Postmodern Specters: The Art of Kris Kuksi

Postmodern Specters: The Art of Kris Kuksi

 David Punter has consistently theorized the nature of hauntings. The Gothic is haunted by the Gothic itself, the text and the subject are haunted by memory, by something “prior” that transgresses the boundaries of the law (1998, 14).

 The art of Kris Kuksi points to this space of spectrality and places the viewers against hauntings. His grotesque, postmodern assemblages reveal what owes to be concealed from the eyes of the law. The haunted work of art manifests itself in that moment when the viewer becomes him/herself a ghost of the spectacle, an exiled figure searching for a home in a chaotic postmodern world.

Original Sin

Like the Gothic text and body, here the work of art manipulates my gaze, it traverses the past, memory, history, sins and creates multiple hauntings. I’m in front of what alienates me, what makes me turn away, but at the same time forces me to look closer, closer into what goes beyond. I’m haunted.

 The Deadly Sins

The detailed nightmares depicted above produce more ghosts. Deities, warriors, anthropomorphic figures, perverse acts, fragmented bodies, unfamiliar bodies haunt the sculpture, transgress the frame. They threaten to escape their territory, to cross to our side. This is excess.

Kuksi unveils the specters of postmodernity. He shows our sins and those desires that remind us of our sinful history, our past, our haunted selves.

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