Nic
Hess
It is a men's world
In one of these days, when
the "state of emergency", otherwise called European Football-championship,
is announced, when the streets are empty and the city is silent and life burbles
in the apartments, when the friends are busy, than I will go to see Nic Hess
"Tulip and Cactus Show".
During the events in Holland and Belgium the gallery-floor finds itself transformed
into a "tulip-field" of seven hundred colored footballs, products
of the main-sponsors in rivalry. This field is arranged concentrically around
a sepal; for it's imaginary existence Hess uses a ledge of the wall. The visitors
whose eyes and minds are overexcited in these flickering days and nights and
hypnotized from fast maneuvers of muscular calves, can soothe themselves in
this ironical garden of recreation. The nationalistic confessions that raise
and connect greedily to a little round fetish just as if it was the globe is
peacefully undermined by the artist by the plenty of beautiful and tattoo-like
ornamented footballs.
The tulip itself is part of this iconography of desire: once the most precious
flower of all it was understood as a declaration of love, when offered.
The cactuses though reveal as fetishlike (and not only cactus-shaped) substitutes
for physical sensations.
The Dutch Tulip-field reminds Felix Gonzales-Torres "candy-mountains".
An image of abundance as well, their metaphorical decay started early due to
greedy operations. Nic Hess floor-installation should not be entered. It is
an iridescent image, a highly effective emblem, and a logo patchwork of friendship.