“The Middle Class Goes to Heaven” at CHEWDAY’S
Artists: Egyptian Funerary Objects, Jef Geys, Nicolás Guagnini
Venue: CHEWDAY’S, London
Exhibition Title: The Middle Class Goes to Heaven
Date: January 14 – February 11, 2017
Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.
Images:
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- Nicolás Guagnini
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- Nicolás Guagnini
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- Nicolás Guagnini
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- Jef Geys
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- Jef Geys
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- Nicolás Guagnini
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- AN EGYPTIAN PORPHYRITIC DIORITE JAR Early Dynastic, Dynasty I, c. 2900 BC 5 1/8 in. (13 cm.) diam. across handles Of squat form, with low flattened circular rim and unpierced lug handles The fact that the lug handles on this jar are unpierced suggests that this example could either be unfinished or solely funerary and not intended for daily use. From humble beginnings, Belgian-born Baron Edouard Louis Joseph Empain went on to become a wealthy financier and industrialist, whose companies developed several railway lines in France, including the Paris Métro. Empain was beguiled by Egypt and its culture and became involved in archaeological digs in collaboration with the Musées royaux d’art et histoire in Brussels. Perhaps most famously, he set about building the extraordinary Palais Hindou or Baron Empain Palace in the Avenue des Palais in Heliopolis, which took its inspiration from the Hindu temples in Orissa in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Provenance: Baron Empain collection (1852-1929), France. Christie’s, London, Antiquities Including Property from the Baron Edouard Jean Empain Collection, Thursday 14 April 2011, lot 7; Private Collection, London. Accompanied by a French passport.
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- EGYPTIAN BRONZE OXYRHYNCHUS Egyptian, Late Dynastic Period, 25th-31st Dynasty, 715-332 BC Length: 11.6 cm The fish, with its distinctive long, down-turned snout, is crowned with uraei, cow’s horns and sun disc with double suspension loop behind. It wears a broad beaded collar around its gills and has hollow eyes recessed for inlay (now missing). It is perched on a sled, supported by its tail, rear fin and a striated prop below its belly. Exhibited: ‘Egypt Through the Artist’s Eye’, Holt Festival, Norfolk, 18th – 27th July 2014, exhibition no. 28. Literature: For an example of an Oxyrhynchus fish crowned with horns and sun disc, but balanced on a pylon, see Madeleine Page-Gasser and Andre Weise, with Thomas Schneider and Sylvia Winterhalter, ‘Égypte, Moments d’éternité. Art égyptien dans les collections privées, Suisse’ (Mainz, 1998) pp. 281-282, no 190. Provenance: Private collection France, acquired in the 1970s. Accompanied by a French passport.
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- EGYPTIAN BRONZE OXYRHYNCHUS Egyptian, Late Dynastic Period, 25th-31st Dynasty, 715-332 BC Length: 11.6 cm The fish, with its distinctive long, down-turned snout, is crowned with uraei, cow’s horns and sun disc with double suspension loop behind. It wears a broad beaded collar around its gills and has hollow eyes recessed for inlay (now missing). It is perched on a sled, supported by its tail, rear fin and a striated prop below its belly. Exhibited: ‘Egypt Through the Artist’s Eye’, Holt Festival, Norfolk, 18th – 27th July 2014, exhibition no. 28. Literature: For an example of an Oxyrhynchus fish crowned with horns and sun disc, but balanced on a pylon, see Madeleine Page-Gasser and Andre Weise, with Thomas Schneider and Sylvia Winterhalter, ‘Égypte, Moments d’éternité. Art égyptien dans les collections privées, Suisse’ (Mainz, 1998) pp. 281-282, no 190. Provenance: Private collection France, acquired in the 1970s. Accompanied by a French passport.
