HYDE PARK ART CENTER, CHICAGO
As one enters Max King Cap’s “video opera” installation, a booming voice from a darkened corner spouts an abstruse narrative full of symbols and cryptograms. The cast of characters, represented by such things as a three-tiered cake and a crown, and the abstract story about sin and the institution of religion bear all the markings of an allegory or moral lesson. Even if the tale may be difficult to access, the sculptural installation, or the stage set, is wholly impressive and enthralling. The relationship of the objects to each other and to their surrounds posit a narrative all their own. A hollow church structure hangs mid-air and upside-down. Beneath it, its house-shaped shadow appears like a grave strewn with flowers. Is the structure a vision of resurrection or is it a floundering and dying thing? Subjective and personal revelations emerge from the murky black lake and calmly solidify as playful mutations of Nature. Although the symbolic language here has been fully articulated by Max King Cap, we must necessarily interact with the space, and in doing so we break the fourth wall such that the installation absorbs us.
Published in Newcity (February 20, 2007)
