From Beauty To The Beast

From Beauty to the Beast

A few weeks ago, on my way back to Madrid from hiking in the Swiss Alps, I made a stop in the charming medieval town of Gruyères. It's known for its production of the cheese which shares the same name.

You may think I was there to visit the cheese museum in the 13th-century Château de Gruyères hilltop fortress, but I was there to visit one of the other museums located within it. Past charming gothic doorways of local residents, I excitedly made my way across the sun-drenched plaza searching for its entrance.

Inside the small St. Germain Castle within the Château de Gruyères is the H.R. Giger Museum. A small sign above the otherwise nondescript portal to the castle directs you to it.

When the Swiss artist was awarded an Oscar for his “Alien“ monster in 1980 for the film bearing the same name, he became world-famous overnight. Instead of purchasing a villa in Hollywood, he decided to purchase the Château de Gruyères. In 1998, he opened a museum of his artworks inside the castle.

There were other installations of his art in place in front of the museum entrance. I especially love the Alien handrail - a beautiful marriage of a functional architectural feature to the biological, preparing visitors for what's to come inside.

I have long been a fan of the Alien movies, and became incredibly interested in the man and his art in the early 90s. My friend and I had a photo of one of his artworks hanging on the inside of our locker door in highschool.

Nothing could prepare me for what was to come once I stepped inside the front doors, past the ticket gate, and into the first couple of many rooms on mutiple floors of the castle. Walking up these fascinating tiled stairs, I entered his biomechanical world and a part of me still stands at the top of those stairs gazing at these paintings.

The photo of this room does not give you a true sense of the scale and power of his biomechanical airbrush painting imagery. His artwork engulfs you. Time and space cease to exist. The incredibly fine detail of these floor-to-tall-ceiling paintings dazzle the eye. But they are not for the faint of heart. Some of the iconography is uncomfortable, disturbing, and some may find them upsetting in how they challenge the onlooker.

Some of his most interesting and challenging art pieces in the museum are his furniture, like this glass-top table.

His Alien dining table and chairs sit on the second floor. By all accounts, H.R. Giger was a quiet soft-spoken man, and yet his art speaks so loudly and boldly, it's hard to imagine him as such. In my mind, he exists as three people; I envision him sitting in one of his hipbone headrest chairs at the head of the table, boisterously raising his glad to toast whatever feast was laid out upon it reveling with all of his guests. Simultaneously, I see him brooding silently over an untouched dinner setting for one all alone. The third, is of him and his wife elegantly dining together having ordinary conversations about mundane everyday topics surrounded by his dark and morbid decor.

I needed to take another selfie using the mirror in this dining room to show the intriguing and claustrophobic low height of the ceiling, which further added to the ambiance. The combination of futuristic biomechanical and the medieval wooden beam ceiling complimented each other both beautifully and grotesquely. I imagined silver platters and goblets of gold. My floral dress looks eerily wrong and disturbingly out of place.

I would say, as a dinner guest, I was not appropriately attired.

I had a moment with this Alien head in glass.

Near the mouth, a small movement caught my eye. I felt hairs raise. Goosebumps. That phrase "a slight disturbance in the force" came to me.

My logical mind told me that it must have been my imagination, but sure enough, a small movement around the mouth caught my eye again. I had my forehead nearly pressed against the glass trying to see what it was, because surely it was nothing.

Yet, my fellow museum-goer also noticed it when I called him over. He too was unable to pinpoint exactly what it was. He stood up straight, willing to let it remain a mystery and move on...

And then I realized, there was a small dangling bit of Alien flesh that would move ever so slightly in reaction to people walking nearby on the same floor. To be completely honest, I was creeped out and fascinated. It may not have been by design, but I could imagine how the characters in the Alien movies felt, paralyzed, when they encountered one in such close proximity, trapped by the same dangerous fascination. I felt like at any moment it might come to life, shatter that glass, and eat my face.

Also on display was the most fascinating piece in the museum - a letter from H.R. Giger to David Giler in regards to Alien III. The insight it gives into the inner workings of this quiet Swiss man's creative mind is truly a treasure worth more than all the other pieces in this museum.

The sketches with notes displayed near the letter were a close second. The excitement, energy and passion leaps out of that letter and these pages, the joyful results of synaptic neurons firing scribbled on paper.

