Remember Dolly? That sheep some weird scientists cloned nearly twenty years ago? Everybody thought it was the beginning of the end: man ripping the power of creation from the the cold dead hands of the gods. (After having stolen the power of mass destruction a few decades earlier. What’s left? I guess we still can’t telepathically communicate with dolphins, like Aquaman.)
Now most of us live in the future, without realizing it. Change, when it comes, can be as swift as a Tsunami, blinding us to its impact. Just the other day, in an airport in Newark, NJ, I noticed that every person I surveyed was tapping away at a little screen, oblivious to the reality surrounding them. The physical world is boring, I suppose.
What’s that you say? Tell us something we don’t know, Blaustein? I’ll allow the above observation is not Earth-shaking. We all know we’ve been sucked into the Matrix. But how often do people even notice? Short of teleportation and flying cars, the 21st Century is as freaky as it was imagined to be: robot warriors rain bombs down on hapless shepherds, human ears sprout from lab rats, bionic limbs sprint down the race track, and the President of the United States is a dead ringer for Spock.
Speaking of teleportation, I was lamenting the lack of its existence the other day, wishing I could just beam my family to the Mayan Riviera. Wouldn’t that be nice, I speculated? It’s empty this time of year. My five-year-old son, growing sharper by the day, pointed out that if teleportation indeed existed, then the beaches would be mobbed all the time. Damn. Can’t even bitch about imaginary inventions without someone bursting my bubble.
Where was I? Right. We’re living in the future, but haven’t truly grasped that yet. What might it take to shake us from our ignorance? Who might wrench our necks from beneath the white sandy beaches, which abut the clear blue water? (Sorry, dreaming about the Caribbean again.)
How about our good friend Asger Carlsen? Remember him? We published an interview early last Fall, where he discussed his imminent book release, “Hester.” (Published by the excellent Mörel Books in London.) Leave it to Mr. Carlsen to conjure wicked visions of our techno-present, thereby shaking us from our drunken slumber.
“Hester” comes wrapped in a beautiful, classy bit of fabric. It’s a hard-cover, unlike most of the Mörel offerings I’ve yet seen. Open up, and the inside cover is a velvety bit of purple paper. Again, classy. (Purple evokes royalty, no?) Flip one page further, and we’re treated to the only bit of text in the whole book, save the thank you page: Hester, Chinatown, NYC. We’ll remember from the interview that the artist’s studio is in Chinatown, maybe on Hester Street? Not much to go on.
The lush beginnings lull us into a false sense of security, just as our media addiction assuages our collective fear of big-picture thinking. (The 24-hour news cycle and our social media obsession keep our eyes off of contemplating anything of substance. I had to escape urban reality, moving to a horse pasture in the Rocky Mountains, for goodness sake, just to have any chance at staring skyward.)
Out of high-end beginnings, “Hester” devolves into a dark, dystopian tale, shrouded in banality. Right away, we see a naked torso, vagina looming above some seriously big feet. Where the breasts should be, we see only said torso tapering into skinny arms, with no hands. Just some almost-flippers instead. The setting is neutral: wood floors and a white wall. Like an art gallery?
Turn the pages, and the next two plates feature a blob of dark-skinned flesh, with a hand-ended arm and a foot-ended leg planted firmly on the concrete ground. A ladder leans against a wall, in the first, again suggesting the gallery vibe, maybe in the middle of an installation. Are these laboratory-created flesh sculptures? Damien Hirst’s animal-art version 9.0?
The grotesque, almost goblin-like renderings, courtesy of Photoshop, continue in an unending chain of bad taste. (Which married good taste, and had shockingly-of-the-moment babies.) Horrible, brilliant babies. I’d want to vomit if I weren’t so enchanted by the awesomeness of this project.
Just when it starts to get a bit old, there comes a photo of a thinner blob, skeletal, jutting vertically on a narrow table, like a skin-lamp. So the speculation ends. These things are really meant as art-piece-props, there to reflect back to us the futuristic insanity in which we live, where secret labs come up with all sorts of unthinkable nonsense we pretend isn’t really happening.
One of these days, I’ll write a column that doesn’t blatantly attempt to raise your ire, or mess with your head. Maybe I’ll show you a well-made book by an old master, and the lead-in will be witty but harmless. Look over here, I’ll say, because everything is going to be all right. Maybe that day will come. Maybe even next week? But I’ll tell you one thing: Asger Carlsen will be crouching in the shadows anyway, thinking up something twisted, no matter how pretty the flowers look today.
Bottom Line: Wicked, twisted, prophetic, excellent book
To Purchase Hester visit Photo-Eye
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