The
Chronicles of Narcissism
Jane
Benson’s exhibition The Chronicles of Narcissism unpacks one
of the most primary and pervasive human conditions. With its first
literary appearance in the Greek myth of Narcissus – who took
his life while gazing at his reflection – the condition of
narcissism is a psychoanalytic disorder in which the patient overestimates
her appearance and abilities and has an excessive need for admiration.
In interpersonal relations, narcissism is so universally experienced
that it would be difficult to find an individual who does not have
contact with this ‘condition,’ even as an external force
produced by an entity outside the self. In Benson’s artwork,
there are palpable tensions between natural and artificial forms
of beauty and the precariousness of identifying too strongly with
appearances and status.
In recent years, Benson has produced an extensive body of work that
examines how nature is represented in the built environment, exploring
the transformation of meaning through representation and the reinvention
of context. In 2002, for the World Financial Center, she created
a series of fake plants that were subtly but laboriously augmented.
Up-close the unabashedly fake trees’ leaves revealed unnatural shapes,
a fantasy of future genetic mutations. Another recent public sculptural
work is Imitation Day (2004), a massive camouflage colored ceiling
garland produced for a White Castle restaurant in Jamaica, Queens.
Benson’s floral installations in urban and corporate landscapes
offer a fertile critique of the lack of authenticity in nature and
identity in contemporary culture.
In The Chronicles of Narcissism, Benson integrates mirrored surfaces
into installations and sculptural objects – swans, furniture,
clothing, and globes – to address the contradictions implicit
in narcissism. These materials are used to express Benson’s shift
in focus from flora to fauna, important because plants literally represent
the condition of the environment, whether in bloom or pallor. But narcissism
is a human condition, or at least animalistic, and plants are low enough
on the food chain that they are exempt from the culpability associated
with waste, indulgence, and self-absorption. Narcissus fancied what
he saw in his reflection, and literally drowned in it. In a similar
vein, Benson’s artworks with mirrored surfaces express the impossibility
of true reflection. Her series of Disco Globes (2005–6) are
individually displayed on the axes of various globe stands. A glittering
visual pun of global club culture, this series promotes globalization
as a fractured reflection of the individual. A flattened disco ball,
Mirror Globe calls attention to the limitations of any perspective.
Though its flatness makes the surface of the world visible in a single
glance, the globe is no longer true to its form.
In Naked Swan (2006), perspective is illusory as well. Positioned
slightly behind the mirror, the swan is unable to access the reflective
surface, suspending the moment between unselfconsciousness prior
to seeing one’s
image and an awareness of the reflected self. Resting on a jalopy of
a concrete raft, the cruelty of the swan’s situation – stripped
of his most beautiful features and unable to fly – is double-edged.
The bird is pathetic, his feathers painstakingly plucked, but he cannot
see himself, making apparent the benefit of not having access to one’s
own image. Our engagement with the piece is subjective: do we prefer
to see the empty surface of the mirror, undisrupted by our own image?
Or is the experience of finding ourselves in the work a form of completion?
The recent glut of reality television shows, for example, Fox Television’s “The
Swan,” in which contestants are beautified through numerous rounds
of plastic surgery, confirm that the cost of beauty is on the rise.
Benson's work suggests that Western culture is more “plucked
and fucked” than it is swan.
Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling (1844)
chronicles the transformation of a duckling into a beautiful swan.
A reversal of the myth of Narcissus, Andersen’s ugly duckling
is persecuted for his ugliness throughout the first year of his life.
In the thaw of the spring, he wishes death as an escape from his
loneliness and isolation, but is pleasantly surprised by his own
reflection:
“Kill me,” said the poor bird; and he bent his head down
to the surface of the water, and awaited death…. But what
did he see in the clear stream below? His own image; no longer
a dark, gray bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful
and beautiful swan.
The former ugly duckling’s attractiveness is especially poignant
after the suffering he has endured. The other swans’ appreciation
of his appearance confirms that beauty is indeed subjective. Perhaps
Benson’s Chronicles of Narcissism is nobler than the exploration
of narcissism as she makes a strong case for cultural and physical
authenticity, beyond the fleeting image perceived on a reflective
surface.
Sarah Reisman
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