Elaborate solutions to non-existent problems

Working against convention and utility, frustrating mean- ing-making at every turn, the work of the mysterious Ramon Pihla strains at the margins of art, philosophy, semiotics and fashion. Pihla is responsible for ritual objects that flatly refuse to be read at face value and conform to their own internal logic, resisting the chaotic cycle of consumption. The objects on display either subvert notions of use value - as with the ‘Inversely Sweater’, a piece of clothing that is always inside out, no matter how you wear it or gleefully, maniacally participate in the masquerade of use, as with the ‘Edition Summercoat’, a garment that constructs an elaborate solution to the problem of overheating even while it warms you. Works like the ‘Summercoat’, the ‘Sweater’, and ‘Tacheles Shades’ invoke the playful performativity, and the casual interface with technology, found in Nam June Paik’s collaborations with Charlotte Moorman. Technology in this sense is found to be an extension of the body, but the connection is anything but seamless: instead, each object moulds you to its own contours and its own anti-logic. More complex mechanisms like the ‘Anti-Perpetuum Mobile’, meanwhile, ascend into the rarefied realms of pure fancy - like the exquisitely pointless inventions that populate Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus. ‘Inversely Sweater’ is accompanied by a contemporary refash- ioning of Man Ray’s Obstruction, a finely-balanced mobile made up of bifurcating coathangers - but the work that comes most to mind when viewing Pihla’s work is another Man Ray, 1921’s Gift. In this savage recontextualisation, the artist removes the utility of an iron with the addition of a sharp row of tacks and in so doing, calls into question the entire raison d’etre of the object itself. With one swift intervention, he makes a nonsense of the notion of purpose. Utility and order are revealed as smug, simplistic equations with no remainder, a trembling citadel poised at any moment to collapse under the dark assault of non-meaning. Likewise, Pihla’s work heaps offerings on the altar of non-meaning. But whereas Man Ray’s visual punctum ar- rives quite literally at the cruel end of a tack, Pihla allows a sense of shocking unreality to permeate his entire oeuvre. But to say his oeuvre is in itself misleading, because Ramon Pi- hla himself is a construction, a ciper, a label. He is the tongue- in-cheek outward facing concoction of artists Robert Pawliczek and Roshi Porkar. Artifice heaped on artifice: a fake persona, a constructed artist, a paper-thin notion of usefulness. There’s no attribution to make, no personality upon which to hang the hollowed-out husk of meaning. A grasping hand comes away empty. Like Rrose Selavy before him, Ramon Pihla stands for some- thing outside the individual artist. In fact, Ramon Pihla - the brand - is what’s left after the effacement of individuality. The playful interventions performed in his name still appeal to a very human sense of whimsy, but they’re tempered by a slick and somewhat sad anonymity. How close can we press our faces to the screen, before the forms dissolve?