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- EGYPTIAN BLACK-TOP JAR Predynastic Period, Naqada I-II, c. 4000-3250 BC Height: 30 cm The elongated ovoid body rises from a small flat foot to a short neck with everted lip. The red and burnt black surface is burnished to a dull sheen. The vessel restored from original fragments. This comes with a thermoluminescence test report from Oxford Authentication confirming its antiquity. Black-topped pottery vessels, made of fired Nile silt, have a polished red coloured lower surface, sometimes enhanced by a red slip. Below the rim is a blackened area probably caused by the vessel being fired with its mouth pushed into the ashes with the body exposed to the air, although it is also suggested that it was placed in some type of organic matter immediately after firing. This carbonization was employed solely to obtain a desired colour effect, and was obviously deliberate for the even firing of pottery in a kiln had been practiced for centuries. The blackened area is also polished, giving it an almost metallic sheen. Literature: See Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie, ‘Prehistoric Egypt, Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery and Palettes’ (reprinted Warminster, 1974) pl. VI, no. 53a for the type. A similar example from the Thalassic Collection is included in ‘The The Collector’s Eye’ (Peter Lacovara and Betsy Teasley Trope with Sue H. D’Auria, (Eds.) the catalogue of the collection published in 2001 (number 45).
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- EGYPTIAN PREDYNASTIC BLACK-TOPPED JAR Predynastic Period, Naqada II, 3700-3250 BC Height: 15.4 cm Of flaring cylindrical form, small flat base and slightly everted rim. Black-topped pottery vessels, made of fired Nile silt, have a polished red coloured lower surface, sometimes enhanced by a red slip. Below the rim is a blackened area probably caused by the vessel being fired with its mouth pushed into the ashes with the body exposed to the air, although it is also suggested that it was placed in some type of organic matter immediately after firing. This carbonization was employed solely to obtain a desired colour effect, and was obviously deliberate for the even firing of pottery in a kiln had been practiced for centuries. The blackened area is also polished, giving it an almost metallic sheen. Literature: See Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie, ‘Prehistoric Egypt, Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery and Palettes’ (reprinted Warminster, 1974) plate IV, 27c. for the type. Provenance: Private collection London, B.A., London and New York, acquired 1980s; and thence by descent.
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- EGYPTIAN BRONZE SHREW MOUSE SARCOPHAGUS Egyptian, Late Dynastic Period, 26th-30th Dynasty, 664 – 343 BC Length: 8.3 cm The figure of a shrew or shrew-mouse surmounts a rectangular box with raised rib running round the 3 sides, hieroglyphic inscriptions incised in the lower section. The animal with long snout and tail extending the length of the sarcophagus, its back decorated with a bird with outstretched wings and winged scarab beetle. Many examples of miniature sarcophagi surmounted by images of various animals have been found, all dating to the Late Dynastic or Ptolemaic Periods. As with this example, such containers are generally small and would have held the mummified remains, or partial remains, of the animals portrayed. Literature: Similar examples can be found in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, including the shrew coffin of Pahapy (accession number 37.411E). Provenance: Private European collection; With L’Ibis gallery, New York; Sold Sotheby’s New York, 17 December 1998, lot 394; Private collection, New York
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- EGYPTIAN BRONZE SARCOPHAGUS FOR A LIZARD Late Dynastic Period, 26th – 31st Dynasty, 664-332 BC Length: 7.5 cm The figure of a lizard surmounts the bronze rectangular box inscribed with the name of the donor, Horenpe-Tayef. Nakht. A pin on the base to allow for insertion into another element and a suspension loop on the front. The contents of the sarcophagus appear to survive, the opening seemingly still plugged. Inscriptions on the left and right sides of the plinth read: ‘May Atun give life to HORENPE-TAYEFNAKHT’ and ‘son of PAAQER engendered on the lady of the house SHEPET-BASTET’. Many examples of miniature sarcophagi surmounted by images of various animals have been found, all dating to the Late Dynastic or Ptolemaic Periods. Generally these containers are small and would have held the mummified remains, or partial remains, of the animals portrayed. Exhibited: ‘Egypt Through the Artist’s Eye’, Holt Festival, Norfolk, 18th – 27th July 2014, exhibition no. 29. Literature: Similar though uninscribed examples in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen are illustrated in Mogens Jorgensen ‘Catalogue Egypt V; Egyptian bronzes; NY Carlsberg Glyptotek’, 2009, p.228-9. Provenance: Private Collection of Charles Bouché (1928-2010), likely acquired in the 1960s and 70s. Accompanied by a French passport.
