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Shaun GladwellApologies 1–62007-09Production still: video, 16:9, colour, soundPhoto: Josh Raymond© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

PORTFOLIOSHAUN GLADWELL

“Shaun Gladwell: The lacrima chair”Exhibition from March 6 to April 25, 2015at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF), Australia

“collecTion+: Shaun Gladwell”Exhibition from March 6 to April 25, 2015at UNSW Galleries, Australia

Solo Show Shaun GladwellRepresented by Analix Forever at Art Paris 2015From March 26 to March 29, 2015at Grand Palais, Paris

At forty-two, Shaun Gladwell is to Australia whatBuren is to France. With the exception that inAustralia, Gladwell is known not only in the art world,but also throughout skate, surf and street culture. Notto mention opera. And even the military, which isperhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of his work.As well as one the most relevant for the summer of2014: a summer of war.

Strongly engaged alongside American soldiers inAfghanistan and the Middle East, Australia selects an“Official War Artist” every year. In 2009-2010, it wasShaun Gladwell. The artist had the chance to travel toAfghanistan and the Middle East in order to interactas an artist with Australian soldiers and others on site.

What did Gladwell do? He chose not to show anythingrelated to war as such. That notably means no dead orwounded bodies, whereas all previous representationsof war, whether classic, modern or contemporary, havealways sought to portray the body’s suffering, itsdereliction and decomposition. Weapons are there, butonly when they appear as toys—which, in a way, iswhat they really are, like stage props. Intriguingly,these weapons also include the camera, which ShaunGladwell says, along with Susan Sontag, “has analmost lethal role … a kind of weapon”.

Demonstrating this, Gladwell places the camera in thehands of two soldiers, enabling them to view eachother through the medium of the lens. They no longersee each other face-to-face, but only through thecamera. Gladwell then has the soldiers copy eachother’s actions. Through a forced mimicry that

represents the essence of all combat, one of the twoprotagonists emerges quickly, if not immediately, asthe “lead”, while the other follows. And now the twoAustralian soldiers, recognizable by their light-coloredfatigues against an arid desert backdrop near the TarinKowt base, perform a strange dance to the bare rhythmof their steps and the music of the Afghan desert wind.Our two protagonists engage in a dance, a dialogue,a war. As in all of Shaun Gladwell’s videos, “nothinghappens”—not even the slightest narration. Instead,gesture takes precedence, as Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev observed in her article “Means with NoEnd”, published in 2009 when Shaun Gladwellrepresented Australia at the Venice Biennale. In placeof story or action, Gladwell offers gesture.

And what gesture, indeed! Weapon – or camera – inhand, one soldier hunts the other hunting him. And asthe soldiers move across the sand, their cameras seemto watch us, the viewers, instilling in us a strongerfeeling of tension than any narrative could inspire.Because it is clearly us, the passive viewers of theirdance of death, that the soldiers appear to film, ina  time as wide open as the space through whichthey move.

Fascinated by the “intermediary” gaze – the gazedirected or trained on the other, on the other’s gaze, ona double who appears to see what we are unable to seeon our own – the artist, in his photographs taken atTarin Kowt when the Australian base was still active,references that master of Romanticism, Caspar DavidFriedrich. Friedrich’s famous painting, Wanderer abovethe Sea of Fog (1818), symbolizes a certain gaze –

INTERVIEW BY BARBARA POLLA & PAUL ARDENNE

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01. Shaun GladwellBroken Hill Linework2009Video still: video, 16:9, color, soundVideography: Josh Raymond© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

02. Shaun GladwellDouble Linework2001Video still: video, 4:3, color, sound© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

contemplative, human, pensive – that is focused on theworld, and which immediately and powerfullyidentifies the viewer of the painting with the subjectgazing across the landscape. And though thelandscape itself is not all that interesting – a mass ofmountains and clouds – seen through the eyes of theWanderer, of the Other, it becomes extraordinarilyevocative. Much of Shaun Gladwell’s work as OfficialWar Artist was inspired directly by this painting.In  fact, he even styled himself as Caspar ShaunFriedrich in one of his countless self-portraits.