Before exiting the museum, I took a selfie with a photo of a young H.R. Giger. The expression on his face, his body language, that little tilt to head, his half-hidden amusement, they all resonate deeply with me. I admire and am inspired that he unapologetically shared his visions with the world. And that now, in this unassuming picturesque Swiss village, they live on in a setting of his design that greatly enhances their presentation.

You may be thinking, but surely there must be more. The museum is much larger than one first thinks. I roamed its floors and rooms for hours. I took many many more photographs and videos of his paintings and sculptures that I did not share here today. I thought I was visiting a small museum, not an entire alternate dimension in another universe. Photos and videos cannot adequately do the experience the justice it deserves. These photos amount to one sixteenth of what I saw that afternoon. I highly recommend going there.

Whether you like the Alien series, or not. Whether you like this kind of art, or not. It cannot be denied that this man was a force unto himself who dared to present himself and works that some may dislike, revile, and be deeply disturbed by. For me, in some ways, he is the modern equivalent of Goya and his works make me think of the Black Paintings. Especially, Saturn Devouring His Son. They make me think of the Fuente del Ángel Caído in Retiro Park in Madrid by Francisco Jareño y Alarcón and Ricardo Bellver. A fountain that was so reviled by some people, an armed guard was required to protect it from being torn apart and torn down after it was installed.

The Mexican poet and academic, Cesar A. Cruz said, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." You can take this at face value, or understand its deeper message, which is to question everything, to try to look at the same event, thing, person or happenings from multiple points to gain the absolute view. Beyond the transient reality of feelings. Beyond judgements based on one's learned beliefs informed by loved ones, created by society and dictated by culture and traditions. In short, to think.

Nearly two weeks ago, I shared an entire collection of new artworks and decided not to explain anything about them to anyone. Of course, moments came up where people wanted to know what they are about, what they mean, how I make them. I answered some of these questions but truly, those things are not important. What you think and feel when you see my work is what matters. If you are not seeing exactly the same things that I imagined and felt when making the work, that is not a failure. I have communicated an idea and you reacted based on your life experiences. We have each had some life experiences that the other has never had before, and that is not a bad thing. A little mystery is appealing.

An acquantance, a fellow Korean Adoptee, described my art work as "something very beautiful that will cut you," and that may be the closest description to the true meaning of my art. What I discuss are deeply serious topics that are sometimes tragic and often factually harsh. Does the lightness, the copious amounts of gold, the airiness make them more or less palatable? What do you think?

I leave you with one final thought, something H.R. Giger said that so perfectly displays the man that he was, "Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is."

I ask you, if you see these things in an artist's works, are they what the artist is communicating? Or what you are projecting onto it?

H.R. Giger died on May 12, 2014 in a hospital in Zürich, Switzerland after suffering fatal injuries from a fall.

Next Steps...

Documenting and preserving the artworks shown in the open studio in photo and video nearly two weeks ago have moved along quicker than expected. Some of you who weren't able to come may be wondering when you wil get to see this new collection. Some of you asked me how it works with purchasing a piece and giving it a new home, which I will address first.

The price list is here. The password is the same as the one I gave you for the guide. Contact me directly by email or my mobile and I will answer all your questions.

For those outside of Madrid living in other countries wondering and waiting, I'm sorry but the wait will need to be a while longer to see the kinetic sculptures. Documenting those is still in process.  For the other thirteen pieces that were shown, some of those are going to be available for you to see sooner online than I said in my last diary entry, sometime in the latter half of October into November.  You may have noticed on my website the additional pages added to the top menu - Exhibition LEGACIES and Gallery Four. The LEGACIES exhibition is nearly ready to be beta-tested as an online gallery experience before I make it available to the public. If you are interested in being one of my beta-testers, email or Whatsapp me.

For those living in Madrid who were unable to attend the open studio, stay tuned! I am working on doing another showing.

Additionally, while all this is happening and even during the weeks leading up to the open studio exhibition, I have been quietly preparing a collection of photos from my travels abroad in the past year or so for an online exhibition. Initially, I was thinking to do this one in late October, but I am pushing it back to mid to late November. I haven't been able to get as much done on it as I would like for those dates to work.

As always, any comments or questions can be sent to me directly at nikoru.art@stylemylife.email

Happy October!

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A friend has been telling me for ages to write a book, a memoir, of all my wild past-life experiences. Maybe I'll write a book about my life when I'm older, maybe around 80 (if I am blessed to live that long). I've decided to keep this diary instead.

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