“PRODIGY” is the primary institutional solo-exhibition by Swiss artist Julian-Jakob Kneer, perpetuating the story of his ambivalent double persona via a one-hour movie shot on his iPhone. Coated in a silicone masks imitating his face, he repeatedly movies himself confined to a New York Monetary District resort room for 3 days. In a setting that deteriorates because it self- destructs, he information himself in unstable psychological states nurtured by excessive sleep deprivation. Within the custom of the Kammerspiel-style, Kneer presents a portrait torn between neurotic narcissism and detestation. With its uncooked fashion and strict respect for unity of location, it recollects the universe of Dogme 95 movies, however below the catatonic affect of Taylor Swift, Vatican Shadow, and The Caretaker . . . On this bipolar portrait, he alternates close-up pictures of the erratic conduct of a fallen star midway between Voldemort, Jonathan Caouette, Alain Cavalier, and Lil Peep. Equivocal intertitles violate the fragmented, confessional narrative of this mimetic being. In voice-over, a collection of monologues borrowed from residing and deceased artists accompany this liturgy. To this polyphony of synthesized voices that are reconstituted utilizing deep-fake software program, mash-up tracks of pop, emo, metallic and industrial music are added—mirroring the stormy feelings of his doppelganger. His masks acts as an object for distancing himself from his opinions, emotions and positions. These are amplified, distorted, satirized and martyrized by the masks behind which they cover. This dermal layer, this ultra-soft piece of silicone flesh, capabilities like a booster, a steroid or a disinhibitor. Maybe he is aware of that masks are perishable, and that whereas they initially shine within the highlight, they’re finally destined to rot.

The cinema-like atrium of the Kunsthalle is encircled by two corridors. The left wing is punctuated by 5 wall works, paying homage to Kneer’s BASTARDS collection, that includes portraits of his doppelganger, taken by Harcourt, the well-known Parisian photo-studio of the celebrities and aristocracy. They’re printed on mirrors and embrace all the data from the exhibition in a method impressed by the visible codes of blockbuster posters. However the composition is violently disturbed by the superimposition of a few of the movie’s flashy slogans: BIG DICK ENERGY, MORAL MANIA, P.C. CLOUT, BRO CULTURE, PRODIGY. Whereas the shattered mirrors within the film are proof of the character’s tipping over into insanity, right here our veiny-headed Alice in Wonderland has already crossed over into the rabbit gap. The appropriate wing at first sight appears fully empty. Solely a sensible determine emerges, dressed identically to the artist: studded, darkish and stylish. With this costumed determine, the artist delves into the idea of a schizoid self, a conflicted state between his ego and superego, but additionally his propensity for melancholy and humiliation. There’s at all times a effective line between self-definition and self-destruction. In a state of superior solitude however at all times uncovered to others, between abandonment and exhibitionism, a state of personal expenditure and public exultation, he’s directly his personal star and his personal fan, a grandiose topic and a factor gangrenous with emotions of impotence. Suicide and Leisure within the Artwork Trade.

In “PRODIGY” Kneer is his personal narrator, his persona, and our scapegoat. In discourses mixing completely different temporalities, he addresses inside selves, beliefs and feelings. To borrow from CG Jung, he creates an alter-ego to arrange his personal horcruxes and his relationship of individuality with the remainder of society, mixing in to flee social opprobrium. Norms, anti- norms, anomie—he could possibly be an asshole and that’s okay. This persona is represented by a silicone masks, a monstrous, inert mimesis of its flesh face. This transitional double at relaxation, normally meticulously packed in its field and in a state of slumber, sleeping, then coming again to life, awakens when worn by its creature, this factor, these faceless eyes. It’s a Caesar with out Caligari, moved solely by his personal reflection. It turns into an object of incarnation or synthetic carnation, a information, an egotistical object of subtraction. As Anna Nicole Smith wrote in her 1992 diary: “I lastly really feel like I’m turning into anyone. I actually assume like I can do one thing. I simply know I’m going to be an actress. I need it so dangerous. I do know I’m going to be nice at this.”

Misplaced between his deepest self and his personal impostor, Julian-Jakob Kneer de-sanctifies himself as he sublimates himself. In a self-destructive marathon, his compulsive playing persona reappears, accumulating medication and masturbation with the irresistible impossibility of not doing it once more, regardless of the understanding of dropping ultimately. He has a lucid attraction to the abyss, a horrified euphoria for the autumn. For him, there’s an analogy between harmful spending and onanism, between overcoming and guilt. Along with the duplicity of the face and the triple split-screen, he provides a 3rd strategy of false pretense to his video, utilizing prosopopoeic voices to make numerous celebrities communicate via his position. These embrace the voices of Lana Del Rey, Nico, Marilyn Manson, Andy Warhol and Charlotte Rampling. Borrowings from the confessions of activist Andrea Dworkin, Oscar Wilde, YouTube conspiracist HG Tudor, or Fyodor Dostoyevsky and those of the artist himself anonymously punctuate the character’s vicissitudes. Like an evil twin, they surprise about pleasure, loss of life, boredom, struggling and the irrational satisfaction of having fun with them. Maybe he’s like that anti-hero character Alexei Ivanovich, debt- ridden and inveterate poker solitaire who rents the Suite of the Nice Basic, empty, left to himself, within the fictional city of Roulettenbourg in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Gambler (1866). His resort room is a spot to overlook himself, to indulge his abuses, his doubts, his impulses with out truce or relaxation. The resort right here, like his identification, is an object of disfigurement. The fatigue of being all over the place and nowhere on the identical time.

“Performing is the loneliest career, and loss of life is simply the final scene of the final act,” Julian as soon as stated. “You possibly can solely actually be avant-garde if you happen to do issues otherwise. And you can be hated for it.”

—Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou

at Kunsthalle Košice c/o VUNU
till September 9, 2024