Art Envelope

2011-08-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

My interview with Santa Fe painter Joan Watts has been published on the BeingBlog, park of NPR's radio program OnBeing.

The Contemplative Artist, Perception, Losing Oneself, Bill Viola

2011-06-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

This essay was originally published on an on-line blog in conjunction with the two months I spent in the fall 2010 at Naropa University as a Frederick P. Lenz Foundation Residential Fellow for Buddhist Studies and American Culture and Values.
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This morning I sat in on Robert Spellman's Contemplative Artist class at Naropa University--twelve students, some artists, some not--but all engaged, focused, attentive, interested.

The class began with "bowing in"--which is how many classes at Naropa begin. Everyone stands in a circle, and at the leader's indication, everyone bows toward the center of the circle. According to Naropa's website, the bow is "a way of acknowledging and honoring the qualities of warriorship that each of us has... By warriorship in this sense we do not mean warfare or aggression—but actually the opposite. The warrior whom we honor when we bow is someone who is brave enough to be a truly gentle person. Therefore, the emphasis is on bravery, not on warfare, because the warrior understands that aggression is actually the result of cowardice. So, in bowing to each other, we honor the inherent bravery, gentleness and wakeful intelligence that each of us can experience personally. We also honor Naropa as a place where the deepest purpose of our education is to cultivate these qualities and bring them to fuller expression in whatever field of learning we may choose."

Think about that as a pedagogical philosophy--or an administrative philosophy!

After "bowing in", we sat in a circle of red zabutans and zafus (meditation cushions) and meditated for the first 20 minutes of class. I don't think I have ever meditated with a class of students before, and it was a powerful experience for me. I can't help but dream about how wonderful it would be to bring some of these qualities of contemplative education to Ringling College of Art + Design, where I teach, but I fear it would be resisted--it would be seen as a religious practice, perhaps, instead of a teaching and learning practice. It's a shame, really, because in our current multi-tasking, high-speed form of education, I think we miss out on the value of slower, deeper, and more holistic education and living, for that matter.

Again according to Naropa's website, "contemplative education is learning infused with the experience of awareness, insight and compassion for oneself and others, honed through the practice of sitting meditation and other contemplative disciplines. The rigor of these disciplined practices prepares the mind to process information in new and perhaps unexpected ways. Contemplative practice unlocks the power of deep inward observation, enabling the learner to tap into a wellspring of knowledge about the nature of mind, self and other that has been largely overlooked by traditional, Western-oriented liberal education."

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Robert Spellman is an engaging man, the kind of person you enjoy listening to. He has a sense of humor -- about himself, about the class. He has a generosity with the students that is supportive and encouraging.

After we meditated together, Robert talked a little about the students' essays he had been reading--essays about their experiences with meditation and the course assignments, which are all geared toward deepening contemplative awareness in studio art practice (one of the main subjects of my book, and the reason this class was of particular interest to me).

Several points Robert related in his opening talk stood out for me:

--in their essays, the students said that the meditation practice was helping them be friends with their own minds. The tendency toward self-judgement, toward being mentally at war with oneself, was subsiding, and they were able to look at their thoughts and feelings with more compassion and curiosity. In other words, they were learning how to have a different relationship with their minds.

--the students also mentioned that they were becoming more aware of their environment during meditation, and Robert suggested that one can not go deeper into meditation practice without this awareness of one's environment.

--Robert suggested that the students try to locate their apparent sense of "I". Who is "I"? Where is this "I-ness" located? "It is strange to contemplate", he said, laughing, "but it is interesting to try".

--Robert then talked about the exploration of perspective--Western and Eastern--that the class had been discussing. Robert described Western perspective as "intolerant" and limiting--not a bad thing--but somewhat fascist. He uses much of what David Hockey has explored in his studio work and writing concerning how we perceive space (this was reassuring, since we plan to use one of Hockney's books for the new freshman year curriculum at Ringling for the same reasons).

--Robert talked about his current argument with fellow Naropa faculty member Peter Grossenbacher. Robert believes that our perception of perspectival space is due to the bending of light in the lens of the eye. Peter disagrees, and says that we see perspectival space because objects subtend--they take up a smaller percentage of of field of vision the further away they are from us. One sharp student suggested they were both correct. ("Peter Grossenbacher teaches psychological courses on perception, cognition, statistics and research from a contemplative scientific perspective. In his decades of work in psychological science, he has taught at the University of Oregon, England's University of Cambridge and American University in Washington, DC. ...Peter collaborates with students conducting empirical research on meditation and contemplative spirituality in Naropa’s Consciousness Laboratory. Peter is an international speaker on meditation and the brain, whose research has been covered in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and Discover Magazine." from the naropa website )

--The conversation then moved to how much our habit of "naming" things effects our ability to perceive things clearly. Once we understand a door as a "door", do we really see the complete nature of a door anymore? Robert said there is a Sanskrit word for this---nama rupa--which translates as name-form, and means "a habitual form of confusion". In other words, naming forms causes us to be in confusion--because we do not see them anymore. This makes me think of the title of the autobiography of Robert Irwin by Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.

Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.

It is this quality of moving back and forth between different structures for knowing and understanding that seems so unique to Naropa. Western, Eastern---a variety of perspectives for thinking critically about the world. It's a total turn-on for me because it is so in line with what I believe education should be, could be.

A student in the class related that she had a severe brain injury (from a car accident) that at first made it difficult for her to see normally. The horizon would move or change position, things would sway, come in and out of focus--and she would have to remind herself that what she was seeing was not what was really happening. Another student in the class asked what would have happened if she had determined that, instead, what she was seeing was more real. She said, "Well, we would have to lie down. Buildings would fall apart. The earth would crumble."

What is the relationship between perception and reality?

I lead the class in a drawing assignment, based on Roland Cohen's talk at Shambala on the previous Monday night, "Doing One Thing Completely". I related to them the passage Roland read to us from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki: "when you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, so there is no trace of yourself." I encouraged them to focus, to lose themselves to the degree that they disappeared or burned up completely. I asked them to find an already existing "drawing" in the classroom (perhaps the marks on the floor, for example), something they could not name or label, to draw. And they used materials that were not comfortable to them, untraditional materials like coffee, beets, ink drawn with a string.

It was a challenge to get to the point of burning, but several of the students had moments of the self disappearing.

________________________

I found an audio interview with video artist Bill Viola by ABC radio's "The Spirit of Things" the night after my visit to Spellman's class---a very nice karmic twist. I am not fond of the introduction, but what he discusses is very much related to the discussion we had in the Contemplative Artist class I attended, as well as what I plan to discuss in my book: about the self and the ego, perception, meditation, Buddhism, contemplation, academia and the art market--and the losing of oneself that is necessary to make great art.

It is long, but it worth listening to. Go to this link and click on "Listen Now" or "Download Audio". http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2010/3042396.htm

Possibilities

2008-12-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

Kelly McLane "Fragile"

Beginning in the 1940s, contemporary artists confronted sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography and laid traditional definitions of these media mostly to rest. EVO gallery’s current exhibition, “Beyond Graphic: Contemporary Drawing and Works on Paper”, presents innovative approaches to contemporary drawing over the last twenty years. Some of these works have been seen in international venues many times and are not as relevant now as they were initially. But next to more recent works, a conversation about the recent history of drawing, and its future possibilities, starts to emerge.

“Beyond Graphic” includes works by Ann Hamilton (Ohio), Cuban-born José Bedia (Miami), Tony Fitzpatrick (Chicago), Ethan Murrow, Walton Ford, Donald Sultan, and Gary Simmons (New York), Julian Opie (London), Kelly McLane (Los Angeles), Bernar Venet (Paris), Hirosi Sugimoto (Japan)—as well as recent drawings by College of Santa Fe painter Gerry Snyder and alumnus Luke Dorman. A wall piece by Sol LeWitt is installed upstairs. Works by Basquiat, Lucien Freud and James Rosenquist, listed on the exhibition announcement card, are being shown at Art Basel, Miami and are not presently in the gallery.

