Martin Bladh and the Truths

Truths are seldom unitary. When Martin Bladh confronts violence, pain and blood with naked bodies, the first impression might be that he seeks attention by using controversial methods. That he walks in the same footsteps as Hermann Nitsch; between the cruelty of beauty and disgust. But to look through such a narrow angle would be deceitful, although Bladh confesses his kinship with Nitsch when he in an article in the publication Heterogénesis (No. 50-51, 2005) with the title 010804, 14.00 – Castle Prinzendorf´s Chapel (First floor) writes: “It’s the cameras duty to immortalise the beauty of the passion, just like the great painter’s of old time”. However Bladh is considerably more radical in his attitudes and becomes more straightforward than Nitsch when it comes to confront violence with the beautiful, to see the beauty in the body of the beast; I understand Bladh as more related to Francis Bacon than to Nitsch, and most obvious to Bacon’s religious inspired queer art. What Bacon in a photographic manner perceives as the truth and tries to capture with paint and brushes, Bladh transforms into action, on stage and video.

In an action work (Deadringer 2) Martin Bladh is inspired by the mid panel in Francis Bacon’s triptych Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962). Bacon has painted a naked, homosexual man lying on a bed. The figure differs remarkably from the classic catholic iconography, but the painting is still obviously traditional in the traditional sense of the word. Although the man on the picture is historically abstracted Bacon shows a figure, a man that visualizes how even an existentially modern human is incarnated in the eternal process of love, violence and suffering. Incarnation through pain and death, through sexual action and rest. Is the man on Bacon’s painting crucified, taken down and laid on lit de parade or is he resting after being whipped and fucked? The baconian red nuance reoccurs in Bladh’s Deadringer 2. The blood red paint on Bacon’s walls have transformed into “actual” blood which runs through a tube to the actor in Bladh’s action work, from a blood container, into the actor’s/man’s mouth, that fills up fast, the blood runs from the mouth and nose, drenches the bed that he lies on. It is a subtle way of Bladh to transform the Bacon painting to his own work. And besides, Bladh has something which Bacon lacks, accompanying, subtle, slow masturbating music as well, for example Sebastian (IRM. Virgin Mind, 2002). The spectators have to confront the philosophic and religious challenge to walk away with their own private vision. And follow up questions? Why isn’t Bladh’s man that receives the blood transfusion naked? Why is there no direct sexual connection between the queer Bacon’s naked man and Bladh’s sexually neutral man, with pants drawn up to his navel? Bladh won’t give any concrete answers to diffuse questions; which of course is impossible. But he gives us clues of violence and sexuality. In these video- and action works there’s reminiscences of Greek mythology and Christian resurrection drama, dionysic exhibitionism and Jesus Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. It’s about the ability, the art of enduring. Through this art of indurations, in the ability of enjoying pain, there is attraction and grandeur. After the excess the beautiful rest. Bladh reconstructs a renaissance aestheticism, a sadomasochistic ritual teaching which follows the instincts and insight instead of the intellect. When Bladh in the video work Exhibit A lets a real young and true-hearted boy transform into a boy soldier, is it a brutal image of many boys reality, a reality that not have to be the soldiers, but which shows how the vulnerable- and blossoming sexuality can be lead into the bourgeoisie societies norm of non-acceptable ways, but functioning through the boys own reality, as sadomasochism, exhibitionism etc. Towards the end of Bladh’s video the boy spreads his legs and offers his cock as a logo for his personality. The same thing happens in Exhibit B, but with the anus as the main subject. There are no valid intellectual arguments which can approve of this transformation, but with the transformation from being the used into being the abuser comes the cruel recipe of instinct and insight. And who would claim that the boy who’s being fucked by a man or the boy whom in the role of the soldier rapes other boys, wouldn’t enjoy being the one who “takes it” or the one that “gets back”. In Talk Show Bladh shows a young boy, with bandages wrapped around war injuries, almost naked, with a vaguely erect cock. The boy picks up a pair of scissors, and the spectator’s first impression is that he’s going to hurt himself, maybe castrate himself, but instead with trembling hands the boy starts to cut away the pubic hair which is visible above the edge of the bandage, to tidy up his appearance, to make the smooth body even more sexually attractive. In Talk Show 3; Off Stage the boyish body returns, now with clearly explicit signs of the cracks from the sadomasochistic whip. Bladh’s at the same time painfully and sexually pleasurably inciting triptych can be seen as a illustration to the quotation (5:29:30) where the evangelist Matthew speaks that it’s better to lose an eye or a hand then to have the whole body thrown into Gehenna. With other words, forsake that which is not essential, protect you solitude, your inaccessibility, because it is only through that naked position that you might access your freedom. Forsake conveniences and fortune which is reached through social terms; forsake the sexual variations imposed by the public opinion, because the real reality gives so much more, beauty and pain, tranquillity and ecstasy. “For some pain and blood are associated with death, but for others they are associated with birth” (Armando R. Favazza).

Martin Bladh knows a great deal about all these possibilities to reach the essence of the core; the truths.

Bo I. Cavefors