Text by Piotr Bockowski
Twisted biomech geometry of metallic claws is cut against itself into an alien fossil, which spells encrypted protocol for material transmutations as it says: METAMORPHIKA—born earlier last year as a brainchild of a couple of Eastend artists Simon Ballester and Kieron Coffey, a versatile art gallery, performance platform & media event space is located in the very guts of Hackney, London. Not unlike other just emerging, clandestine venues focused on post-Internet aesthetics and embodied-again cultural participation, METAMORPHIKA has to break through the hall of mirrors, pieced from electrifying, reflective smart screens. Cracks of metal and glass carry vital gestures.
During what became the most spectacular show of the first year of METAMORPHIKA, Finnish artist Vespera Xander presented a collection of metallic body shields constructed out of sharp blades with spiked edges in the fall of 2024. The ambivalence between the protective crust and danger of self-inflicted wounding accentuated the paradoxical auto-reflexivity of desire, performed by Marina Teodora (Laboranta) as the opening Pleasure Principle act that married lunatic longing with self-harm tease.
Her feet were adorned with neo-mediaeval sci-fi looking fakir boots, put on ceremonially by the gallerists masked with morbid robes of grim ripper; each step was followed by the fatalism of walking on her own wounds. Pushing against the gallery wall of hanging sharpie jewellery, Marina wore a sacrificial crown, and stigmata rings as she was pushing against the wall to support the steps. Her painful walk as a victim queen led inevitably to a crash into arrogant self-sabotage of stepping on mirrors, which broke the figure in its non-gravity impossible fall into pieces. Blinded by shiny rage, Marina Teodora expulsed herself in kicking the mirror surface, obsessively sliding on fragmented, twisted blades that formed a cage for her feet, immobilising her in broken light.
In the figuration of twin reflection, Baudrillard enshrined the zero-dimension tunnel of collapsing mirror surfaces as the ultimate image of disappearing reality, eclipsed by its replication. Both a crisis of power and unattainability of desire, broken mirrors and shiny blades reflecting each other in mutual destruction become the visible sign of the closure of a system in the vertigo of redoubling. Repeating that in their prodigious show, METAMORPHIKA seemingly attempts to transgress the ‘binary matrix of digitality’ along the sharp axis of Vespera-Marina’s performance that exposed desire & power as complicit in their own destruction.
Pleasure Principle not only introduced METAMORPHIKA as a novel visionary art space of London Eastend underground culture but also created a momentum of attraction that resonates across social media and invites performers and artists to submit their visions animated by a certain allure of futuristic fetishism. Proclaimed as artist-led and community-driven, METAMORPHIKA offers an exciting platform open to its peers’ ideas. Participants who join their shows share their visions and are assisted in refined presentations, just like in the case of the Pleasure Principle act, which METAMORPHIKA is currently producing into a music video.
Interest in liminal and transformative spaces led the gallerists to find a vacant venue, renovate it, and transform it into a shape-shifting hybrid environment for bold expression. After involving about two hundred artists in 30 public events, 22 exhibitions, and 4 residencies throughout not much longer than ten months, METAMORPHIKA is already known and respected for its dedicated support of various contemporary artists and performers from the conception to the production of the shows.
Talking to Simon Ballester makes me realise that all that happened at METAMORPHIKA last year is the beginning of much more ambitious plans with a certain micropolitical edge. Expressed in a telegraphic rhythm of electrifying futuro/fever of online chat, Ballester undertakes the foundation of an association of independent artists: connect artists, collectives and independent artists. Share concerns and insights. Exchange services. Support each other for funding processes: more opportunities for collaborations / between practices / decentralised network.
Copy that —METAMORPHIKA performance space is becoming a meeting place for dialogue of various underground art entities to share know-how and support each other’s operations. There is a sense of vital exchange of new media practices in their cross-fertilisation events, so watch this space as it keeps on morphing.
