On The Q.V At The Mountains Of Madness

Who Goes There? Ronnie Van Hout. At the Christchurch Art Gallery 4 July -- 18 October.

The entrance room of Who Goes There is very 2001. Two artificial men sit on tables in a blank non-place. Two black slabs stare at each other. A man walks through a door from seemingly nowhere, a space defined by a moving projection of colours. But where Clarke is a bit boring, a bit too normal and sane, van Hout is, well, not. The two monoliths are not quite right; the door doesn't fit into the room properly. The men on the beds are undersized automata that seem trapped. You never feel really comfortable throughout.

Peephole, a drilled hole in a white wall opening onto a seemingly intimate scene, makes explicit the implied voyeurism of much of the work, as well as paying homage to Duchamp. It is this feeling of looking where you probably shouldn't, of being present at something essentially private, that I think makes much of van Hout's work so affecting.

Van Hout has a powerfully pulp sensibility. From the fake extraterrestrial to the Thing that is not a Thing in the final room, the spirit of Philip K. Dick is never far away, that Dick where androids lie on their backs not dreaming but broken, and strange insect creatures swarm in the Midwest. In particular, Ersatz (alien) brings to mind a backwoods Southern gothic, of lynchings and godforsaken towns in the Appalachians with locals who are not on the side of the inquisitive tourist.

It is not all grim disturbia. Ersatz (who, who, who) is a ridiculous funny sculpture. The first bad pun makes the second perfect. The parables from the European art circuit are excellent shaggy dog stories. I couldn't help but snicker at the one in which someone backs up to look at a painting, knocks over a sculpture, and runs. The amateurish fonts and tacky background put the finishing touches on the mock serious questions. The multiples of Ronnie van Hout (from an edition of 20) guy the language of buying `a van Hout', of `collecting an artist'. There's a lovely poster, in proper '50s colours, advertising `Planet B', which I assume will be on after the current one. Admittedly, even the jokes are pointed.

The Christchurch Art Gallery has plastered the floor with signs forbidding you to touch the sculpture. It is all very well to take care, but putting `Do Not Touch' in a doorway is, I feel, a step too far. Worse is the voice that tells you off if you get too close to the art. I wondered if it was part of the installation, meant to make you worry that you were being watched by alien intelligences cool and unsympathetic

Who Goes There is powerfully unright. Things are not how they should be: fruit blackens, potatoes shrivel, faces come out all pimply. I cannot in honesty say I liked the exhibition. I liked parts --- Thing, Digging, Ersatz (who, who, who) --- but as a whole it is too queer to be entirely likeable. It is a Gothic for the Bain Retrial, all skeletons in the closet, grey magazines on the bench, and rotting fruit in the cupboard.