≡ Sex and Death, with a Side of Guts

by Angelina Avedano, PhD Mythological Studies

Sex and Death, with a Side of Guts by Angelina Avedano, PhD Mythological Studies Sometimes, I just don’t get it when I engage with Walt Ohnesorge’s collections—not at first glance, anyway. My left brain complains, “What is all this mess?” I’ve had similar reactions to works by Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Hieronymus Bosch, wondering: Are these artists inclined to evoke dread, instigate chaos, or to dabble in the absurd simply for the sake of absurdity? If so, to what end? I recognize my instinctual aversion to that which requires me to shed categories and assumptions when I enter a realm such as this; so I still myself, observe, and wait. An intuitive observation notices the threads of deconstruction and dissent across Ohnesorge’s tapestry. He is all about ripping, shredding, and dissecting, before remastering layer-by-layer the collage of his new vision. Courageously vacillating from tactile to the abstract, his visceral view is unshaken. Frida Kahlo’s Broken Column and Without Hope situate the observer as voyeur to the unthinkable; with What the Water Gave Me she lures us into the collective unconscious by placing us inside her own reflective process. Ohnesorge merges the voyeuristic eye with the collective unconscious by submerging us in a slurry of sex and death, with a side of guts. His hallucinatory imaginings embody the alchemical process of dissolution and reconstitution. Experiencing his gutsy oeuvre, we too find ourselves a bit dissolved, somewhat disoriented, and at times undone. Much like Kahlo, Ohnesorge is illustrating a process by which we actively engage with the paradox of humanity, and he demands no less from us than what he demands from himself: a fearless immersion into a world that is, at once, sickening and sublime. It takes time for certain bodies of work to find their resonance. Some will always carry an air of impenetrability, like those of Leonora Carrington and Hieronymus Bosch. Walt Ohnesorge’s collections have a similar distinctive presence. While absent Carrington’s surreal preoccupation with alchemy and the occult, or Bosch’s apocalyptic sensibilities, I do find that they invoke a comorbid fascination akin to these artists. When we encounter them, we are moved to pause, endure, and hold our breath for the simultaneous “WTF?”and “Aha!” moments, moments which awaken us to Joyce’s “esthetic emotion”: “The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing” (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 254). Ohnesorge bridges desire and loathing, transgressing Joseph Campbell’s polarized view of “improper art” (described as either pornographic or didactic), when he creates a space in which arrest can occur, or when he leaves you branded by his imagery such that you experience a delayed visitation, like flash backs from an acid trip. Naturally, Walt’s pieces have evolved and matured, and so have I. Therefore, my experience with them has matured as well. Recently, when observing random and chaotic patterns left by eddies at low tide in New England, I came into a deeper relationship with the entirety of his work. Traced in the sand were all manner of organic shapes: botanical, anatomical, and structural. They appeared as veins, muscles, and cross-sections; feathers, leaves, and watermarks; aerial views, blueprints, and topographical maps. I recognized the fractalesque ephemera gracing the foreshore of the northern coast as uncannily similar to the Toxic Pond triptych. A larger theme infusing these collections began to unfold before me. In a moment, I saw the mysterious glyphs organically erupting in the sand as the primordial substrate upon which Ohnesorge’s imaginations built. The elaborate yet momentary existence of these images insinuates the intrinsic uncertainty of the human experience. Walt Ohnesorge revels in complexity and the obscure, all the while gesturing toward simple truths that are as plain as the nose on your face. Likely, you’ll discover that nose sniffing you out as his pieces stare back at you: it’ll peer from beneath entrails and size you up out of the labyrinthine viscera of his profane ecstasies. His is a truly tantric approach, taunting those who immerse themselves in his surround-sound sensuality; he weaves us into his pieces with an unspoken invitation to confront desire, delusion, and disgust. It is only in that confrontation that we are able to integrate them fully with an open heart. Albert Camus once wrote, “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” Ohnesorge’s exhibition is an odyssey of rediscovery. He toys with the architecture of the mind; he slices into the collective unconscious and lays bare the cross-sections of human nature. He utilizes visual resonance and dissonance, drills into the psyche with his aural augmentations, and exposes the “unsacred geometry” of landscapes, as well as bodyscapes. Peeling back the layers of the systematic and the sensual, Ohnesorge flays the psyche, exposing the fragile heart of humanity: tortured, yet serene - obscure, yet unveiled - revolting, yet reverent.