Johannes Seluga at Setareh
Horror has a new face. This face has no features. It might reflect our innermost fears, those which could render our lives unlivable.
The horrifying and the genre of horror are two separate entities, the former something that can present itself to us, force itself upon us, in our real, material lives, whereas the latter is an art form. It is evocative, and can represent or fictionalise real stories, but we mostly experience it at an arm's length.
German artist Johannes Seluga's latest body of work at Setareh, a gallery with outposts in Dusseldorf and Berlin, but now boasts a new prime spot in London, directly facing Gagosian on Grosvenor Hill. Its proximity to such a globalised institution gave me (misguided) preconceptions, so what awaited me was something of a surprise, in both pleasant and challenging ways. When I made a remark to the gallerist about the horror that seems to seep out of his paintings, I was told that no, he is not inspired by horror, but by the unconscious. The artist has been known to isolate himself in total solitude, sometimes participating in fasting in order to purge that which needs to find itself on the canvas.
.jpg)
This made me think about the fine line between horror and the unconscious; after all, the very function of horror as an art form, whether in film, literature, or the visual arts, is to tap into the depths of our subconscious, and poke the things we wish to neither encounter nor be. Mann mitt Hut ('man with hat') greets the viewer from the street, and indeed it gives a stark stare in the direction of the Gagosian. There is a sense of the archaeological about Seluga's work, not only in the thick textures of paint used, which mar and blur the image, but the lack of distinct evidence; there is some guess work involved, which lies at the heart of effective storytelling. Seluga paints from memory, which is clear to trace in these works.
Mann mitt Hut has distinctly manlike features, but one gets the feeling that this is not a portrait of an individual, unique figure. We are once again teased with the prospect of evidence, or information, or an historical retelling, but we fall short, which leaves us wanting more. While the artist uses a range of painting techniques, the works are all distinctly authored by him, and the narrative is that of a moribund world. There are no pervasive discursive trails, but a lingering, unnerving feeling of dystopia, a world on fire. Mann mitt Hut could be a mugshot, a prisoner-of-war image, a missing person, whereas Untitled from 2023 seems to be a direct channeling of Seluga's unconscious. The artist speaks of his practice as 'seasonal', and the trenchant decay of winter is palpable here, as the familiar visual tropes of winter make space for figures that are terrifying in their anonymity. While they possess vaguely human characteristics, there is something mysterious, perilous about them. When digging a little deeper, this marriage of recognition and lack thereof is surely the world of the subconscious.
Another Untitled work follows a similar vain, with a mildly threatening environment that is difficult for the viewer to decipher. It's a surrealism that is reminiscent of the incipient form of AI; the images with inverted faces and arms coming out of heads. The elemental aspect of Seluga's work returns in this piece, and it is essentially impossible to shake the feeling that the natural world is closing in on us. Horror prevails.
