Visions of The Hereafter
by Philip Pihl
In its essence, Jóhan Martin Christiansen’s special edition is an imprint. The ten reliefs stem from a larger motif, but each one of them makes its appearance as abstract. Some of the reliefs are almost monochrome while others bear scraps of text, clearly serving to indicate that they happen to be fragments of a larger picture. The large picture has been lost and has now been transformed into ten independent image-reliefs. The artwork is indeed a recapitulation, seeing as Christiansen has previously made a casting of the selfsame motif; this is, however, an artwork that no longer exists.
The ten pieces are plaster cast of a cardboard box; this is a method that Christiansen has been developing in various work-series created during this past decade. The box, which here has been cast, previously had the function of containing a television set, a flat-screen TV, of the LG brand. LG Electronics is a South Korean firm and one of the world’s largest producers of flat screen TVs. The company has factories in a large number of countries and the television that was once packaged inside the box presumably contained components that were produced in several countries, which were subsequently assembled in yet another country, and eventually packaged and shipped off to Denmark, where it was sold at, we might assume, Elgiganten, Bilka or Føtex. The cardboard box was, at some point in time, thrown away and was gathered up sometime later on by Christiansen.
The motif appearing on the box was, obviously enough, a picture of the television set, where the largest part of the motif was taken up by the appliance’s screen. An image of an empty screen, which is just waiting to be filled with pictures from all over the world, but which, in its rendering here, has been left blank. Now the imprint of the blank screen is to be found in plaster, as a picture of an empty picture and a product that is the quintessence of globalization, where commodities are flowing around in the world without any hindrances. In contradistinction to the television set, the plaster relief cannot be switched on, and the picture on the relief is going to remain a picture of an empty picture and, at that, merely a fragment of a picture of an empty picture.
Does this artwork constitute a critique of a consumer society that appears to be accelerating more and more rapidly? A society that is plunging headlong toward the planet’s collapse, where all its resources have been used up and its soil has been exhausted. Perhaps this is what the artwork is about, but it’s also dealing with its own materiality: a lump of plaster shaped by the cardboard’s surface, by what has been printed there, and by the tape that’s been holding the box together. In contrast to the smooth surface of the flat screen, the relief is in possession of a different sensuality and displays, moreover, that the commodity’s journey is really a physical journey, which leaves traces of its manner of being handled on its packaging. To be sure, there are a good many commodities in the globalized world that are fabricated far away from us and are accordingly invisible to us, but they are nonetheless physical products, which exist in time and which are marked by time. The television set from the box, produced in 2020, might very well have been discarded by now and might very well be standing in some basement or in some shed, or it might already have been on another journey through the local recycling center and may have been split apart and scattered again. Only the plaster relief preserves the image of its previous form. The potential for a tele-vision, i.e. for a gaze into what lies beyond, has vanished. And all that remains is the analogous plaster imprint in the room, with its viewer.
The title of the work-series, Visions of the Hereafter II, is also the English-language title of an artwork, consisting of four panels, that was created between 1505 and 1515 by the Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch, a polyptych that is presently housed in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. In two of its panels, we see the Terrestrial Paradise and the Ascent of the Blessed, while in the other two panels we see the Fall of the Damned into Hell and Hell (Purgatory). This centuries-old pictorial screen is neither blank nor empty, but is rather populated by people, angels and demons. In heaven, we see a lush landscape, while hell is dark and filled with smoke and fire. But there is one single spot in the works that has been left blank: the opening to paradise, toward which a handful of people are being lifted, with help from the angels, is a form of tunnel, which leads out toward a white light, which is a blank spot. This white spot is both a switched-on and a switched-off screen. There is nothing to see, but at the same time the light is limitless in its depth.
Pictures of blank screens and spots are meta-images that point back to themselves, as media and as material. They point back toward the pictures’ lives and journey, both as material and as meaning. Meta-images reveal themselves as pictures. They relinquish any claim on being real, but stick to being pictures in meaning-related and material rotation. The ten reliefs are steady images that remain switched off. And in this way, they are autonomous. However, they are also imprints and are directly linked up to the world. They are, much like Bosch’s spot, a switched-on and switched-off screen.
– April 2025
Translated by Dan A. Marmorstein
