Thinking of Until (and of the work of Simen Johan [pt.1])

The meaning of until.

If I say to you, for example, before hanging up the phone: I will read this book until you arrive, what matters? As I consider the question I realize that what is important may not be your arrival, which may or may not arrive, but what happens until then, which is to say what happens now, not in the future. It is what I am doing until. In this case reading the book I hold in my hands. Until. It is the emphatic nature of the until.

I want to dwell in this moment. In the until. And doing so pulls me back from this place called "after" that I imagine will come, pulls me back from this place that never was. And tells me: stay here, stay in the present. Which is to say, the place I always dwell. Until you arrive, until the alarm rings, until the storm comes, until the sun rises.

And so it is the case with the work of Swedish artist Simen Johan, whose exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from now until (or through) the end of May, is so aptly titled Until the Kingdom Comes. Until the kingdom, not when the kingdom, after the kingdom, before the kingdom, but until. Beginning with the title, the exhibition is very much an invitation to reside in the present. For this is what until is. The living and breathing that is happening already, and NOT the imagined life or breath beyond death that may happen after the kingdom (whatever it may be, if it may be, even if it will be, if one doubts (feels positive) it ever will be) comes.

In Johan's work is the present in which the subjects are the ambiguous inhabitants of the place of until. Until the Kingdom comes. Take the image of the foxes (you can find it here). There are two. They stand together as a pair, their bodies touching: one cries, the other has blood on his or her muzzle. They are foxes and yet one shed tears like a human. They are so alive in their hyper realistic, glossily photographed scene, and yet, the viewer may realize, they can't be alive, that the scene doesn't make sense--neither the detail nor the sharpness nor the expressions on their faces. For what pair of foxes would stand together this way: huddled together as foxes become elongated mournful nest turned on its side in the snow, in a pairing off that signifies the coupling of two Homo sapiens--a tail instead of arm wrapped around the other, a signification of that other animal (now invisible) behind the camera? For what pair of foxes would stand together in this manner, so still, so unnatural, as if posing for the photographer, for Johan himself? And the seemingly so alive foxes we realize, must not be alive at all, the photograph (again, always?) is a trick. For how could those two be alive while standing so quietly, so artificially,  in their quiet snow-bound beauty? And here we may  begin to move into the meta analyis, asking questions about the truth of the photograph itself. How was it taken? Is it a single shot? Is it the result of manipulation? Where did the foxes come from? And what about all that snow? Look closer and we realize the closer we look the fewer answers there are. About the photograph, the process behind it, and, of course, the foxes. Look closer and we may realize that none of the facts matter.

This is the until. In this instance.

Until the Kingdom Comes (whatever, if ever, because it isn't about the undefined kingdom at all) we stand in ambiguity. Knowing we stare at two foxes but not knowing what we see as we inhabit a neverending  moment when the after is held in abeyance ...

Until.