154 MARCH 2016 EXHIBITION REVIEWS
WINTERTHUR, SWITZERLAND
TAIYO ONOR ATO AND
NICO KREBS
Fotomuseum Winterthur
he Swiss duo Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebsirst made their
mark with the series “he Great Unreal”(2005-09), a photographic
account of a series of road trips they took in the U.S. Exploring the
limitations of the medium—its inability, despite enduring beliefs
in its transparency, to faithfully convey what the photographer
sees or knows—the pair frequently constructed, elaborated on or
enhanced their subjects by means of manipulation and staging. It
is often unclear just what is straight documentary in this series and
what has been fabricated. Powerlines shootof every which way in a
barren landscape in one image, while elsewhere a utility pole and a
huge illuminated cross echo each other’s forms. One work shows a
roadway as a continuous loop; another, a residential street that drops
of into a sheer clif, as if the earth beneath it had collapsed.
At the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Onorato and Krebs exhibited
a new body of work that, like “he Great Unreal,”portrays a series of
travels.“Eurasia”took them through territories that are generally less
familiar than the U.S.: Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan,Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.he
odyssey was presented across four galleries in works made between
2013 and 2015.hree galleries displayed photographs of varying
sizes, arranged in topical clusters. Several themes crystallized, with
photographs of harsh, poor environments (like an image of a mangy,
one-eared donkey standing on a dirt track) interspersed with those
oflashy architecture, the incongruous vanity projects of the region’s
rulers (such as a vast, curving Zaha Hadid construction whose white
panels we see laborers installing). In one work, a young man on
horseback is shown holding a chainsaw, representing a meeting of
tradition and modernization.
In a space at the center of the exhibition, seven projectors
showed various ilms. One ilm is a series of close-cropped portraits
of people the duo encountered en route; another shows a woman
doing astounding physical contortions while balancing on her hand
or foot. Still another (the only one with sound) portraysa crowd ofWhitechapel’s library space, covers the entirety of the group’s
existence. he remarkable thing is how consistent their
visual aesthetic was, despite the ostensible shifts in ideology.
Undoubtedly, this was partly due to the controlling inlu-
ence of John Hargrave (or “White Fox,” to use his Kindred
name), the movement’s founder and a commercial artist of
sorts. he sigils he designed in 1929 for Kindred lodges and
specialisms were miniature masterpieces of clarity and conci-
sion, the roundels’ resplendent colors and geometric forms
encapsulating what seems to have been the basic principle of
Kibbo Kift artistry: the marriage of mystical or mythological
forms with explicitly modernist elements. his is seen, most
notably, in his design for the role of “Kin Photographer,”
featuring a dynamic Constructivist-style rendering of an
all-seeing-eye motif.
For the mystical side of things, the Kindred fre-
quently turned to tribal or ancient art for inspiration.
Hargrave’s highly detailed designs for a 1927-28 set of
archery equipment displayed in the show, for instance,
were clearly influenced by Celtic ornamentation, while his
1924 tooled leather cover for theKinlogtome (the group’s
official, illustrated history) features a vaguely hieroglyphic,
Egyptological layout. More often, however, it was Native
American traditions that provided the group’s symbolism of
choice. Certainly, the most magnificent works on view had
a “Red Indian” feel—with all the primitivist and monolithic
conceptions of Native Americanculture that this contem-
porary term implies. From the beautifully angular bird-of-
prey carvings on members’ wooden totems to the bright,
blocky patterning of the surcoats worn for ritual occasions
(the ordinary attire was simpler and Robin Hood green),
the Kindred’s version of modernism owes an obvious, prob-
lematic debt to Native American devices, in much the same
way that, say, Cubism stems from Picasso’s appropriation of
African imagery.
The show also includes a lot of archival material, the
most interesting being photographs by Kin Photographer
Angus McBean. Although he mainly depicted decorated
tepees and parading Kinsmen (despite the movement’s
supposed ideology of gender equality, it was primarily men
he focused on), in 1929 he documented the current show’s
precursor: the Whitechapel’s “Kibbo Kift Educational
Exhibition,” whose campcraft displays proved massively
popular, even as official Kindred membership had by this
stage drastically dwindled.
The current show, too, is pretty crowded—the busiest
I’ve ever seen the one-room gallery. Indeed, the exhibition
feels incredibly timely, given cultural trends seen today
in Britain and elsewhere: the hipster-led folk revival, the
nostalgia for all things prewar, the artistic interest in uto-
pian movements and collectives. As such, the one failing
of the show is that it lacks contemporary examples of how
this cultural moment might have roots in the Kindred’s
long-ignored, defiantly spiritual, willfully rural take on
modernism.
—Gabriel CoxheadTa iyo O nor ato
andNicoKrebs:
Axe,2015,gelatin
silver print, 19⅝
by 24¾ inches; at
the Fotomuseum
Winterthur.