Richard Orjis
12 October - 7 November 2009
Starkwhite is pleased to present an
exhibition by Richard Orjis from 12 October to 7 November
2009.
THE SPECIALIST
He cultivates, does the orchid specialist. It's the
plants that do the growing. Wet and pink and thinly glistening,
they do all the growing themselves, their velvet petals sweating
quietly between the grey plastic thighs of the water pipes in the
hydroponics suite. They grow by their thousands in the specialist's
surgery, as he propagates them with scalpels and nutrient-dense
jelly; they grow and yet are grown; they keep and yet are kept; and
when wholly engorged they are sliced and sugared and shipped.
Static, or so they're sold.
It is well known that the specialist
hates his charges. Every petulant curl of their fleshy flowers is
the smile of a socialite; every vivid blotch of colour elicits an
echoing vermilion stain just under his jaw line. Every inch of them
is weak, mock, lite. Perfect. Replicable. Last year he met a friend
of his, another specialist, differently oriented, and started
making plastic flowers for the 2$ and More! Store! He was
escorted out when his prototypes were discovered: purple proteas
erupting frozen white goo on beige leaves; carbon-blacked stalks in
the shape of baby's fists; glaring neon rose-heads cut to a precise
geometric craze. His friend shook his head as the specialist left,
chucking yet another cock-camellia over the jagged metal lips of an
industrial rubbish bin.
Every night at closing, while his tiny
swords are being disinfected, wiped clean of a day's dissecting,
the specialist stands at the door to Hydroponics One, and listens.
It hisses. He hates. And then the next day he rapes hundreds more
of the limp plants, squeezing out viscous sap, and plating and
mutating and creating. In a good day he can invent a couple of
species.
But now it's today. And it's not a good
day. And it's closing, and instead of going home the specialist is
sitting in his lab chair; the very same one that he has just
finished wrapping in thick black PVC plastic. Behind him the
industrial cleaning box shudders. There's one purple LED jutting
out just above the vertical insert slot, furiously winking, telling
him it's on/on/on. Inside, one very important piece of surgical
equipment is missing. It's a 209-mm nickel alloy scalpel, and it is
currently positioned approximately15-mm inside our specialist's
scrotum. In the space of a second it moves five centimetres to the
left, with the help of its cleanly curved blade, and the ripping
sound as he widens the hole is soft, almost furry, like torn
cotton. The blood flow is immediate, heavy, and regular, and
increases as he removes each testicle from its wet slipper of skin.
When this is done, and satisfactorily so, he selects from a tray of
meticulously cleaned juveniles, roots thronging and pronging the
air, and positions two specimens inside his own vacant sac. They
have been dusted with a special fungal cultivar, the specialist's
own, and this will stimulate growth. A twist of a nearby UV-lamp
and his work is done. He inspires, and sips at a long
black.
Eight hours later, with a blistered
torso and grey toes, he scoops some fresh vomit out of his hole, in
the spirit of scientific practice. Orchids don't like acid, and
three green tendrils are already snaking up towards his
belly-button. He can feel the roots pushing against the base of his
bladder.
Sixteen hours later he passes out. His
eyes are therefore closed when the first bud winks into life. It's
a plain white, garden variety, Phalaenopsis amabilis.
Common as muck. And yet, just a few minutes later, it becomes, to
the specialist, quite literally breath-taking.
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Harry McNaughton 2009
Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel. +64 9 3070703
Monday to Friday: 11.00am to 6.00pm
Saturday: 11.00am to 5.00pm
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
www.starkwhite.co.nz
www.starkwhite.blogspot.com
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