of inward and outward facing skins
Of sensual and conceptual consumption;
Slipping as veins and decomposition,
And replayed as the
Jellied synthesis
Of shit-smeared flesh,
Protruding
And lovingly hand-tooled
By time-served cabinet makers
With over 20 years experience
In the field of bespoke fabrication,
As expression of the Absolute
Vibrantly reformatted
By world esteemed printers
And fabricators,
Traversing
A matrix
Of volatile planes,
Marking delirious flows,
Seeping silently
As the ultimate experience
Of bold design
And stunning style;
Expressing the feeling of total liberation
In stolen minutes,
As flesh
and fantasy,
The slow twisting
Of revolution
Tenderly
In each new moment.

The exhibition ‘Well’ presents an 87 x 22 ft
Vinyl print of Hell,
Splayed across the gallery floor,
With accompanying audio work,
Drawing upon the documentation of
Vito Acconci’s sub-floor Seedbed (1972);
Carolee Schneemann and David Hammons’
Floor-based Meat Joy (1964)
And Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983)
As concerned with gestures of looking down,
Or maybe looking up,
And John Martin’s saturated spectacles
Of religious apocalypse.

Media

• Installation

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