The Sky’s Gone Out at the Galleries at Moore

Freud, who was nothing if not consistent, believed that repressed emotions lead to things seeming uncanny. In situations of uncertainty, involving, for example, death, we repress our highly charged emotions; anxiety increases, followed by fear and dread; and voilà, something uncanny this way comes.

The Moore exhibit, organized by director and chief curator Kaytie Johnson, transfers the concept of the uncanny from the psychoanalytical realm to that of contemporary art and design. It is a collection of unsettling, frequently sinister, universally strange works of sculpture, photography, print, sound, and film that force viewers to question reality, explore anxiety, and consider the uncanny feelings evoked.

Visitors don’t need to know any of this. The exhibit is more visceral than cerebral: Just step in and it won’t be long until your hair rises, blood curdles, and flesh begins to crawl. The eeriness greets you at the door in the form of headless burlap babies (Inside the Core, 2006, Gabríela Fridriksdóttir) and pictures of ectoplasm emerging from the nose and mouth of medium Mary Marshall during a séance. (Psychic Experiment, 1948, Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton). In case you wonder, ectoplasm looks like handfuls of cotton balls. I thought it would be gooier.

A harrowing soundscape

While the unnerved wince, divert their gaze, and move on, they cannot escape the harrowing soundscape, which intensifies everything in the exhibit. Imagine the undulating roar of angry lions, or a floodtide ocean crashing against jagged cliffs. Against this roiling cacophony cuts a loud, slow creaking, like an enormous maw opening and closing, or perhaps a prison door. Then add the incessant, high-pitched wail of a purgatorial choir.

Looking for relief, I grabbed a set of headphones hanging below the music video for Herbie Hancock’s Rockit (1983, directed by Kevin Godley and Laurence Neil Creme). The familiar tune and madcap visuals, disembodied gloved hands playing piano, with automaton legs kicking, and mannequin heads turning to the rhythm, was lighthearted in comparison with the rest of The Sky’s Gone Out.

There’s nothing here that won’t give someone, probably most of us, the willies. One piece, however, was particularly haunting: A chair, molded of concrete poured into the ground, then entombed, disinterred, and enhanced with paint to resemble…decaying flesh (Chair from Risen in 30 Days, 2012, Benjamin Rollins Caldwell/BRC Designs). I don’t want to know how close it comes, I just wish my passwords were as hard to forget.

I still cringe recalling the creepy sights and sounds, and will remember what uncanny means every time a chill runs down my spine.

Above right: Chair from Risen in 30 Days (2012), Benjamin Rollins Caldwell/BRC Designs