The late conceptual and minimal artist Sol LeWitt challenged the notion that a drawing had to be made by the artist’s hand. He created sets of directions by which someone else would execute the work. His directions often allowed some choice (make lines that are not straight), so that the decisions of others became part of the work. He effectively killed the notion that the artist is more important than the work itself. The LeWitt work at EVO, a fire-engine red square with a circle in its center, has been painted on the upstairs office wall by Gerry Snyder. Visible from the ground floor, the work glows a nearly solid crimson. Walk upstairs, and from an angle, the mat circle contrasts with the gloss square so that the two separate, until, walking in front of it, the two shapes begin to merge again. Close-up, the red will dramatically reflect onto the viewer’s face, making her part of the work as well.

LeWitt’s reductive contribution to the history of art seems dramatic until one confronts Julian Opie’s recent, oval work, “Christine Swimming 02”. It’s easily missed, and that is part of the intent. Slyly installed over the gallery’s informational text at the base of the stairs (where one could interpret it as a hip decoration), Opie’s slick works refer to advertising signage and video games—the places where minimal, abstracted information is used to quickly convey a banal message. We have been subliminally trained to pay attention—for a second or two--when we see flat and coded images such as these, and this work only requires the time it takes to descend the final steps of the staircase.

Santa Feans may be unfamiliar with the work of Los Angeles-based painter Kelly McLane, but her 2002 work, “Fragile” is a great introduction. For over a decade, McLane has been using the direct, intimate line of the pencil with the color and mark of oil paint in large works on canvas. In this particular work, giant whales are stacked on top of each other in a wooden pen of sorts, situated in the ocean. To the left, a mammoth, decapitated human leg stands in the water—perhaps the remains of a statue after an apocalyptic war (as in the final scene of “Planet of the Apes”). McLane’s process of adding and subtracting marks and images on the surface of the canvas has a direct relationship to the loss and gain she conveys in her work. This loss and gain is personal, global and historical—a constant state of flux and flummox.

Luke Dorman
"Grimalkin Conflict"

Luke Dorman’s ink drawing on gessoed panel, “Grimalkin Conflict”, is a good work to end with. A figure that looks much like the artist himself, in a horizontally striped shirt, is represented in duplicate. The figures form a check out line of sorts. When one of the figures reaches the front of the line, three cat-headed, skirted women in boots shoot him with rifle-fire, leaving the clones bleeding on the ground. It’s a funny, and not-so funny, re-visioning of Goya's “The Third of May and/or Manet’s “The Execution of Maximilian”. Dorman is trying to figure out where he belongs within the raging, transforming river of art history. Each artist in this exhibition has looked behind, at the traditions and artists and methods of working that came before him, and asked “What else can I add?”

Beyond Graphic: Contemporary Drawing and Works on Paper
Through January 10
EVO Gallery
554 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe (in the Railyard District)
505-982-4610
www.evogallery.org

Pretty Disease(d)

2008-11-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

"Tumor"

During the early years of the 19th century in Russia, one could buy sweet, delicate porcelain figures depicting drunks and corrupt government officials to place on the fireplace mantel. During the Russian revolution, when ceramic factories were nationalized, one could add pretty farm girls flush with patriotic fever. During the Cold War, one might move some of those figures over to make room for a little national heroism: Polar explorer Ivan Papanin and his crew, perhaps, with their dog, Jolly.

Porcelain didn’t originate in Russia, of course. The material came to Russia through France and Italy by way of Marco Polo, who returned to Italy with a small, white vase from his travels to China in 1292.

Pure white porcelain, called Blanc de Chine, is the name the 19th century French gave to the porcelain they imported from Dehua county, China, where the pieces had been made primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries. The white clay is covered in a white glaze, sometimes with a bluish, brownish, or pinkish tint, but overall the works appear simple and austere. In 18th and 19th century Europe, the passion for porcelain ran parallel with the popularity of exotic items like coffee, tea and chocolate (all which could be stored in porcelain containers). Porcelain quickly symbolized wealth, status, and nobility.

All of this history is central to understanding why the contemporary porcelain figures of Linda Cordell, whose works are included in “Reconfigurine” at Santa Fe Clay through December 13, are so impressive. (Also included in the exhibition are ceramic figures by Lisa Clague and Debra Fritts.)

Cordell creates immaculately sculpted animals in white glazed porcelain. At first glance, before one recognizes unnerving details, the animals look like cliché reproductions of the 19th century figurines that might decorate a blue and white country kitchen: chickens, squirrels, deer. But her work is far from cliché. These are animals ravaged by ecological disaster, riddled with disease and unease. Like the ceramic propaganda manufactured in Russia, Cordell’s ceramics are not just pretty things.

“Mange” is a little dog twisting around to lick itself. At first look it one might assume the dog’s name is likely “Spot”, until one realizes that the spots are mange and the scratching and licking is the result of illness. “Infectious” is another dog on its back, genitals and open, tumor-like sores exposed on its underbelly. A squirrel stands on a tree stump, one arm raised toward the enormous tumor coming out of its right eye in “Tumor”.

"Rocket Deer"

Two works suggest messages that are layered rather than direct. “Rocket Deer” is just that—a deer with a rocket sticking into its back. It is just a matter of time before it explodes and the deer…oh, well...poor deer. The upper portion of a squirrel is mounted to a decorative plaque in “Fight/Flight”. This squirrel dons boxing gloves. He wants to fight back, but he can’t move. He can’t flee. He is firmly taxidermied. Cordell can be funny, but her message is sobering.

"Fight/Flight"

Cordell currently lives and works in Fredonia, New York, near Buffalo. She received her MFA from Louisiana State University and her BFA from Alfred University, which is well known for its ceramics program. This year, Cordell’s works have been included in several additional exhibitions, including “Confrontational Ceramics” at the Westchester Arts Council in Westchester, New York and “A Human Impulse: Figuration from the Diane and Sandy Besser Collection” at the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe.

Cordell’s works are painstakingly crafted, but not for the sake of craft alone. It is easy to get involved in glazing and surfacing techniques in ceramics, without any connection to the intended meaning or message of the work. Part of what makes Cordell’s works so extraordinary is that all of her choices—of clay body, glaze, style, scale, color—contribute directly to a clear point of view about animals and the environment. That she is aware of the history of her material, and is using all its references to the advantage of her message, is even more impressive.

White is the color of death and mourning in China, and some historians suggest that traditional Blanc de Chine symbolized loss. Whether or not that is accurate, Cordell’s work is certainly about loss—the loss of environmental balance and the suffering that results. That she crafts her ideas in a material that for centuries has represented gain and wealth only makes the works more ironic and unnerving. In Western terms, white represents purity, and if this is Cordell’s meaning, the irony is even stronger. How pure is our environment right now? Under the surface of manicured lawns and clean, public parks, how is nature actually faring? The fact is that few of us personally witness the erratic swimming of a dolphin lost in a river, or beaches covered with dead fish four deep. Cordell brings those realities to the gallery and the living room in the form of pretty, decorative, passive objects—physical representations of our psychological and emotional relationship with the truth.

Reconfigurine: Lisa Clague, Linda Cordell, and Debra Fritts
Through December 13
Santa Fe Clay
1615 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe (in the Railyard District)
505-984-1122
www.santafeclay.com

This review was originally published in the November 28, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Everything In Its Place

2008-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Lee Friedlander is a natural observer and careful organizer.

Just take a look at his 2005 photograph of a Santa Fe street titled “1684-26: Santa Fe, New Mexico”. The viewer might wonder exactly what he was taking a picture of—the telephone pole that is slightly to the left of center? Or perhaps the house between the telephone pole and the parking meter? There are obstructions at every turn: objects cut off unexpectedly, an unwieldy bush on the left pressing itself up against the telephone pole unattractively, the shadow of the pole leading the eye nowhere—it disappears off the right side of the composition. This is not a photograph of beautiful things, the viewer might hear herself mumble. But it’s really beautiful.

Which is exactly the point. This is not how most people using cameras take photographs. Most eyes looking through viewfinders idealize the world, pretty it up, edit out the rotten parts. They rely on beautiful subjects to make beautiful pictures, and that’s easy (and boring). Friedlander allows the world to present itself as it is—uncomfortable, thrown together, and humble. The camera’s viewfinder is a surrogate for Friedlander’s eye, which observes the underlying order in all that appears haphazard.

Between 1995 and 2005, Friedlander focused his camera on New Mexico, a subject he has returned to regularly since the 1960s. Nearly fifty in all, these photographs are on view through January 15 at Andrew Smith Gallery.

