A Visit to Simon Tyszko's Modern Neon Lights at Mol's Place 7th June 2011
When Howard Carter finally broached the sealed door of Tutankhamen’s tomb, he was asked by Lord Carnarvon, “Can you see anything?” “Yes” replied Carter, “I see wonderful things!”
A similar phrase came to mind as I reached the summit of the staircase and gained my first glimpse of the interior of the great vault of Mol’s Covent Garden abode. The floor appeared strewn with treasure that flickered across the spectrum of colour and interval from the intense amphetamine yellow and blue of ‘Elliptical Sequences’ to the sublime red shift pulse of ‘Fundamentals’. Imagine Amon Duul of the Baader-Meinhof period playing right across the street from the Calif.Noir roadhouse of the ‘Blue Dahlia’ and you have a sense of the dizzying cultural landscape evoked by these pieces.
As I ventured deeper into this cathedral-like space it seemed to change around me, weaving itself anew out of the ectoplasm of leaked neon. I felt myself drawn upwards by the vertiginous walls and windows suffused by the realisation that this same brickwork, fired at the high water mark of empire and tempered by the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of generations labouring in darkness, was already in conversation with the light below – both a dull, profound mirror and an ancient tomb unlocked by light.
If Wagner had seen this place first, he would never have bothered to build the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth. He would have been satisfied that everything he required, all he had imagined, was already here.
At this moment, propelled into the garden, I discerned through the green gloom a massive stone font culled from antiquity and was reminded once more of the constancy of our eternal quest for redemption and renewal, here in the hushed heart of the oldest continuous city on earth.
‘A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies’
Immediately, as though the last condition in a hitherto unsuspected alchemical process had been finally satisfied, Simon’s work revealed itself once more and, for that one single gaseous flickering moment, became one in a vibrant erotic synthesis – beyond Rheingold, beyond everything. The journey continues...
Nick Mercer 8th June 2011
A similar phrase came to mind as I reached the summit of the staircase and gained my first glimpse of the interior of the great vault of Mol’s Covent Garden abode. The floor appeared strewn with treasure that flickered across the spectrum of colour and interval from the intense amphetamine yellow and blue of ‘Elliptical Sequences’ to the sublime red shift pulse of ‘Fundamentals’. Imagine Amon Duul of the Baader-Meinhof period playing right across the street from the Calif.Noir roadhouse of the ‘Blue Dahlia’ and you have a sense of the dizzying cultural landscape evoked by these pieces.
As I ventured deeper into this cathedral-like space it seemed to change around me, weaving itself anew out of the ectoplasm of leaked neon. I felt myself drawn upwards by the vertiginous walls and windows suffused by the realisation that this same brickwork, fired at the high water mark of empire and tempered by the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of generations labouring in darkness, was already in conversation with the light below – both a dull, profound mirror and an ancient tomb unlocked by light.
If Wagner had seen this place first, he would never have bothered to build the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth. He would have been satisfied that everything he required, all he had imagined, was already here.
At this moment, propelled into the garden, I discerned through the green gloom a massive stone font culled from antiquity and was reminded once more of the constancy of our eternal quest for redemption and renewal, here in the hushed heart of the oldest continuous city on earth.
‘A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies’
Immediately, as though the last condition in a hitherto unsuspected alchemical process had been finally satisfied, Simon’s work revealed itself once more and, for that one single gaseous flickering moment, became one in a vibrant erotic synthesis – beyond Rheingold, beyond everything. The journey continues...
Nick Mercer 8th June 2011
posted by Nick Mercer at
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