Please don't ask me what the work of the Rev. Ethan Acres means. I have no idea. (He has hinted that he's not quite sure, either.) All I can say is that it's strange enough to somehow mean something to me.
Acres's work at the Biennial, which entirely fills the Corcoran's grand rotunda, consists of three inflatable structures made of yellow nylon, rising up to 12 feet high. They're shaped and decorated like elaborately wrought cages. Behind their golden bars lurk evil blow-up monsters sewn in midnight blue. A text inscribed below the creatures quotes from Revelation 18:2: "Babylon the Great has fallen, and become the habitation of devils, the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
One of Ethan Acres's inflatable cages, complete with monsters.
(Courtesy Of The Artist And Patricia Faure Gallery)
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To experience the work in full, you have to put on headphones. They feed you a cautionary tale, intoned by Acres in the fire-and-brimstone style of a camp-meeting preacher. (Which is more or less what the artist's father was. Acres himself is an ordained minister who does performance art around Los Angeles and far beyond, carrying on the family tradition.) Acres's taped voice tells of a trip to Las Vegas (Shame, brother!) and of the artist's meeting with the Whore of Babylon (Protect us, Lord!), who turns out to be as saintly as she is sinning (Praise His name!).
Acres insists that none of this is meant as blasphemy and that he's a true believer. But since when have artists had the last word on their art? I think the work has strains of healthy parody in it and asks if we can always tell spiritual talk from the spinning of tall tales.
-- B.G.