The world in Friedlander’s photographs is the eye-level, everyday world in which we all walk and drive. He often photographs what most of us edit out of our daily field of vision: telephone poles, road signs, fences, truck beds, the frame of the car window though which we admire the mountains. And he renders these banal objects so exquisitely that one wonders why we don’t give them equal time. As observers ourselves, we are clearly missing much.

Friedlander is a formalist, concerned with how he divides the rectangle of the photograph, how light and shadow divide space, and how foreground and background relate and merge. Many of his landscapes have strong verticals, horizontals, and diagonals, which Friedlander uses to create additional frames for smaller stories within the frame of the photograph.

The side and front car windows are both frames in “1499-14: New Mexico”. The edge of the car door splits the photograph in half, simultaneously splitting the roof of the gas station in the background. On the left side of this split a car points to the left; mirrored on the opposite side a car points to the right. The driver’s side window is open half way, splitting the window frame and the rear view mirror frame in half. The edge of this window cuts exactly between the two buildings reflected in the rear view mirror. All of this cutting-in-half is not accidental. This is the photographer, seeing what is ironically beautiful about this particular perceptual moment. In the midst of banality there is geometry and beauty. Foreground and background merge into a single visual field that can be cut into neat sections like a construction paper pie.

Friedlander has been photographing the landscape from his car for decades now. There is a truthfulness to these images that is jolting; we like to pretend the car isn’t part of how we experience nature, but for many of us, it is the only way we experience the landscape. Friedlander not only reminds us of this, he shows us how the car can be a compelling part of the visual story.

In other compositions, Friedlander pacts the photograph nearly edge to edge with leaves, bushes, trees. It is difficult to see through the brush, and if we do, as in “1684-18: Santa Fe” we might see a glimpse of something (in this case, the American flag). Again, this is a natural and realistic representation of how we see the world. Our vistas are often dense and obstructed. If Jackson Pollock made photographs, they would look like these: all-over mark, edge-to-edge, lacking a focal point or a way through.

The urban landscape is divided into vertical strips in many of Friedlander’s works. In “1499-3: New Mexico”, a nearly vacant intersection is host to a row of skinny poles (roads signs, telephone poles, and a stop sign) which stand like cartoon characters on a triangular island. Their shadows cast long, dark, diagonal lines toward the viewer. There is nothing emotionally or psychologically striking about these objects or this space. What is striking is Friedlander’s intuitive ability to recognize the moment when the bland becomes miraculous.

Considering the time in which we are living, when the magical Disney-like years of massive wealth and privilege are gone and we are, like our grandparents, finding inventive ways to conserve and stretch our resources, these photographs seem especially poignant. They are not about excess, glamour and status. They don’t rely on beautiful faces or places.

After the events of the last year, we know we can’t rely on glitter. Friedlander shows us that we don’t need to.

Lee Friedlander: New Mexico
Through January 15
Andrew Smith Gallery
203 W. San Francisco Street, Santa Fe
505-984-124
www.andrewsmithgallery.com

This review was originally published in the November 21, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Get Real

2008-11-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

Today’s column is the fourth in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Margaret Bowland "Models"

Aware of how difficult it can be to draw a convincing sketch of, say, a sailboat, during a game of Pictionary, many of us are awe-struck by an artist’s ability to create a painting that copies nature so exactly that it’s mistaken for a photograph. It takes years of careful observation and daily practice to master realist techniques. It isn’t easy.

But what does realism provide the viewer beyond the “wow” factor? Skill alone is a cool visual trick. It’s impressive and fun. But skill combined with something else—something emotionally or intellectually convincing—is worth a longer look.

The 15th Annual Realism Invitational at Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe is an opportunity to compare the works of realist artists from around the world. There is a wide range of realist styles in the show, but the variety is curated well and it is possible to appreciate each work individually.

Some of the artists (Doug Webb, Daryl Poulin, Robert Peterson, and Bill Fogg) make works that demand nothing more from the viewer than admiration for the artist. There is little suggestion of a point of view about the world; there is simply a landscape or a still life or a figure presented with concentrated neutrality. As a conceptual or theoretical position this would be dynamic and interesting. But these artists are concerned with making a living rather than making a point. And that’s why these works are ultimately forgettable.

Gustavo Schmidt attempts to turn his skill into something more, but his trickiness is so silly that it obscures his sincere desire to illuminate the spiritual within the physical. “Ascension Series-Understanding”, is a traditional still life of lemons on a glass shelf in front of a shiny red silk background. Except that a lemon is ascending, literally, like Christ or the Virgin, up the center of the composition. Worse, the artist has painted “speed lines” (as comic artists call them) which indicate to you, dear viewer, that the lemon is moving up. It’s beautifully painted and intellectually embarrassing.

Aristides Ruiz
"La Llamada"

Aristides Ruiz is as technically skillful with watercolor and a ball-point pen as Schmidt is with paint. His urban landscapes and portraits (rendered with the sitter’s eyes closed) are about as photo-realist as it gets, but they reveal an honest humanity that is visceral and moving. The materials and the technique are secondary to the emotional impact of the work. In Ruiz’s work, realism is a means rather than an end.

John Brosio’s work, “Jerk in a Field”, is a poignant human comedy. A man drinks a beer while he passively watches the tornado heading his way. The message (trouble is on the horizon, and we are absurdly partying down) is what sticks in the viewer’s mind. The realistic style of the work keeps the message from being abstract; copying nature is not what the painting is about. In his artist’s statement, Brosio writes, “I tend to think of my work as more allegorical than anything, often calling juxtaposition into play, grabbing for what is "larger than life" and exploring its role in modern American identity. It is this identity which fascinates me, our increasingly constant - maybe even numb -relationship to the overt and extreme which drives the work. And the challenge for me, the fun, is an exploration of how to anchor a choice of visually allegorical elements - often seemingly disparate - into the truly inevitable relationships they actually are.”
John Brosio "Jerk in a Field"

Margaret Bowland’s large, ambitious paintings are welcome surprises in the show. At first, Bowland’s highly skillful and academic rendering of the figure and her ability to paint just about anything (sky, crows, people, jewelry, balloons) seems to be the point of the work. But then sly commentaries reveal themselves--about gender, power, race, beauty, and contemporary art. In Bowland’s work, the bravado of the artist’s hand is perhaps a slight-of-hand.

Bowland’s impressive rendering makes surreal situations believable and odd juxtapositions acceptable. But there are conflicts. The naked bodies we see in advertising and the movies are mostly female and white; most of Bowland’s are dark-shinned and one is a dwarf. The discomfort comes not from Bowland’s choice of subject but from the viewer’s conventional notions of female beauty, “normalcy”, and race.

A female dwarf, Anna, who is a frequent model for Bowland, stands naked next to a disheveled bed in “Models”. A dark-skinned female, topless in her black underwear, stands on the left, her body cut vertically in half by the left edge of the canvas and her head cut off by the top. She wears a good necklace and bejeweled heels. We are confronted equally with what compels us (signifiers of sex and desire) and what repeals us (“the other”). Bowland’s choice to render her ideas realistically keeps us from intellectually running off into the comfort of abstraction or suggestion. This is it, as it is, and the viewer must deal with it.

Anna stands on art magazines tossed on the floor and open to images of paintings by New York art stars Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin. Yuskavage and Currin are known for their overtly sexualized images of (mainly white) women. But under the feet of the naked dwarf, Yuskavage’s and Currin’s messages seem easy and comfortable. Bowland is being ballsy here, and it’s smart.

Margaret Bowland "Murikami Wedding"

The messages in “Murikami Wedding” are also complex and intelligent. A dark-skinned woman in white-face, wearing a wedding dress, looks straight out at viewer from the center of the composition. She is flanked on either side by young girls in party dresses, also dark-skinned, one in white-face and the other not. The wallpaper behind them, and the floor beneath them, are spotted by helium balloons and packed with images by the Japanese pop culture artist Takashi Murikami. There are conflicts here as well: between celebration and insolence, us and them, high and low culture, acceptable and unacceptable ideas of beauty. Why aren’t Bowland’s snappy, smart and powerful images in the contemporary art spotlight? They should be.

