Gallery Hop: 'The Somnambulists' brings crazy art to a new level

Upon entering the [Bellwether Gallery], I encountered four hand painted miniature wooden theaters, Zoe Beloff’s The Somnambulists, that resembled something from the 19th century.  When I looked into the actual stage, I saw loops of footage. These images at first appeared to be almost humorous, with people displaying melodramatic behavior: one theater had an over-gesticulating man sounding a plaintive, desperate monologue; another featured a young woman freeing herself from a rope-bound chair after which she appeared on the stage exhibiting bizarre body language. It seemed funny, but something didn’t seem right. They were too real to be shrugged off as some cute, quaint display. It turns out that this is footage from the 19th century of patients going into various degrees of hysterics: all case studies filmed by doctors in Belgium, Romania and the United States. Using an updated version of an old, Victorian stage trick known as “Pepper’s Ghosts” (a hidden mirror provides the refection of the images), these figures are beyond ghostly. It’s as if they were fated to endless hysterics. What started out as light hearted was soon transformed into something much darker.

One might ask, “Why the stage?”  Belloff's works are based on studies of the French psycho-pathologist Dr. Pierre Janet who developed a theory that, when one of his patients went into hysterics, they’d shut down. In order for him to communicate with them, he had to enter their world. This is the beginnings of psycho-therapy (minus the drugs). At the same time, the French public had a fascination with madness which can be linked to the highly emotive (almost hysterical) antics of performers in Parisian cabarets.

Beloff makes the connection in this well-researched project. She also has a book available (The Somnabulists: A Compendium of Source Material) which details cases on which she based her exhibition.

All of this leads up to her main exhibit in the back room of the gallery. In this room is a large theater housing two high-definition 3-D color video projections of what she calls “Vaudevillian Musical Dramas.”  These are shot stereoscopically and project three-dimensional figures, about on fifth of human scale, performing on stage. This is all viewed via the supplied 3-D glasses.  Instantly, one is transported to a hallucinatory trip in time to the late Eighteen Hundreds. There really is the feeling of seeing an entire live performance. The editing (if any) is so transparent that the whole thing looks like it was done in one shot. These musicals use the premise of staging the unconscious as a hysterical drama/musical. The narrator, mc, is Dr Janet himself. There is a woman (in the lead role) and a few other characters.  All of this is drawn from case studies.

The effective, minimalistic music drew on dissonance, 12-tone rows and polyphony while never wavering into the obscure. While watching this, I forgot that I was in a gallery in Chelsea. I can’t remember when I had such a multi-dimensional experience at an exhibition.   Through Oct.4, Bellwether, 134 10th Ave. (betw. 18th & 19th Sts.), 212-929-5959.