The contemporary art world is descending on London in time for the opening of the Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see how much reaction there is to two works in a show timed to coincide with it, “The Age of Marvellous”, which is on at a deconsecrated church opposite the park. One of the artists, Paul Fryer, caused controversy this year when his Pietà, a sculpture of Christ in an electric chair, was displayed in the cathedral of the Alpine town of Gap. Now he has taken this further in another work, in which the Christ figure is black and appears contorted and visibly suffering.
“The figure of Christ isn’t just in the electric chair,” explains Fryer, who has collaborated with Damien Hirst and whose work has been exhibited at the Tate and the Courtauld. “He’s starved and he’s black. Hundreds more black people have been executed in the chair than white people. More black people starve to death than white people by what you could call a significant margin, too.” The work also makes the point that “we still execute people 2,000 years after Christ’s death”.
More edgy — more likely to offend, at any rate — is The Privilege of Dominion, in which a waxwork ape appears nailed to a cross. “At the rate we’re killing them all, the lowland gorillas will be dead by the year 2020,” says Fryer. “Do animals have souls? What a question. We should be asking the same question of ourselves.”
Personally, I don’t find either sacrilegious. But then perhaps that’s not for me to say. Given that the clearly fantastical Jerry Springer: the Opera managed to arouse the ire of so many Christians, it’s quite possible that Fryer’s ape on a cross will provoke more than just thought.
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