In her artist’s statement, Bowland writes, “… After watching Anna leave my studio, I have knelt on the floor, stooped even lower, crawled, to see the room as she sees it.” Realist artists who show us what we’ve already seen aren’t giving us much. Realist artists who reframe our experience, who ask us to metaphorically “kneel on the floor or stoop a little lower”, are demanding that we stop idealizing or inventing our experience and instead directly see the truth. In doing so, they ask us to be a little more compassionate, a little wiser, and a lot more real.

15th Annual Realism Invitational 2008
Through November 30
Klaudia Marr Gallery
668 Canyon Road, Santa Fe
505-988-2100
art@klaudiamarrgallery.com

This review was originally published in the November 14, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

De(cor)rivitive

2008-11-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

Today’s column is the third in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Karen Gunderson
"Churning Sea (after Moby)"

Last year, William Siegal moved his gallery from the corner of Palace and Grant to a 5,000 square foot space in the Railyard. The move allowed him to hang the Andean textiles and Meso/South American, Chinese, southeast Asian, and African antiquities he has assembled over three decades next to mid-century and contemporary art. This aesthetic combo-platter could easily result in an unappealing visual cacophony, but not under the sharp eye of Siegal and his staff. Despite the fact that the works in this gallery span centuries of time and innumerable human perspectives, it works. This is true even of the Diego Rivera studies for the Detroit mural, hung next to a large case of mostly Pre-Columbian figurative sculptures in stone and clay. Both groupings share clean, graphic lines and simplistic, bold forms that describe figurative details with economical skill. All of the gallery objects share textural, sensual qualities that dominate any narrative or representative content. Siegal presents art that is graphic, formally dynamic, and sophisticated—work that hits the visual gut.

Currently intermixed with antiquities, mid-century art, and a contemporary stable of artists are works by six artists new to the gallery: three from New Mexico and three from New York. Their works are on view through November 21.

“ We chose artists for this show who are unique, whose work is not derivative,” explains Ylise Kessler, an art consultant who joined William Siegal Gallery a few months ago to curate and sell contemporary art. (This is a laudable intention, but the absolutely unique is rare and normally so off-kilter that it is initially rejected, particularly if the work lacks the current, socially accepted requirements of good taste.) The new artists represented by Siegal make work that is meticulously crafted, aesthetically pleasant, and in the very best sense of the word, decorative. Karen Gunderson’s paintings are painted with the blackest of black paint in rolling waves that seem inches thick. The surface is surprising thin, but the grooves created by the brush reflect light and suggest intense, implied depth. One painting, “Curning Sea”, which hangs near a window, reflects the blue tones of the New Mexico sky and is placed next to a huge black torso from 1976 by Pedro Coronel (a supurb juxtaposition). Another Gunderson, “Rounding the Cape”, reflects the yellow of the overhead lighting. As the viewer moves around the room, the waves of black paint appear to move as well. Gunderson’s paintings are quite hypnotic and perceptually fun.

But they are not derivative-free. In her artist’s statement, Gunderson says that, “My paintings are universally recognizable, and familiar to anyone who has ever seen the sea.” They are also familiar to anyone who has ever seen the graphite drawings or wood engravings of Vija Celmins, whose images of the sea are as much about light and movement as Gunderson’s, using exactly the same subject matter and composition. Celmins began her sea drawings in the 1960s.

Willy Bo Richardson grew up in Santa Fe, got his M.F.A. at Pratt, and returned to the southwest. His oil paintings are vertical washes of color, mostly greens, blues, and golds, that bleed into each other. The titles of the works suggest content outside of the formal abstraction, even though the paintings seem only to be about paint, color, line, and process. The vertical washes in “Poseidon” are curved slightly in such a way that the canvas itself seems warped. (Poseidon would strike the ground with his trident if offended, causing shipwrecks and earthquakes, but this may not be the interpretation Richardson intended.)

Patrick McFarlin’s tiny, thickly painted landscapes and still lifes, hung at varying distances from the wall, are the most highly saturated objects in William Siegal Gallery. McFarlin’s style references Bay Area figurative painting and Abstract Expressionism. Most of the images are deserted, southwestern spaces with dilapidated billboards or empty roads. In one painting, a billboard, surrounded by a yellow sky, reads simply “Peaches”. Yummy.

Cyrilla Mozenter
"Tomb"

Cyrilla Mozenter hand sews wool into boxes that suggest architectural forms. Each sewn seam is animated with loose threads. These works, from Mozenter’s “Warm Snow” series, are sweet and tender like fairytales. They suggest a solitary childhood, where imagination is one’s best friend. In her artist’s statement, Mozenter says that she is “attempting to push felt to do what it doesn’t want to do while maintaining its integrity as a material.” She succeeds, but pushing the scale to near impossibility would be an exciting next step. Right now, the works are the size, and comfort level, of a microwave.

Chris Enos’s large format Polaroids of decaying flowers are technically beautiful, but the metaphorical suggestion (what is young and fresh decays, but the decay itself is beautiful, too) is a cliché one-liner. Enos has an eye for composition, color and scale that makes these photographs worth looking at anyway.

The most unique work is by New Yorker David Henderson, who creates other-worldly sculptures; each piece seems to float with one “finger” lightly touching the wall to steady itself. The Jetsons-like, bulbous, indefinable forms look like they were bashed by meteorites and somehow survived slick and sexy. Inspired by a 1928 pulp science novel given to him by his uncle, Henderson is a space-ship builder wanna-be. He designs his sculptures on the computer, makes positive shapes from a variety of materials from which he crafts molds, and uses the molds to form the final fiberglass and carbon fiber works.

David Henderson
"Blackbird"

Henderson’s sculptures are the reason to visit this show. He uses forms, processes, and materials that all refer back to his initial desire--to build a spacecraft—an idea, literal at first, that transformed into a series of interesting questions about weight, gravity, physics, and the perfection of imperfection. As visually gorgeous and meticulously crafted as Henderson’s sculptures are, they are not at all decorative.

New Artists New Work
Through November 21
William Siegal Gallery
540 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe
505.820.3300
www.williamsiegal.com

This review was originally published in the November 7, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Re-Newing New Mexico

2008-11-29T19:41:00.000-08:00

Today’s column is the second in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Armando Espinosa
"Despertar"

“Re-new”, the Santa Fe Community Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, highlights the diversity and breath of northern New Mexico art and craft. According to gallery manager Robert Lambert, seventy-eight artists submitted portfolios and additional artists were recommended or discovered. A curatorial committee of four arts professionals who represent local galleries and arts organizations narrowed the selection down to a few dozen, and Lambert made the final choices. During the curatorial process, the committee was sensitive and thoughtful about representing the breath of artistic practice and cultural tradition in northern New Mexico. In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, local Hispanic artists were particularly emphasized; their works are indicated by bright orange tags.

The title of the show, “Re-New”, cleverly refers to the renewal of the convention center itself, as well as the re-visioning of Santa Fe as a regional and international center of art and culture. The premise is optimistic and fun. Only three of the twenty-nine artists, Marie Romero Cash, Julian Romero, and Nancy Hidding Pollock, made works specifically for the show, and the remaining works do reference the theme of renewal in some way (Mateo Romero’s large painting of a military tank, “Fallujah”, is, according to Lambert, “a curatorial stretch”). But the title, “Re-New”, is untenably broad and does little to unify the wide range of works represented here.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t compelling work to look at—there is. James Koehler’s “Harmonic Oscillation XL”, a 40 inch square monochromatic blue weaving made with hand-dyed wool is quiet and meditative. If a work of art can actually educe tenderness, compassion and peace in a viewer, this work succeeds. Koehler’s compositional structure references the works of Bauhaus painter and color theorist Johannes Itten. Three squares nest inside each other, evenly spaced. Unlike Itten’s paintings, though, the two inner squares are nearly obscured by soft rippling forms that shift in value so subtly that the viewer can not locate where the shifts begin and end—quite a feat, particularly in a hand-made textile. The work is based on a famous Zen koan, A Woman Comes Out of Absorption, in which an enlightened being, Manjushri, unsuccessfully attempts to bring a woman out of meditative absorption. Instead of illustrating the scene, Koehler creates a work that elicits the meditative experience in the viewer. The inclusion of Koehler’s work recognizes Santa Fe as a center for spiritual and contemplative practice. It also exemplifies the local art community’s appreciation for reductive and minimalist art.

Artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Marsden Hartley, and Paul Strand brought modernism to New Mexico from New York, and their lasting influence is represented here as well. Siddiq Khan’s mixed media painting, “Lineage Series 4” is a series of large, abstract forms emerging from painterly marks. Chip Dunahugh, who moved to Santa Fe from the east coast himself just a few years ago, owes much to 1940’s geometric abstraction in his painting, “ A Little Jig Number 7”.

Nancy Hiding Pollock
"History 1"

The works that diverge from American modernism to form hybridizations with other traditions, or with contemporary perspectives and subjects, are some of the most intriguing works in the show. Nancy Hidding Pollock combines expressionist painting, the Southwest landscape, local history, and scientific/mathematical equations inspired by Los Alamos in her mixed media work on metal, “History 1”. The merging of these elements visually represents the eclectic mix of culture, history, science and nature that defines New Mexico. In fact, a tourist in Santa Fe who visits the exhibition, and who wants to learn about what made the city so unique, should start with Pollock’s work.

Two represented modes of creative practice illustrate Santa Fe’s extreme artistic breath: traditional arts, particularly those that exemplify New Mexico’s Hispanic history, and works that prove Santa Fe’s deepening connection with the international, contemporary art world.

Ruben Gonzalez’s wooden doors, made from antique wood he found in Illinois, are a gorgeous example of the tenderness with which local craftsmen and women link the past to the future and preserve the skills New Mexicans deeply value. Miquel Chavez’s talent is represented by a traditional tin mirror frame and carved banco. (Chavez will demonstrate traditional wood carving techniques in the gallery tomorrow, Saturday, November 1, from noon to 4:00 pm, admission free). Julian Romero’s work, created specifically for this exhibition, is a relief wood carving of a skeleton being brought to life by God’s touch. Also included are Marion Martinez’s “mixed tech media” sculptures, made from discarded circuit boards, inspired by her Hispanic and Native American roots and her childhood in Los Alamos.

Carol Coates
"Dialogue"

Carol Coates’ towering work, “Dialogue”, a wavy sculptural box on the wall, rising 144 inches, contains images of peachy bodies transferred onto layered scrims of canvas and mesh. Her impressive work, along with an altered book, “Hopi Maiden”, by Joy Campbell, and a video, “Despertar (Awakening)” by Armando Espinosa, represent contemporary artistic practices that honor culture and history. Espinosa and his partner, Craig Johnson, have recently completed a collaborative project with a village in southern Oaxaca, Teotitlán del Valle. The artists call their work “fair trade art and anthropology” and their primary purpose is cultural understanding. Espinoza and Johnson were visiting artists at the Santa Fe Art Institute last summer, and their inclusion in this show illustrates the collaborative possibilities between the city and the region’s private arts organizations.

The purpose of a community gallery is to celebrate local talent, and the Santa Fe Arts Commission, with Lambert’s leadership, is off to a good start. But while local visitors to the gallery will recognize artists’ names and New Mexico’s cultural traditions, visitors from outside New Mexico might not. The lack of informational text for this exhibition is intentional; Lambert wants to leave interpretations open. While his desire to avoid didactic discourse is understandable, contextual information will only enrich and sharpen how regional art is experienced and understood by tourists. Without information, visitors will leave the gallery with a mental snapshot of New Mexican art divorced from its multiple contexts—and context is the heart of any story.

“Re-New” at the Santa Fe Community Gallery
through December 12
201 W. Marcy, (at the intersection of Marcy and Sheridan), Santa Fe
505) 955-6705

This review was originally published in the October 31, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Feeling It

2008-10-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today’s column is the first in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews will illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Sarah Barsness “Underdog”

Eila Kovanen and Michael Wong were students at the San Francisco Art Institute when they met five years ago. “We were both trying to understand how to make work about our emotional experiences,” said Wong in an instant message, “and we were thinking about how to do that as individuals and collaboratively.” But colleges and galleries were embracing what Kovanen calls “intellectually clever work”. Wong and Kovanen wondered where, and if, their feeling-based work might fit within the cerebral and theoretical discourse.

After graduation, Wong was invited to show his work at a vintage store that doubled as a gallery, cleverly named Mixed Use; he encouraged the owners to include Kovanen’s work, too. There was resonance between Kovanen and Wong’s work, but their ideas had nothing in common with the third artist that the gallery added, and it was with ironic accuracy that the gallery titled the show, “Mixed Up”.

In 2005, Kovanen and Wong, in collaboration with Victor Barbieri, Verónica Sahagún, and Robin Ward, decided to curate a show of their own, “You Know How I Feel”. Several years in the making, “You Know How I Feel” is now on view in the Muñuz Waxman Gallery at the Center for Contemporary Arts. “You Know How I Feel” includes the works of the five core artists and a co-curated group of international guest artists. Despite years of collaboration and an impressively curated installation, this show is on view for only two weeks.

Installation view of
You Know How I Feel at CCA

The curatorial premise, when represented by successful work, is a powerful reminder of how emotionally disconnected we are, what we are missing, and the ways we call to each other. All of the artists are sincere, but some touch the perfect nerve in a palpable way.

Editing would only make this good group show better. Some of the artists use uninteresting and obvious metaphors. Some pieces are derivative of works by well-known artists. Victor Barbieri’s slow motion silent videos of a family grouping or a young woman crying are near imitations of Bill Viola’s “The Passions”.

A few works almost hit the mark. Lara Beth Mitchell’s life-size drawing, “Portrait of My Mother”, depends on the model’s literal nakedness and surgically removed breast for its emotional power, but it is the meticulous drawing of the hands and head, and the placement of the mother’s head at the viewer’s eye-level, that really pokes at the heart.

The artists who use sources outside the self in order to represent personal, inner, emotions have created the most successful pieces in the show. Michael Wong’s tender and watery charcoal drawings of people in banal, everyday settings appear at first to be portraits of close family or friends. They are, in fact, stills from television shows (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and movies (“The Crying Game”). The stills are scenes that are personally and emotionally evocative for Wong--scenes in which Wong feels empathy for a fictional character’s feelings. All of Wong’s compassion is translated into the literal touch of his mark. The viewer can feel how much he cares. It is so sincere and unpretentious it is almost embarrassing.

Robin Ward
"Cyborg Manifesto"

In her mixed media drawings on paper, Robin Ward relies on images of animals to explore human emotions, particularly need, desire, belonging, and loss. Often the animals are disembodied, floating, in a non-descript atmosphere. In “Cyborg Manifesto”, a polo player leans over a horse that has an artificial, rear leg. Nearby a chicken walks on insect legs. A baby with a cyborg arm stands near another baby with wheels for legs. All of these creatures seem sad and breakable despite the mechanical reinforcement. For all that is going on in Ward’s skillful drawings, there is a disconcerting “hole”, an emptiness, a lack of acknowledgment that generates unease.

Eila Kovanen creates soft photographs of materials that are used to reinforce or protect (bubble wrap, window screen). The materials have been punctured, hurt. These images are achy, delicate, sympathy-inducing. Kovanen’s decision to shoot the images slightly out of focus, almost as if they are in the periphery of the eye, increases the feeling of vulnerability. Kovanen also photographed the greasy top of a plastic bottle, speckled with dust and pubic hair, and titled it “Sexoil”. It is dirty in every sense. It is also delicate and truthful.

Eila Kovanen
"Sexoil"

Sarah Barsness’ “Underdog” is defenseless, humorous and horrifying all at the same time. A stuffed pink dog, flayed over an equally flayed mink coat, has been sewn to a pink, circular blanket, the sort of blanket a child carries around for comfort. This is an unkind womb, or a torture device, or a contemporary re-visioning of Titian’s “Flaying of Marsyas”. It is an illustration of our most pathetic, self-indulgent emotions—those moments when we feel like victims, like underdogs.

There are many other works in this show, many surprises that this article does not reveal. It is worth a trip to CCA this weekend to see “You Know How I Feel” before it closes on October 26.

And while you are there, stop in to see “A Humble Project” in the Spector-Ripps Project Space. If Thomas Haddad’s story of surviving the world trade tower collapse, and the way in which he tip-toed around his own broken heart by drawing other disasters and mythological figures doesn’t get to you, then the collaborative response of the Humble Collective (Matt the Knife Tsoodle, Micha Wesley, Rose B. Simpson, and Cannupa Hanska Lugar), an “elephant in the room” made entirely of white balloons, will. It is perfect.

