From the Susan Hiller collection: Homage to Yves Klein 2005-2007, ongoing~ Guardian
Even doubters can't fail to be amazed by Susan Hiller's inexplicable images.
Susan Hiller's latest show - enthralling, unmissable - begins with a leap in the dark. The scene takes place at a crowded soiree. An elderly gentleman in Victorian dress has not just risen from his seat but appears to have been ejected several feet in the air. There is no visible explanation in the spectral gaslight.
Other men in other photographs lift up above the horizon. There are instances of levitation and yogic flying. A mother and daughter float above the garden path, blithely smiling; a banker in a bowler appears to lean against a wall high above the passers below. Teenagers leap out into the void.
That we can fly is one of our most cherished dreams and, like a dream, the urge hovers somewhere between fantasy and belief. Children imagine they can fly, mystics actually believe it; for the rest of us, only in sleep does the sensation ever become a reality.
These thoughts and many more are prompted by Homage to Yves Klein, Hiller's wonderful anthology of images of unaided flight, of figures no longer tethered to the earth. Leaping, floating, levitating, jumping, cross-legged in mid-air, weightless as balloons bobbing up at the ceiling - these people really seem to be flying, slipping the bonds of science.
...For 30 years and more, ever since she settled in Britain, this American-born artist, now in her sixties, has been collecting evidence of mysterious phenomena - telekinesis, hallucinations, voices from beyond the grave, visions of the Virgin at Fatima. I have no idea whether she believes in any of these phenomena; my guess is that she is agnostic on the grounds that one can never disprove another's claims. But she is perennially struck by our love of the irrational and unexplained.
Full Review
Suan Hiller
Proposal and Demonstrations at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. Until 20 December
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