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- SMALL EGYPTIAN BRONZE CAT HEAD Late Dynastic Period, 25th – 31st Dynasty, 715-332 BC Height: 5.6 cm The cat’s gaze directed straight ahead, oval eyes set above high, hollow cheeks. Erect ears are pierced to take earrings (now missing). Around the neck a raised necklace of cowrie shells hung with an aegis beneath the throat, a menat at the back. Hollow cast this is a finished piece and not an element from a complete cat. Literature: Similar small-scale cat heads finished at the neck can be seen in G. Roeder, ‘Mitteilungen aus der Ägyptischen Sammlung. Band VI. Ägyptische Bronzefiguren’ (Berlin, 1956) Tafel 50, l, m and o. Provenance: From the collection of Reverend Severne Majendie (1843-1927), probably acquired during his visit to Cairo in 1895; given to his god-daughter, Miss Mary Dudley Short and thence by descent.
Images courtesy of CHEWDAY’S, London
Press Release:
For Condo 2017, CHEWDAY’S (London) will host Galerie Max Mayer (Dusseldorf). The exhibition will feature works by Nicolás Guagnini and Jef Geys, of Galerie Max Mayer, alongside ancient Egyptian funerary objects, contributed by CHEWDAY’S.
The works of Guagnini and Geys draw focus onto the shrinking middle class, which, since the emergence of neo-liberal politics in the 1980s, is a growing fact within western societies with strong implications on an essentially middle class culture like contemporary art; their works are here placed amongst two groups of Egyptian funerary objects dating from the very beginning (c. 4000 BCE) and the very end (c. 30 BCE) of Ancient Egyptian civilization that attest to the funerary practices of the middle classes and the increasingly complex social structure and belief systems of these periods.
The exhibition borrows its title from Guagnini’s 2005-06 work The Middle Class Goes to Heaven. From an artist known for his critique of social institutions, this piece – a projection of 80 slides, featuring brutalist architecture accompanied by spoken terms such as ‘health insurance,’ ‘couple’s therapy,’ and ‘long weekend’ (procedural structures of middle class modes of production and consumption) in several languages — shown only once previously at Orchard Gallery, New York in 2006, foreshadows middle class struggles to maintain not only their benefits, but also responsibilities as they hurdle unknowingly towards financial crisis.
Jef Geys (b. 1934), essentially coming from a middle-class background and regional context, can be seen as an annalist of the changing context around his work. Working as a teacher for almost thirty years, the artist has always insisted on locating his artistic practice in the context of his native Balen, Belgium. Every work is specifically developed for each presentation and conceptualized from his extensive archive, relating to the city and therefore building the institution for his own work, referencing the entanglement of his oeuvre with Balen and the broader region. This connection is an essentially bourgeois idea of the artist being part of a group of educated citizens and Geys’ work in the span of the last sixty years represents the continuing change that this relationship has undergone.
Simple red and black-topped pottery vessels, made of fired Nile silt, commonly date to the Predynastic Era (circa 4000-3100 BCE) — a time before Egypt was unified by a single power, when society consisted largely of simple agrarian communities.
Their find-spots in tombs or temples associate these vases with ritual or funeral use. Miniature bronze sarcophagi for mummified animals date from the Late Ptolemaic period (664–30 BCE) towards the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization, when the funerary practices once only accessible to royalty became accessible to a much broader segment of society. Such containers are generally small and would have held the mummified remains, or partial remains of the animal portrayed. The shrew-mouse (one example on exhibition here) was an animal sacred to the solar deity Horus of Letopolis, but was honored all over Egypt, particularly in the Delta. The mouse was considered to be the blind eye of Horus, which was miraculously healed, thereby symbolizing resurrection and rebirth. These boxes would have been offered in temples or for deposition in animal necropolises, not just in honor of the god that they are linked to but also in broad connection with other animal representations linked to solar cults, such as shrew mice, ichneumons, or falcons. They are testament to the complex social stratification and rich belief systems of this late period.
Link: “The Middle Class Goes to Heaven” at CHEWDAY’S