“You Know How I Feel” (Muñuz/Waxman Gallery through October 26)
“A Humble Project” (Spector Ripps Project Space through November 1)
Center for Contemporary Arts
1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe
505.982.1338
www.ccasantafe.org

This review was originally published in the October 24, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Struck by the Sublime

2008-10-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

Constance
DeJong
Untitled Stainless

There is no other way to say it: this is a stunning exhibition. Constance DeJong’s works cause the viewer to forget the world and the self—to stop thinking. Utilizing a reductive palette of materials, DeJong has created works that one might dare to call sacred--sacred in that spontaneous, visceral way in which one experiences an object before a thought takes hold.

In her exhibition, “Shift”, on view at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art through October 31, DeJong has reduced terror and beauty, dark and light, the somber and transcendent, into a sublime, aesthetic awe. It would be simple, and incorrect, to say that this is formalist or minimalist work. It isn’t.

Although DeJong’s works are made of metal, they are visually soft. “Big Black Work With Three Tilting Planes #2” is composed of three vertical, tilting, and converging rectangles hanging a foot off the ground on the white gallery wall. The entire work is human scale-six feet tall by 100 inches wide. The edges of each rectangle, shaped like a wedge, reveal the glowing orange of the bare copper. The front faces of each are black: a dense, subterranean black that absorbs light. This work is a sculpture and a painting--a painting of time and movement, stillness and infinity. Without knowing DeJong’s process, it is evident that this surface was carefully crafted and meticulously felt. A reproduction of this work will not communicate much, especially on newsprint. Like Mark Rothko’s paintings, DeJong’s works demand intimacy with the viewer. A snapshot will not do; you must show up and have a conversation with the work, in person, in real time.

Constance
DeJong
Big Black Work With Three Tilting Planes #2

Most of the works in the exhibition adhere to the same
organizational structure: three angled rectangles hanging side-by-side. The number three has many cultural and symbolic meanings that seem to resonate with the work: the divisions of time (past, present, future), the human abilities of thought, word and deed, the Christian trinity, the three aspects of the Egyptian sun god (rising, midday, setting), and even the three grammatical forms of self: me, myself and I.

"I work with numerical logic, in some cases with classic mathematical ratios like the Golden Mean, to generate or guide form in very precise ways,” says DeJong during a phone interview. “Within this rigorous framework, the surfaces are meant to express the nature of elemental processes like gravity, the movement of water etc. I work on the copper pieces outside, pouring the patina solution in layers, sometimes over the course of a month or more until a surface is realized. I don’t intervene but I do make decisions about which naturally produced surface is expressing the right quality. Then I seal it.”

Like DeJong, Rothko worked in watery layers, rubbing thin paint into the canvas. According to art historian Dore Ashton, "his surfaces were velvety as poems of the night." DeJong’s copper works suggest something similarly elegiac. They refer to what is constantly apparent or looming in oneself, the core that lacks a name or solid form.

“Untitled Stainless” is a work that is nearly identical in size and form to “Big Black Work”, but its presence is dramatically different. This work is made of unmilled steel that DeJong mentioned is difficult to find. This is steel in its pure state, before it is manufactured into a utilitarian object. The surface, which DeJong carefully chose but did not alter, is highly reflective and creamy. The water-like surface is intersected by a row of screws. They refer to the construction of the work and to its existence as an object. Without the screws, the transcendent power of the surface, light, and scale would be uninterrupted.

The exhibition includes very small works, made of steel, aluminum and silver that pull the viewer into an internal and sensual world. Their intimacy is as powerful as the larger works.

In addition—and this shouldn’t be missed—another installation of DeJong’s works has been installed at Charlotte Jackson’s project space just off Airport Road. A to-scale cardboard model of a large rectangle is propped against the wall next to rectangles in materials with which DeJong is experimenting. Upstairs, small paintings made of stained copper plates hang in plastic bags on the wall. A visit to the project space will reveal DeJong’s quiet and careful working process and deepen the viewer’s experience with the work.

Constance DeJong
Installation in the Project Space

Edmund Burke, who published the “Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” in 1757, believed that terror or pain, along with beauty, is key to experiencing the sublime. According to Burke, a feeling of the sublime is only possible during a fully absorbed sense of astonishment, “in which all…motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other."

Burke’s sublime is experienced when we witness (and are struck silent by) natural disasters, oil spills, and forest fires. These days, Burke’s sublime is all around us. It is this particular quality of the sublime that is present in DeJong’s works. They are not beautiful in a “pretty” sense. Their beauty is sourced from those things that are somber and detached. This is not a negative sense of detachment, but rather the fact of how things really are—a Zen-like acceptance of the true nature of life. All of it, from the pleasurable to the horrific, is life, and life is wonder.

Constance DeJong
Shift
Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
200 W. Marcy Street, Suite 101, Santa Fe
505-989-8688
www.charlottejackson.com
The Project Space is located at 7511 Mallard Way. Call the gallery for directions and hours.

This review was originally published in the October 17, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Playing in the Shadows

2008-10-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

Georges Thiewes

Tumble

One of the pioneers of abstraction, the Russian-born Kazimir Malevich, coined the term Suprematism in 1915 to describe a type of artistic practice that rejected narrative, social or political content in art and instead championed works of pure form with spiritual qualities. Along with Piet Mondrian, he is often cited as a forefather of 1960s and '70s Minimalism.

In his 1918 painting “Suprematist Composition: White on White,” Malevich tried to eliminate all superfluous elements, including color. This landmark work was followed by a series of plaster sculptures he called “architectons,” forms which were simultaneously models of imaginary buildings and three-dimensional realizations of Suprematism's main tenants. Walking through George Thiewes' installation of new works, “Penumbra in White,” on view through Oct. 25 at EVO Gallery, Malevich's architectons come immediately to mind.

When one is standing just outside the gallery's front door and peering inside, Thiewes' works appear to be singular large, gray lines drawn across the gallery's white walls. When one walks into the space, the drawings transform into sculptures: long, thin slats of white painted steel protruding from the walls, casting deep shadows. The shadows are louder and more dynamic than the objects themselves. From a distance, these sculptures seem to be undulations in the walls, seams perhaps.

The slices of light and shadow in Thiewes' work are perceptually similar to the geometric shapes of shadow and light in Malevich's architectons. From a distance, both Thiewes' and Malevich's sculptures appear to be flat, geometric patterns — up close they are three-dimensional forms. Both artists are exploring the nature of human perception and the illusionistic natures of light and space.

Thiewes was a successful glass artist in the 1960s and 1970s, and changed his medium and approach to art-making in the 1980s. Like Malevich, he designed theater sets. It is clear that his work in glass and in theater provided much information about light and space, and about perceptual awareness and illusion. His sculptures were first exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2006. He lives and works in Tempe.

Even though there is a long sliver of an object protruding slightly from the wall, the real substance of Thiewes' work comes from the space literally cut into the wall next to the steel slat. This cut-out space is objectless. On close inspection, one can see that the shadow is created by this cut-out space, which, like the shadow, also has no solid form. In Thiewes' work, the Suprematist notion of pure form and nonobjective art moves away from the object (almost) altogether.

Penumbra at 1:35

George Thieves
Penumbra in White
Through October 25
EVO Gallery
554 South Guadalupe Street, Santa fe
505-982-4610
www.evogallery.org

This review was originally published in the October 10, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Diamond in the Rough

2008-10-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

Jack Slentz
Blue Tube

What is immediately striking about Jack Slentz’s reductive, geometric sculptures is the surface: slick, shiny, striped—and reflective. “Blue Tube” is a sculpture formed by two, rectangular tubes, each over a foot wide and a couple of feet long, intersecting at the center of each. The separate planes of the rectangular tubes have been cut from retroreflective sheeting, the material used for road signs. Each plane is attached to an adjacent plane with twisted wire laced through holes in the sheeting. The smooth, cool, geometry of the work is similar to the sculptures of the seminal minimalist Donald Judd.

