The works in NineteenEightyFour, up at the Austrian Cultural Forum, can be divided into three themes central to the “Orwellian”: surveillance of the public, doublespeak and the architecture of control. Artists use and interweave this most common literary eponym into a crosshatched exploration of unexposed power and control in the 21st century.
The Quistrebert Brother’s “Illuminati,” a mural of Big Brother-esque eyes, is painted high in a corner and peers down into the gallery. The suggestion of CCTV cameras is evident, though the eyes appear more threatening than the actual security camera mounted nearby. “Congruent Triangles” references the Eye of Providence with a large triangle made up of nine smaller triangles, each framing a single all-seeing eye.
“Privet,” by Rachel Owens.
Clemens von Wedemeyer’s video, “Die Probe,” explores Orwell’s concept of doublespeak with a recreation of a politician rehearsing an acceptance speech backstage at a rally. The banality and hollowness of the rhetoric is heightened by low volume and the missing audience.
Rachel Owen’s minimalist sculpture “Privet,” a light box covered with green shards from broken bottles, suggests the segregation and class distinction of British hedgerows. The viewer has an impulse to get close and look through the hedge. Do we want to see through the hedge simply because we are kept out, or are we seduced by the danger implied in peering too closely at the lives protected by such fortifications?
The Austrian Cultural Forum is certainly an appropriate setting for such an exhibition—its stark, Modernist milieu evokes the isolation of Orwell’s novel. But none of the artists addresses the omnipresence of technology in our daily lives. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World might be another fitting parallel, with its dystopian future stemming from the fulfillment of human desires and drowning any dissent in a sea of pleasure and information to the point of malaise.
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Through Sept. 5, Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 E. 52nd St., 212-319-5300.
