Never Seen
Silvia Ikkesett
Silvia Ikkesett, started her career as a
portrait painter. She revelled in great detail, producing works on canvas whose
heightened realism was the result of her tendency toward the extreme, and her
insistence on concentrating with almost microscopic detail on the features of
her clients. As a young woman she toured the great cities of art in Europe,
painting her way through actors and politicians, whose vanity insisted on her
presenting them with a level of detail they often later came to regret.
Success followed her wherever she went despite the small
controversies that her candour elicited, including, on one occasion, a brief
attempt at suing her for defamation by a client. But it was quickly dropped due
to the incontrovertible evidence that the portrait she had painted, which was
the subject of the lawsuit, was an unquestionably and extremely accurate
representation of their likeness. None of this gave her any pause for thought
however, as she continued her travels, eventually settling in London.
Her favourite subjects were actors. She enjoyed the notion
of their character being assumed by everybody who had seen their work, but who
in fact were usually very different. Some were shy, almost embarrassed at the
idea that anyone knew who they were, having been more or less forced into the
position of having their portrait painted as some kind of spurious reward for
their talent by one organisation or another. But some were rather more
ego-centric, and she did not get on with all of them: about one famous film actor
she commented, “the banality of the characters he plays are only outweighed by
the tedium of his personality.”
But her success was starting to bore her, as were the
innumerable commissions for portraits. She started reducing the areas she
concentrated on within the face, homing in on particular characteristics and
features which she reserved for her special attention. The rest of the painting
she started to block in with a more abstract style, which gave the sitter the
appearance of coming through some kind of multicoloured fog into the
foreground, but in the end she simply left those areas blank. Eventually she
stopped painting portraits altogether.
After giving up the role that had made her name, she briefly
concentrated her talents on very traditional still lives, using fruit and
crockery as the main subjects, and then moved on to using found objects, or
things that just happened to be around. These included a series of crunched up
cigarette packets in ashtrays, discarded fast-food containers, often with the
food still in them half eaten, and tiny wild flowers which she would harvest
from between paving stones, or under trees on the street. She would put them on the table in her studio
without any real application of composition, creating beautifully executed but
rather uninspiring works. Then she stopped painting completely.
For two years nothing was heard from her. No paintings, no
exhibitions, no art of any kind, until she came back with a brand new idea
which didn't involve painting pictures of anything at all. In interview, she said she had grown tired of painting,
tired of being regarded as a great talent that could do almost no wrong, and
lamented the fact that whenever she had an exhibition, thousands would flock to
see the show, because it was Sylvia Ikkesett, the renowned artist and burner of
actors. She continued, “they don’t care about what I do, they come for my name,
for me”; she became disillusioned. As far as she was concerned the public
doted on her every brush stroke because of her proximity to the rich and
famous, and the fame that it conferred on her. She found the whole experience
superficial and pointless, and so decided to give the public and the art-world
what they really wanted: Sylvia Ikkesett, not art.
Her new show featured absolutely nothing at all. She claimed
that it was an inevitable conclusion to her way of working, which was either to
paint everything she saw in extreme detail, or to paint nothing with equal
detail, still regarding herself as a painter although she produced no
paintings. She described these shows as artworks that reproduced, in detail,
all the people that came to them, since, as they were there explicitly for her
show, they were in fact her creations. And as reproductions of people that went
to art exhibitions, they were as detailed as it was possible to get.
Her first show in this series was called Unseen-Black. She rented out a gallery
space in the west end of London, painted the walls, the furniture, the ceiling,
everything apart from the glass in the windows, black. The private view was
full of those that had eagerly awaited her return, but they hadn't read the
invite properly, which told them to bring their own wine, as none, and nothing
would be provided. Soon, someone had bought from a local pub as many bottles of
cabernet sauvignon as they had, and the evening went extremely well. She didn't turn up herself, but it was nevertheless a great success with only a few
naysayers amongst the arterarty that congregated on that Thursday evening.
Five more exhibitions followed, with different colour themes
in each: pink, orange, blue, yellow, and dark grey, each entitled Unseen- and then the colour, though the
colour stated only related to the colour on show in the first exhibition.