During a studio visit, Slentz picks up “Blue Tube” and it wiggles enough that one wonders, nervously, if it is going to fall apart. The curly-q’s of wire and the slivers of space between the planes are the things that make Slentz’s work not like Judd. In fact, it is as if the Juddian order (if we can call it that) has fallen apart, and Slentz has taken some wire and tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The idea of taking Minimalism apart and putting it back together into something contemporary is an exciting idea, but is this what is going on in Slentz’s work? Maybe and no. More than any previous body of work, Slentz’s new sculptures, at Box Gallery through November 1, are concerned with perception--with making the viewer extremely aware of the autonomous object and the environment in which it exists. Installed on the floor, on pedestals, and on the walls, Slentz’s new works create an environment of sparkling, shifting jewels in yellow, red, blue and green. The surfaces visually echo the movement of light around the room, repeatedly reminding the viewer of her physical presence and visual perception.

In 1966, Robert Morris published a series of essays, “Notes on Sculpture”, in the journal Art Forum. He defended minimal art, suggesting that it provided a heightened awareness of the structure and function of human awareness. The following year, critic Michael Fried challenged the pretense of minimalism in his essay, “Art and Objecthood”; he wrote that the seeing and comprehending of art as nothing more than autonomous objects is impossible. The human mind looks for relationships and references, naturally and unconsciously.

Perhaps both ideas are true. Minimalist art, when it is successful, makes viewers aware of their awareness, but it is nearly impossible to stop there. Humans will relate shapes, colors, surfaces and even the scale of artworks to objects they recognize, often objects in their daily lives.

According to Slentz during an interview in his studio and also in his artist’s statement, he is inspired by relationships—the relationships between people and the internal relationship between conflicting emotions, like anger and kindness. He notices the shapes of objects (gears, man-hole covers, spears) and these forms, reduced, appear in this work. All of these sources are wonderful starting points, but are they (should they be) end-points as well? Slentz must decide. Presently, his ambivalence is showing. He sometimes titles his sculptures so that we return to the object (“Blue Tube”, “1 Into 8 Into 1”), but at other times his titles encourage associations outside of the object (“No U Turn”, “Shooting Star”). It is useful to experiment with both, but a conceptual commitment, one way or the other, will make Slentz’s point of view much clearer.

A craftsman gets ideas about how to use materials, and he makes new work based on the ideas the material permits. He values the workmanship much more highly than the idea his object communicates. The word “craft” comes form the German word “kraft”, which means ability. Slentz has developed significant ability--he can build a beautiful object from many materials (past work in wood and rubber is as visually and technically impressive as the current work). Slentz’s use of wire to hold the sculptures together, at several points along each edge, brings the viewer’s attention to the making--to the way the objects literally take shape.

An artist hunts for truth (or is against truth) and makes art that communicates his particular point of view about the truth of art, form, perception, society, human nature or mother-nature. His point of view—his truth—dictates all of his decisions about materials, process, scale, and technique. If his truth changes significantly, so will all of his formal decisions.

Which best describes Slentz? It’s a tough call. And the answer is not necessarily either/or. What is certain is that Slentz’s sculptures are sincere, wonderful gems. If Slentz can pinpoint, for himself, why these gems should exist in the world and what they have to say, in the next show we’ll be seeing diamonds.

Jack Slentz
Intersection
October 3 – November 1, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, October 3, 5-7 pm
Box Gallery
1611A Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe
505-989-4897
www.boxgallerysf.com

This review was originally published in the October 3, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Contemporary Landscapes of the American West

2008-09-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

Artist Point
installation pics
Fine Arts Gallery,
College of Santa Fe
David Jones
Fool's Gold

David Jones' sculptures are small, doll house-like scenes of landscape colonized by humans. In "Fool's Gold," a vitrene covered with a glass dome, Jones shows us an overturned bathtub, a discarded house radiator, a tire, and an orange oil drum surrounded by barren earth and dry grass. Except for the glass dome, the work is made entirely of painted cast iron. The physical weight of the work is an effective metaphor for the "weight" of our actions. Jones shows us the part of the landscape we look past and ignore as we romantically admire the pink and purple sunset.

In another work by Jones, we encounter a to-scale, miniature billboard, just a few feet high off the ground. The attention to detail is impressive: the billboard is complete with painted-out graffiti and a fresh tag in the right-hand corner. The word "nowhere" stretches across the length of the sign. Made of cut-out dots that light up from behind, the word "nowhere" intermittently reads "now here." Jones' works are funny, and the humor is what keeps us present long enough to unconsciously swallow his serious message. In this way, Jones' works are wonderfully effective, sugar-coated pills.

Edgar Smith is a "mad professor" of materials and approaches. Smith's works include a gorgeously painted, realistic landscape diptych, drawings created from staples, wire and paint, and abstract, carved "trophies." While David Jones makes works based on intellectually planned concepts, Smith makes works that articulate what his intuition is sensing about the landscape. Smith is feeling around for clues. The works themselves, rather than Smith, offer the answers.

A visually simple painting, "Plain," is a good example. The minimal, monochromatic, thick layer of creamy paint is smooth at the top and rough at the bottom. The dividing line between smooth and rough is marked by a horizontal stretch of wire attached to the surface with a series of vertical metal staples. This piece, along with its companion, "Mountain," point out just how little visual information humans need in order to make a cognitive connections. A horizontal line is a horizon line. The upper half of an uneven, vertical ellipse is a mountain. These associations occur so quickly and completely that it is difficult to experience either work abstractly.

Smith's trophies, mixed-media wall pieces that include carved chunks of wood, reference animal trophy mounts without the messy carcass. In these works, Smith has "taxidermied" the landscape, and in doing so questions the notion that the American West can be "won" or conquered. Unfortunately, these works look so much like the sculptures of H.C. Westermann, the post-war artist who had great affinities to surrealism and Dada, that Smith is either looking at Westermann regularly or he is channeling him. One of Smith's works, "Melty Mountain (Infirm Peak)" is so much like Westermann's 1968 work "Untitled ('This Great Rock Was Buried Once for a Million Years')" that it is almost an unabashed copy.

Patrick Kikut, whose paintings and drawings are also included in "Artist Point," curated the exhibition. "I think that artists have to live in three worlds," he says during a phone interview. "The external world, or the time and space we live in; the internal world of thoughts and ideas; and the world of art history. I think the show looks at landscape from all three of these worlds: Jones' work is about the external landscape, Smith's work presents ideas about landscape, and I look at landscape from context of art history."

Kikut's shaped paintings on wood hang on many of the gallery's walls, placed high and low, floating ameba-like throughout the space. At first encounter, the works are abstract paintings about shape, mark, paint and the environment of the room itself. Some of the shaped paintings, by their texture and color, reference rocks. Others suggest color-field painting. The juxtaposition is equally intriguing and perplexing.

Kikut bases his works on the paintings of two romantic landscape painters, Thomas Moran and Caspar David Friedrich. Moran, a 19th century painter of the American West, is known for his dramatic paintings of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. His works have influenced how all Americans mentally visualize the landscape of their country. Friedrich, a German artist, made equally grand paintings of the German landscape. Unlike Moran's paintings, Friedrich's works were often laden with religious symbolism.

Kikut has successfully extracted the essence of each artist: the rugged, untamed physicality of the land that Moran described in his paintings of the American West, and the vapor-like skies in which Friedrich contemplated human existence. Kikut's Moran-influenced works hang below his Friedrich-inspired ones, and the space in between the two is the literal space of the gallery — the space the viewer inhabits. These works are most successful when Kikut's references and intentions are made known to the viewer.

Overall, "Artist Point" will be a more powerful experience for visitors if the conceptual framework is made known. The addition of a curatorial statement or statements by each of the artists will enrich the experience for viewers who are not fluent in contemporary art practice and theory. Kikut acknowledges "it's important for artists to interpret their work in written form for the viewer. It's hard for the public to keep up with contemporary art, especially in a time when artists are utilizing so many materials and styles, as well as historical and theoretical references."

"Artist Point" includes beautifully crafted works by three artists who thoughtfully consider landscape as physical space, as resource, and as metaphor. It shouldn't be missed.

Artist Point
Fine Arts Gallery, College of Santa Fe
1600 St. Michael's Drive
Through Oct. 17
(505) 473-6508
www.csf.edu/gallery
The Fine Arts Gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, from noon to 5 p.m.

This review was originally published in the September 26, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Big-Sky Mind

2008-09-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

When Joan Watts moved to New Mexico from New York in 1986, the light, space, and silence overwhelmed her, and the landscape became the influence critics and curators referenced when discussing her paintings. But there is something more complex in Watts' work. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the artist completed a series of paintings with titles such as Yantra, Zazen, and Zero that directly implied Hindu or Buddhist content.

