Gregg Bordowitz: There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, exhibition review: ‘Ill health as a springboard for metaphysical reflection’
Installation view of There: a Feeling at Camden Art Centre. Photograph: Luke Walker
Gregg Bordowitz is an artist, writer and activist with an intense interest in the spiritual.
Having lived with HIV for more than 30 years, his daily experience is one of survival, illness and loss, which inform his work.
There: a Feeling at the Camden Art Centre is his first institutional solo exhibition in the UK.
The show includes video, installation, performance, poetry, sculpture and monoprints, many of which revolve around the themes of illness and belief.
These include Debris Fields, a poem in 24 parts, each of which is written as a block of words on the wall; bereft of grammar, the disparate nouns, verbs and adjectives denote disease, medical procedures, everyday life and abstract entities. Their juxtaposition is both jarring and mesmerising.
Gregg Bordowitz. Photograph: New Museum
A series of monoprints mounted on wooden scaffold-like frames offer abstract renditions of the tetragrammaton, an “unpronounceable four-letter Hebrew word, the name of G-d in Judaism that spells creation into existence daily”, as Bordowitz explains in the exhibition notes.
Floating above the prints is Baroque Clouds, a sculptural installation.
In an adjacent room is a film titled Before and After (Still In Progress) (2023), the third in a trilogy of autobiographical documentaries reflecting on the artist’s multiple identities, including his Jewish faith.
Meandering around close to floor level is Continuous Red Line, literally a line affixed to the wall, with both biological and philosophical resonance. Alongside these pieces are videos of people living with HIV.
Though every disease is a tragedy, Bordowitz uses ill health as a springboard for metaphysical reflection, with intriguing results.
Gregg Bordowitz: There: a Feeling runs until 23 March at Camden Art Centre, 50 Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG.