JETHRO MALLARMEY, Das Schloss (The Castle) Feb 10-April 1, 2023.

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A burst pipe on Christmas Eve at The Redundant Beach destroyed Jethro Mallarmey's inaugural exhibition, a blue chicken coop built into the gallery's walls that alluded to the site's past function as an animal feed lot. Vastly expanded to fit the gallery's new 2000 sq ft space, the chicken coop has been rebranded Das Schloss (The Castle),  after the unfinished novel by Franz Kafka. Wandering around Mallarmey's blue psychobuilding, visitors play the role of "K," hopelessly searching for the castle's bureaucratic authority. The farm animals themselves have taken on a threatening air, as mesnie, minotaurs, and false confidants. At the entrance to the "pig run," there is Brügel, the long-winded secretary delivering useful advice on about art.  Adventurous visitors willing to shuffle further into the darkness are treated to an animatronic man gazing on (and pleasuring himself to?) an acrylic self-portrait of Mallarmey dressed in a Santa suit while straining to lift the wood used to build Das Schloss.

 

Handmade cut-outs of roosters and rooster-hounds have been coated in transparent projector paper to prevent a view of the outside, in effect coating visitors in the castle's oblique narrative. Largely this narrative seems to concern celebrating the making of the castle itself. Pairing the rooster symbolism with a sheet of definitions for the term COQUILLARD suggests that we are to connect a nearby dungeon with the gang of thieves and bandits that stalked Paris in the 15th C (one rooster is dressed as an executioner). Through a hidden door beyond the castle walls, a villager furrows a long poem. Les coquillards were known for having developed their own thieves' jargon, and the message of this poem remains tantalizing just out of reach. Of the poem, which took him 8 months to write, Mallarmey explains: "In this illuminated world, there are no more shadows, no misunderstandings, no slips of the tongue. But language is devious -- it uses this light to play even greater tricks. In reflection, one sees nothing but objects, dead objects in a drunken stupor of dim thoughts and mixed messages."  A fitting conclusion to The Castle.

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Das Schloss (The Castle) runs until April 1, 2023.