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Willie Doherty at Alexander and Bonin
Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell
Made on the field of the Troubles of Ireland, Willie Doherty's videos and photographs engage the viewer with an awareness of foreboding, of surveillance. In the quasi-cinematic details of such earlier works as Somewhere Else (1998) and Restricted Access (Off the Path), 1999, the camera moves through gritty, wasted landscapes, or lingers on some striped length of tape hanging from a branch, markers or general evidence gathered at the scenes of ambiguous crimes.
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In the more recent Re-Run (2002), panic seizes a man in suit and tie bathed in lurid red light and running endlessly to or from the viewer across opposed screens. Through the increasingly reductive imagery of his recent video Non-Specific Threat (2004), Doherty dwells on the objectification of the other, focusing on an unnamed subject whose principal activity is to stay put. A text by Doherty is presented as a droning voice-over, while his virtually motionless subject is examined in a 360-degree pan, deep in a somber palette of black and blue.
The unknown man suits the media image of a seasoned skinhead. His head is shaved. He wears a denim jacket and black shirt, a silver chain at his neck. He bears his indifference with the look of a patrician stevedore, an icon of rough trade. The voice-over could represent the subject's thoughts, alternately addressing the viewer or forecasting a future characterized by the things it will lack. "You think you know me," the voice intones. "I am unknowable." The camera slowly pans. "I live alongside you." The jaw clenches slightly. "There will be no books." "I am the reflection of all your fears." "There will be no water."
Seven 5-by-6-foot chromogenic prints--portraits formally related to the more-than-7-minute loop of the video installation--capture the subject from different vantages. Each title in the series includes a number, followed by an attribute and its degree or kind of intensity. The subject faces right, toward the darkness of Non-Specific Threat VI (Unforgiving Ruthlessness) and again in the darkening of Non-Specific Threat VIII (Indifferent Cruelty). A rich, golden light strikes the left profile of Non-Specific Threat I (Unspeakable Terror), an intense blue beyond. An almost solarized glow lingers at the throat. Doherty presents a threat that even when named can't be forgotten or forgiven. If this unknown man is to be the custodian of these projected attributes, menace remains in the eye of the beholder. At the age of 12, Doherty witnessed the death of the 13 peaceful demonstrators of Bloody Sunday as they protested internment without trial in Bogside, Derry, and were shot by British soldiers--who were later exonerated by a British board of inquiry.--Edward Leffingwell
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