APORIA

In one of his famed fables, the ancient Greek writer Aesop details how Herakles stumbles across an apple lying on the ground of a narrow pass and tries, unsuccessfully, to strike it with his club. As he attempts in vain to strike it again, the apple grows larger, blocking his way. In a state of confusion, he is reminded by a passing Athena, that this could only have arisen from his continued willingness to fight it. She explains how his conundrum is the work of Aporia, the divine personification of difficulty and powerlessness ¹.

Sophie Reinhold’s distinct aesthetic language is one that stirs such perplexity. Upon entering the lower space of Fitzpatrick Gallery, the six letters that form the word APORIA are each represented across six canvases, which, like Herakles’ own predicament, confront the visitor’s passage.

Using the style of old alphabets where letters are each given illustrative qualities, the paintings take on a plethora of historical artistic genres from the sentimentality of fairy tales, to the caricatural and burlesque worlds of post-war painting. Linguistic ciphers and symbolic imagery collapse into one another across the paintings. As they negate each other in their exuberant form, they serve as ominous symbols for the task of representation.

Spiraling forms provide a certain sense of direction and clarity, as implied by one of Reinhold’s work Untitled (spiral of pursuit). Indeed, in Plato’s Meno dialogues, Socrates describes how in reaching a point of puzzlement or impasse, a sense of desire is ultimately brought on in the pursuit of resolution². The spiraling form depicted lures us to a representation of Cupid and Psyche, both wedded in myth, and symbols of the ultimate form of desire.

Aporia becomes a tale about the challenge to surpass the entrapments of today’s world where a collective sense of social cohesion and moral judgment has been eroded. We are reminded of the challenge to seek forms of truth within our contemporary times and the spiraling sense of remorse that can ensue.

Perhaps it is in this toing and froing, in the search for one’s own subjectivity, that a sense of truth can be found in navigating today’s world. The medium of painting becomes the field of play for such a quest in Reinhold’s tale, rooted in ancient mythology. Layers of oil paint open up to a more abstract form of representation. Distinct aesthetic tropes belonging to the (male) artistic canon have been abandoned. And so, Herakles’ apple has been left on the ground, retaining its original shape and allowing, as Reinhold’s painting describes, for ‘the escapology of the game of life’ to thrive in its stead.

• Juliette Desorgues

Conceptual Fine Art
Contemporary Art Daily

¹ Fable 534’, Aesop’s Fables, a new translation by Laura Gibbs
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
² ‘Meno (84a-c)’, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M.
Lamb (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1967).