Lies one of the most intriguing parts of the West End. Whilst dawdling on Oxford Street earlier that morning (on hunt for a new Breton top, if you’re interested) I popped into Carroll Fletcher, a newly opened gallery halfway along Eastcastle Street.

If you’re around that part of the city over the next 3 weeks, go along to see their current exhibition by Eva and Franco Mattes, titled Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable. Carroll/Fletcher has such an interesting interior, I remember going along to its opening night back in February and being perplexed by the gallery space and how it twists and turns all over the building. 

Consisting of a range of mixed media pieces (including a smidgen of late seventies ephemera), Anonymous, Untitled, Dimensions Variable managed to grasp our senses and play with them relentlessly. If we take Colorless, odorless and tasteless (2011) as a way of illustrating this notion. Prior to viewing the piece there is just one line of vinyl that stands out against the wall:

Perplexed, you walk through to see a lone and battered looking Atari Arcade Machine (image of one can be found by clicking here) .Except, there’s an engine fixed to its back. There are a handful of coins scattered onto the machine; I hesitate before inserting one into it. With literally no idea what to expect, the machine springs to life with a classic car racing game and a message flashes up, inviting you to grab the steering wheel and begin play. So I do, and within moments of turning my first corner on the (virtual) race track, a pungent smell of burning begins to fill the room. In most cases this would have left me worrying that the machine was about to burst into flames, but for some reason my eyes are transfixed to the screen and I can’t seem to let go of the steering wheel. Whatever this burning smell is, it’s not affecting the machine at all, so I continue playing the arcade game until the smell of burning has taken over the room to the point of where I’m finding it difficult to breathe comfortably. On closer inspection on leaving the space, I notice how rusty the engine looks and wonder if it is possibly as old as the Atari machine.

On progression through the exhibition, it all changes. Homourous pieces like Catt are followed by My Generation, which is a video collage the artists created 2 years prior to the exhibition.  There’s an incredibly powerful moment for the viewer here, as they stare into the monitor they watch a young adolescent throw himself around his bedroom, and purposively hitting numerous possessions against his head. I stare at the screen feeling helpless at this traumatic experience, but this feeling of helplessness begins to cascade and as the screen flickers onto another person I become transfixed. All unknowingly filmed, the piece is actually a narrative of emotional upsurges experienced by video gamers. 

Are all these artworks/pieces/situations that Eva and Franco Mattes have generated staged? What is real here? Notwithstanding their first London exhibition, I’m fairly certain this won’t be the last I hear about the artistic duo. I think their compelling fictional narratives are here to stay.

Hurrah. It’s nice to be subverted, after all.