Thereafter, the colour on show and the name for the show seemed to become
abstract notions which were not in any way related to each other, as lost in
their meaning as she was distrustful of the power she had gained through her
art.
They were held over a little more than a year, one every two
months or so, and gained quite a large following, becoming known for their
party atmosphere where arty types would meet and discuss, mingle and network,
all the while increasing Ikkesett’s renown. But again, she became tired of the
format, and another period of silence ensued.
A year after the last Unseen
there was more excitement when a new show by Silvia Ikkesett was advertised in
the art press, all the listings magazines, on websites, and in national papers.
The date and time for the exhibition was given, but no details as to where the
show was to take place, other than it would be somewhere in London. The show
was called Never Seen, and even had
one editorial written about it before it took place which speculated on the
direction Ikkesett was now taking. A week before the show, a new advert
appeared listing a number of websites where, two hours before the private view
and opening of the exhibition was to take place, details of the venue would be
given.
Excitement grew with this prospect, the imagination of those
who couldn't wait to go running riot with rumour and counter rumour as to where
and what the show would be. Finally, later than advertised, only seventy-two
minutes before its starting time of 5:30pm, the address of the venue was
uploaded to the websites, causing one of them to crash with the huge surge in
requests for data from their servers.
As expected, it was to be in the west end of London, in the
heart of the old and moneyed contemporary art scene, Cork Street. But the
number on the address was 39. There was, and is, no 39 Cork Street. By this
time, excitement was at fever pitch, and hundreds of people descended on Cork
Street looking for number 39. Outrage was restricted to a few tired individuals
who had travelled hundreds of miles for the new show, but on the whole, the
notion of an exhibition that didn't exist was greeted with pleasure, and the
local pubs saw a massive jump in their takings as they filled with the art
seekers who had nowhere else to go.
One can only imagine Ikkesett’s disappointment at not being
able to put a foot wrong. The show was hailed a success, a revolution in art
thinking and examination of the very concept of the famous artist, but Ikkesett
herself was nowhere to be seen. Two more shows followed, one in New York, and
one in Newcastle, for reasons Ikkesett kept to herself – as far as anyone knew,
she had no connections with Newcastle, and had never even been there. But maybe
that was the point.
That was the last show she ever put on. She hasn't been
heard of since, even by her friends and family; she simply disappeared,
vanishing as if her existence was as empty as the exhibitions she had
masterminded. But there are those with a passion for the Unseen and Never Seen
works that still keep an eye out for a new Ikkesett event, possibly advertised
in a local paper, or on an obscure website, waiting for a time when she will
come back once again.
I am ashamed to say that I had not heard of Sylvia Ikkesett
until the first Never Seen exhibition
took place. I went down to Cork Street along with all the others, and the
atmosphere was fantastic, like a carnival or street party. I went with two
friends, frequenting all the pubs in the area, talking to strangers all of whom
seemed to be there for the show. It was quite a remarkable feat of advertising
and marketing. But we must remember that had she not been Sylvia Ikkesett, no
one would have turned up. And that was perhaps the point of these shows.
Her interest in the extreme led to her success, and
necessitated her development. She was clearly unhappy with the recognition she
had gained and thought it a vacuous entity that she tried to extinguish by
pointing out to all that gravitated towards her and her shows that fame is
nothing. But far from lancing the boil, her Unseen
shows simply accentuated her notoriety, making her even better known that she
had been before.
Similarly, and perhaps with her foreknowledge, the Never Seen shows did exactly the same
thing. But where does one go after that? The person to ask is nowhere to be
seen, and cannot be found. Perhaps, one day, she will turn up again. But until
then, it is worth remembering that her shows were indeed a microscopically accurate
rendition of the types of people that caused her to flee the success she had
made of herself.
We were all, on that night in Cork Street, her
belongings, her artworks, which she displayed in the pubs and on the streets of
the wealthy art dealers. It is a testament to her understanding of her
situation that it was such a success, whether or not she wanted it to be. And
in that case, we can see her as the great artist she always promised to be from
her earliest days of painting portraits.
–
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