I might scent Mandy El-Sayegh’s exhibition earlier than I might see it. Forward of coming into “Determine, Subject, Grid” at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, I watched a video of Mandy El-Sayegh, during which she discusses her love of latex. “It’s a gnarly materials,” she tells the digicam. “It has this twin high quality of congealing and holding, but it surely’s additionally dying and falling aside. It’s an impossibility of getting any magnificence with out its terror.” That coupling of magnificence and terror aptly describes El-Sayegh’s observe; in all of her work, a darkish undercurrent lies beneath preliminary appearances. For all its gnarly materials high quality, the latex all through “Determine, Subject, Grid” foregrounds its historical past of extraction and colonial violence. The scent of that congealed latex was palpable from down the Depot hall in Rotterdam. After I pointed it out to a member of the gallery workers who had been putting in the present for over every week, she laughed. “We’re used to it,” they responded.
Instantly on coming into, it’s clear that “Determine, Subject, Grid” is a multisensory present. The ground was coated in hardened latex, paint and rust, making it barely uneven underfoot. Search for from the ground, and one sees a Frankenstein mashup of supplies and histories. Large sheets of newsprint, silkscreens, her father’s calligraphy, a replica of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy sitting below a glass show, hand-painted grids, extra latex. However “Determine, Subject, Grid” isn’t nearly what we are able to see. The scent was a part of the expertise (even when Boijmans workers have been desensitized), as was the sound, a screaming blues observe enjoying from audio system above our heads. It was discomfiting, however for a present that tackles, amongst different themes, the battle in Gaza and our numbed response to genocide, we are able to hardly count on to really feel snug.
The identify of the exhibition comes from Rosalind Krauss’s seminal essay. Revealed in 1979, “Grids” positioned the grid as central to trendy artwork. It has been a instrument for artists for the reason that Renaissance, however within the twentieth century, the grid turned a outstanding function in works by Piet Mondrian and Agnes Martin. In a distinct essay, Krauss articulates the “expanded subject” as a approach for artwork to transcend the standard boundaries of portray and sculpture. El-Sayegh takes this concept and runs with it, creating “Determine, Subject, Grid” as a multisensory present, one thing that’s bodily skilled somewhat than passively acquired.
For a maximalist like El-Sayegh, the grid is greater than a visible instrument; it affords her a method to maintain ideas collectively. Her pursuits vary from the political to the psychoanalytical; from the abstractions of concept to the very actual our bodies of latest battle. Grids, unsurprisingly, are discovered all through the exhibition. The newsprint on the partitions, the tiles on the ground, the patched materials hanging from the ceiling: take a step again, and also you see that the room is a matrix of grids.
“Determine, Subject, Grid” is the primary solo present within the new Depot constructing of the historic Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. A precursor to the V&A Storehouse in London, the Depot revolutionized how audiences work together with historic artifacts when it opened in 2021 by making its huge assortment accessible to the general public somewhat than conserving it dormant in storage. El-Sayegh integrates Boijmans’ assortment into “Determine, Subject, Grid,” for example, by reinterpreting drawings by Sixteenth-century Mannerists Andrea Lilio and Jacopo da Pontormo. Lilio’s Examine of a Male Nude for a Pietà (c. 1596) is repeated all through the exhibition, a grid housing the sketched male physique. Andy Warhol’s {photograph} The Kiss (Bela Lugosi) from 1963 can be dotted in varied types all through the room. Warhol and El-Sayegh share a love of repetition, manipulation and silkscreens; in some ways, he’s an applicable companion to El-Sayegh’s approach of creating artwork. El-Sayegh performs with the historical past of photos and our relationship to visible media, but it surely’s the place she extends this theme past the historical past of the Boijmans assortment and into modern politics that the present turns into strongest.
The identical newspaper entrance cowl seems repeatedly in “Determine, Subject, Grid” in varied sizes and below completely different layers of paint and latex. The October 9, 2023, entrance cowl of the Monetary Instances, two days after the Hamas assault, introduced that Israel was at battle. The most important of those entrance pages is displayed aspect by aspect with the again web page of that FT difficulty, a Tiffany marketing campaign fronted by Anya Taylor-Pleasure. The gorgeous and the horrific are in dialogue. (Subsequent to this FT unfold is one other provocative pairing: Andy Warhol prints subsequent to pictures from Abu Ghraib.) The juxtaposition is disturbing, however its impact is larger than merely a distinction between navy motion and a diamond advert. Moderately, as elsewhere within the exhibition, the visible pairing interrogates how photos are served to us, particularly as one thing structured, as one thing produced by another person. For the final two years, we within the West have been uncovered to pictures of violence, however entry to imagery has largely been filtered by these in energy. It’s this very fragmentation and filtration of images that sustains energy dynamics. Nonetheless, there’s one other layer to this front-page/back-page diptych. Over it, El-Sayegh has pasted hell cash, a Chinese language joss paper historically burnt as an providing to assist members of the family within the afterlife. By incorporating these gold squares into the piece, El-Sayegh not solely continues with the theme of the grid however provides an additional degree of creative, historic and private resonance to her political assertion.
El-Sayegh has stated that she is attempting to categorize expertise in her work. The result’s a multidisciplinary collage observe that usually prioritizes feeling over understanding. Additionally it is an enormous endeavor, materially talking. Amira Gad must be recommended for curating such a daring exhibition for the Depot’s inaugural present. If future exhibitions match El-Sayegh’s in experiential discomfort and historic interrogation, that will make Boijmans’ Depot an exhibition house to look at.
“Determine, Subject, Grid” is on view on the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Depot till March 8, 2026.
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