It is notable and laudable that Spiritus, in its stated aim to represent or evoke altered states of consciousness, should overwhelmingly focus on the body and the senses. The ecstatic consciousness that much of the work drives at suggests displacement from consciousness as bureaucratic regulation. Unfortunately the sorry reductionism of consciousness to functional mind, which results from the disembodying of action that characterises our mock-hedonistic age, fixes the ecstatic as mere reaction when culturally mediated. But let us take our pleasure with it regardless.

Spiritus' careful curation allows a wealth of relationships to play between individual works, while the considered siting in every useable space within the Douglas Hyde gallery develops a sense of journey through these relationships. Pipilotti Rist's video Mutaflor für Wien utilises the metaphor of journey, as the camera's point of view is swallowed by the artist, travelling from mouth to anus, then exiting only to be swallowed again. The interior psychedelic dreamscape depicted is a mechanistic poesy of geometric and organic forms; the slightly hackneyed imagery employed is compensated for by the work's play between ecstatic tone and repetitive enclosure, the satiation and re-creation of desire. Additionally, the positing of viewer as both sustenance and excrement of the creative process itself is a clever means of engagement. Mutaflor compliments the selection of historical 'documentary' photographs of séances that are positioned around the gallery. The bodily ruptures, ectoplasmic emissions and tranced-out mediums convey an obviously sexual charge. This masks the complex semantic function that results from the question of authenticity; are they fake real or real fakes? The image of the veil or curtain in many of the images is an apt metaphor for the images themselves, as photography veils the real while also serving as passageway to it.

The insuperable isness of Marine Hugonnier's Candle elicits a moment of (perhaps welcome) Cartesian angst through its transcendental suprematism. Sited underneath the stairs, the refined simplicity of the work is a little marginalised within the show; the self enclosure of the work becoming the subject of emphasis because it cannot open up into the surrounding space. Candle's completeness and resolution is inclined to suffer from being fitted into a busy environment and in this case sound clash also detracts from its impact; it seems overall to be a work waiting to meet its best context. Located nearby, Ceal Floyer's exuberantly humorous exercise in site-specific minimalism, Door, would blend flawlessly into any environment. The suggestion of potential space that is an obvious illusionary trick (a light source which is actually a projected light) is an intelligent visual pun on the artifice and frustration of contemporary art's preoccupation with conceptual space, and is of course appropriately slight and light.

Ceal Floyer, Door, 1995, metal mask slide, slide projector, door, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist/Lisson Gallery/Douglas Hyde Gallery

In contrast to this conceptual siting, Doug Aitken's hysteria (breaths) and Ann Veronica Janssens' Blue, red and yellow - scalemodel 1 are technical works in the very best sense; both works have the strength of simplicity that is so often a feature of worthwhile endeavours. Whereas the context of much artwork means the semantic system in which the artefact is located and which the viewer is to be schooled in, both works create an environment that allows consciousness to be active as its own context. hysteria (breaths) includes, encompasses and finally dissolves the static and stimulus of the surrounding environment; the large circular wooden bed upon which one lies reverberates with the sound of breathing, which is deeply calming and pleasant; it is likewise pleasant to witness and so partake of other people enjoying their own sensuality through the work. Blue, red and yellow - scalemodel 1 is a small room constructed from translucent coloured panels and pumped full of dry ice; the resulting sensory disorientation is an invigorating reminder of the relationship between the visual environment and how one feels bodily, rather than how one's bodily needs are crudely manipulated through the visual. However, could this way of working, if pursued systematically, dull these experiential zones into throwaway interactive one-liners? Perhaps, but viewing the small coloured room from outside, positioned within the functional space of the surrounding gallery and a minute's walk from hectic city streets only reinforces the sense of a dearth of contemplative sensual spaces usually available.

Ann Veronica Janssens: Blue, red and yellow - scalemodel 1 ¬detail), 2002, transparent polycarbonate, colour PVC gels, smoke machine, 255 x 212 x 210 cm; courtesy the artist/Galerie Micheline Swajcer, Antwerp/Douglas Hyde Gallery

Dan Graham's Rock my religion has a similar sense of functional benefit to the two works described above, despite its radically different form and method. The film traces the ecstatic visionary current within American society in a chronological narrative and concurrent anti-chronology of layered references, which is anchored in the comparisons between Shakerism and punk rock, and the journeying between them. The tension between consumerism and capital on one hand and religion and the ecstatic social body on the other are constructed as a compelling and complex montage of contradictory and correlative meaning.

The complementary and contradictory pathways opened up in Spiritus are likewise cultural orientation, edited and so functional; the experience of which is distraction or concentration. Thus so, a mind to paradox is the code breaking of consciousness, which allows annulment and fruition; of which things are an allegory.

om lekha

 1Austin Osman Spare, Ethos, IHO Books, England, 2001, p.18. [from axiom 21 of Micrologus, also published as Axiomata]

Spiritus, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, June - August 2003

Article reproduced from CIRCA 105, Autumn 2003, pp. 100-101.