Following this perspective, Gladwell next shows usportraits of soldiers seen from behind, i.e. soldierssearching the landscape: a neutral landscape at firstglance, nothing but sand and desert sun, but onewhich, transformed by the soldier’s gaze, contains theenemy, an enemy all the more frightening as it isinvisible to our eyes—though only to our eyes. Downone soldier’s nape falls a lock of blonde hair: this is afemale soldier. And though the lone braid is the onlysign of her gender, we know we are seeing thelandscape of war through the eyes of a woman.Another soldier’s jacket reads “Aus AID”. EveryAustralian trembles at this gaze, though they will neversee it in real life. As Susan Sontag underlines inRegarding the Pain of Others, “In images of war, identityis everything”.

2011 saw Shaun Gladwell give a repeat performance,once again representing his identity, his double, in theform of a camera-toting figure. This time the figure isnot only a pilot, it is Gladwell himself—that friend offlight in every form: from skateboards to BMX, surfingto parkour, motorcycles to planes. Like a bird he takesflight and brings us along on his dance in the sky, withthe clouds in reverse as is his habit: filming in reverse,editing in reverse, forcing us to see in reverse.

Art historian Élie Faure called Velazquez “the painterof evening, of open spaces and of silence, even whenhe painted in broad daylight or in a closed room, evenwith the din of battle or the hunt in his ears”.Comparing himself to Velazquez (notably in a worksoon to be presented in Sydney, “The Lacrima Chair”),Shaun Gladwell is the artist of the body, his body,wherever and whenever it lies. He is also the artist ofmovement. Even when he creates at full speed, inorder to impose his rhythm on movement. Even withthe din of the world in his ears, in order to modulateits rhythm. In this sense, the flying loop he performs ina fighter jet does not stand as a symbol of vertigo, orthe loss of orientation, or the G-force that builds andburies your body into the cockpit. On the contrary, thehelmeted face he films remains steadfast, even as theworld spins around him. His obsession withcontrolling the rhythm is evident in the heavy use ofslow motion in his parkour films. We also recognize itas he executes a particularly graceful skateboardmaneuver while a stormy sea churns within steps.Order and chaos? Order imposed on chaos, rather. Art,too, is one movement (that of the work) pitted againstanother (that of the cosmos and its infinite forms).

In 2013 the flying Australian mounted the stage of theRotterdam Opera to become The Flying Dutchman forthe only performance of the masterpiece of GermanRomanticism directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin beforea video projection: not by Bill Viola, as was the case inLondon and Paris for Tristan and Isolde, but one byShaun Gladwell. With its raging seas, squalls and theDutchman himself – that extreme and dual-naturedcreature caught between heaven and earth – TheFlying Dutchman, or The Phantom Ship, is the perfectmatch for Shaun Gladwell, a frequent visitor toSydney’s Bondi Beach and its supernatural waves.Now, every time he returns to Australia and flies overthe waves, he hears Wagner.

Shaun Gladwell was born in Sydney, australia in 1972. he represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 2009. he currently lives and works in london. in march 2015 he is presenting a dual exhibition at two sites in Sydney: the universityof new South wales (unSw) Galleries and the Sherman contemporary art Foundation. The exhibition is co-curated byBarbara Polla and Paul ardenne.

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Shaun GladwellPataphysical Man2005Production still: video, 16:9, colour, silentPerformer: Daniel Esteve Pomares© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

Shaun GladwellApproach to Mundi Mundi2007Production still: Two-channel video, 16:9, colour, silentPhoto: Josh Raymond© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

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Shaun GladwellInterceptor Surf Sequence2009Production still: Two-channel video, 16:9, colour, silentPhoto: Josh Raymond© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

Shaun GladwellInterceptor Surf Sequence2009Production still: Two-channel video, 16:9, colour, silentPhoto: Josh Raymond© Shaun GladwellCourtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery