By giving to his drawing series titles like "Sickly Playthings" and "Malicious Delicious", Scott Ferry immediately announces that he is inviting us into a universe polarized by contradictions. In "Magicians of Yum", we witness a troubling scene: a young girl with absent eyes (white, with no iris or pupils), half-nude, wearing pastel-coloured bracelets with little stars, is lying on the ground. She greedily drinks a green liquid from an enormous plastic bottle, in which there are miniature dead heads floating. She spills a few droplets onto her prepubescent chest. Her dress is raised, revealing her fuchsia-stained panties, with the liquid dripping onto her thighs.
Some vertical ribbons cross the scene, evoking a party atmosphere. Around her float some candies and two curious little men encircled by a green aura glazed over a vibrant candy-pink. They wear the symbol for poison (skull and cross-bones, as in the drink). One of them has a big sucker with the word "Yum" on it, and points his finger at the bottle, with a kind of magic spark at its end. It seems obvious that the two characters have a menacing air about them. Even though they are not forcing the girl to drink, they visibly condone her self-destructive behaviour. Finally, on the bottle, we find a crazy alien with spiral eyes and an antenna from which hangs a cherry. This character points in the direction of the young girl, and from his finger drips the same fuchsia liquid, suggesting menstrual blood. One might be tempted to interpret this image as some sort of rite of passage into puberty.
One of the first contradictions resides in the contrast between the subject, which is quite dark, and the chromatic palette employed by the artist, which ranges from very bright colours to pastels. Also, the figure of the child, a symbol of innocence and purity, is sullied by excess - in this case candy and a poison drink. The magicians, in and of themselves, could at first glance seem amusing. On closer inspection, we discover that they are of a malevolent spirit and that they are the instigators of the drama, the source of the evil that surrounds the girl and threatens to pervert her.
Ferry's pictures, some of which are far more complex, display a strong and morbid sexual tension. Here we find the victim-perpetrator tandem at the heart of the scenes, which are simultaneously intimate and surreal. The main characters, almost always female and badly scarred, at times maimed, seem to participate willingly in their inflictions. A disturbing sensuality inhabits some of them, with enormous slugs and butterflies which are elegantly-drawn and covering their bodies to such an extent that their hygiene and safety are visibly compromised.
What attracts us and holds us to these images is perhaps the inhibition of our own self-destructive tendencies and other phantoms that roam the darkness of our subconscious. By the precise use of symbols and colours, the artist invites us to confront that which we do not accept in ourselves. The piece works like a magic mirror that helps us to see our fears and anxieties. They force us to question the most complex relationship between our physical bodies and our psychology. We all entertain profoundly negative fantasies that are in direct conflict with our dominant morality. Over the course of millennia, with the intensification of socialization, certain pressures call us towards social cohesion, to order and conformity. Our bodies and minds have had to evolve toward the automatic repression of our animalistic aggressivity and other irascible impulses inhabiting our psyches. These physical and psychological mechanisms are almost always reinforced by the strict social mores of modern society. To work with others, it is imperative that the human being suppress the unknown worlds that assail him, and that are alive in the psychic body that we refer to as the "shadow self".
Ferry offers a kind of catharsis of the shadow self by allowing us to see that which unconsciously bothers us: our intense vulnerability, our deviant sexuality, our perversions and excess, the threats to our physical integrity, infections, sickness, decay, and ultimately, death. These themes belong to the realm of the nightmare, where the strong repression that is active during the day is dormant while we sleep. This is why in our dreams we are witness to or even active participants in heinous, depraved behaviours and aggressivity that reveals our animal nature. As such the works of Ferry are not really horror, but rather more suggestive of situations that flirt with the extreme. Their evocative power is then even more pervasive. They envelop us in a soft insanity while we navigate through esoteric and dreamy worlds, where flies a fecund imagination of the most refreshing variety.
- Translated by Judith Brisson
This text appears in MALICIOUS DELICIOUS, published at Éditions Fri, 2011