Many writers have noted the spiritual qualities in Watts' paintings, using words like "ephemeral" to describe the luminosity of the paint, or "meditative" to describe her subtle formal choices — all outcomes, they suggest, of her examination of the landscape. I wonder if, instead, the light and space of New Mexico gave Watts (a dedicated Zen practitioner since 1989) the vehicle for relating the spiritual experiences she had on the meditation cushion and in her daily life.

I arrive at Joan Watt's home and studio on a gloriously sunny Memorial Day. She leads me into her impressive studio where her newest paintings, in cool gradations of blue, purple, and gray, line the warm, white walls. These paintings are included in her solo exhibit at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, opening on Friday, June 6. Paintings that span nearly 40 years of work, some on circular canvases, are neatly stored in racks on one wall of the studio. The chronological story of this work is included in a richly illustrated new monograph on Watt's life and paintings, published by Radius Books. The book features a foreword by former SITE Santa Fe director Louis Grachos and an essay by Art in America contributor Lilly Wei. Garcia Street Books hosts a talk and book signing with Watts and Wei on Saturday, June 7.

Each painting on her studio wall presents a gradation of colors — gradually lightening from darker shades and finally becoming purely white, so subtly that the changes are imperceptible. Watts invites me to move closer to the paintings so that I can see that the edges of the canvases were painted solid white. This is the tip-off, she says, that all of the painted mark is on the surface; that there is only an illusion of depth in the paintings — in actuality the paintings are truly flat. At one point, Watts began removing all evidence of gesture and mark in her paintings, and this tendency, along with the use of monochromatic color, led some to label her a minimalist. Watts' paintings use reductive forms, but all of her work references emotional and spiritual experience. But how do you make a physical object that directly expresses a spiritual or meditative experience?

Watts' new paintings include two distinct marks: the horizontal lines of the thick, dried gesso, and the wavy, horizontal marks of the paint itself, which she rubs into the surface with rags. "Everything is waves," Watts explains, "sound, light, water, energy. And there are waves during meditation — waves of thought.

"The transient and luminous light of New Mexico has certainly been a penetrating 'vehicle' enveloping my spiritual path, but it is also true that my spiritual path propels me to somehow discover the means to evoke light and space through painting," Watts says. After beginning her meditation practice in 1989, the process of making a painting also became a form of meditation for Watts. "Now when I begin a painting, I have only a vague feeling about where to go," she says. "The painting takes over, and I disappear. The process is no longer ego-bound. But the moment before the ego drops is pure fear. I know I am losing it — losing my ego as my base. It is the same experience in sitting meditation, when the ego drops away. When I am working, it is completely intuitive, and there is the intellectual aspect afterwards. Only later can I reflect — who painted that? While I am painting, there is no 'me,' no extra thought, no judgment."

Watts' work has a quality of reaching everywhere without being attached to the forms of the physical world. So when someone asks her what the paintings are about or what she means by them, the question is not easily answered, especially if the inquirer expects a response that relates to the world of objects and associations. That might be why one viewer of her works at the New Mexico Museum
of Art in Santa Fe left the angry indentation of his fist in one canvas. The ego demands something, anything, to attach itself to. But in Watts' paintings, there is no-thing.

I saw nothing in Rothko's paintings, I admit to Watts, until I visited the Rothko Chapel in Houston for the first time. When I entered the chapel and saw the huge black canvases, I didn't understand why anyone would present black paintings of nothing to describe spirituality. Why black? Why no religious images or symbols? I sat there for a long time repeating those questions to myself and really looking at the work. Then I saw it: the paintings weren't black — they were purple and many other subtle colors — and they slowly revealed themselves to me. Rothko had created an experience for me rather than showing me a picture. I walked in angry with Rothko and walked out in awe.

"I visited that chapel several times after my mastectomy," Watts says, "and also had a powerful experience with the work. Seeing the Rothko Chapel was healing for me, and it was the beginning of my meditation practice, although I didn't know it at the time."

This kind of discovery happens when viewers of art allow themselves to sit, to ask questions, and to allow questions. The work can then reveal itself. This kind of discovery can happen if one spends time with Watts' work rather than looking at it briefly.

In Not Always So, a collection of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher writes, "To exist in big mind is an act of faith, which is different from the usual faith of believing in a particular idea or being. It is to believe that something is supporting us and supporting all our activities including thinking mind and emotional feelings. All these things are supported by something big that has no form or color. It is impossible to know what it is, but something exists there, something that is neither material nor spiritual. Something like that always exists, and we exist in that space." Watts shows us how the inner landscape and the outer landscape are one and the same — one big space — and we exist in that space.

Joan Watts
Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, June 6; exhibit through June
Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, 200 W. Marcy St., Suite 101; 989-8688

This review was originally published in the June 6, 2008 issue of Pasatiempo/The New Mexican.

Too Cozy?

2008-09-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Love Armor

Shirley Klinghoffer guides the Humvee into CCA on September 12; volunteers cover it with the cozy

Early in his career, Picasso didn’t believe in mixing politics with art. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, appalled by Franco’s actions, he became a passionate supporter of the Republic. But when asked to create an anti-war mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair, Picasso was reluctant. And then a small Basque village in Northern Spain was bombed for over three hours, killing sixteen hundred people. Picasso, outraged, immediately began sketches for “Guernica”, the seminal anti-war artwork of the century. Picasso’s art did not stop any war, but it did stir people up, and some of those stirred actually got busy.

Art and politics can be uncomfortable bedfellows for many viewers, and difficult works for dealers to sell. According to Susan Landauer, chief curator at the San Jose Museum of Art in text written for the 2005 exhibition Visual Politics, The Art of Engagement, “... there has often been a deep ambivalence about mixing art and politics, even in periods of tremendous turmoil. This was at no time more evident than in the 1960s, when New York's market-driven avant-garde responded to the Vietnam War with Pop Art, Minimalism, and hard-edge abstraction, which cultural critic Susan Sontag characterized as the ‘aesthetics of silence.’”

We see those silent aesthetics now, especially in Santa Fe, where Southwestern landscapes, Modernist abstraction, cool Conceptualism and Minimalism are, even during seven years of war and economic decline, the most popular and lucrative art in its galleries. “Love Armor”, on view at the Center for Contemporary Arts through October 5, is a welcome reminder of where our attention, as artists and art viewers, has been lax.

Under the direction of Santa Fe artists Shirley Klinghoffer and Sarah Hewitt, over sixty women from all over the country knitted and croqueted a life-size “cozy” for a military Humvee M1026. According to Klinghoffer on the project’s website, “my vision is to take an icon of this war…and swaddle it in comfort and quiet…Knitting takes time, concentration, and may be considered a meditation. Today we sit down and knit meditatively thinking about the trauma occurring in the Middle East.”

It is that very process—people from disparate walks of life and locations around the country coming together to create a non-partisan symbol of compassion--that is the most successful part of the “Love Armor” project.

On September 2, local military officers drove the Humvee into the Munoz/Waxman gallery at CCA and tenderly covered the vehicle with the cozy. The action was deeply moving. On September 11, military officers returned, moving the cozy to a Humvee-shaped metal frame in the gallery, and driving the vehicle away. Both actions were witnessed by fewer than twenty people each time. Why weren’t more people present for the drive-in and the drive-out? Perhaps it was scheduling (both events occurred on weekdays when most people are at work and most children in school). Perhaps it was a general feeling of ho-hum, Humvee; ho-hum, politics. It is hard to know.

Although the project is deeply sincere in its intention, several of Hewitt and Klinghoffer’s choices weaken the cozy itself as an art object. The cozy is knitted of white cotton rope, and the result looks like late-1960s macramé. That reference links the project to Vietnam and the craft-based art of the same era instead of to contemporary America or Iraq. Referencing Vietnam might serve as a powerful reminder of how swiftly history repeats itself, but mostly it softens the project’s emotional kick. The viewer gets lost in sentimentality. Complicating this further, Klinghoffer and Hewitt chose to “draw” the details of the Humvee-its windows, doors, license plate—with variations in the pattern of the knit. The cozy becomes a sweet, cartoon-ish
illustration of a Humvee instead of its own, separate, symbol of compassion. Both of these
points are reinforced by the (way too cute) knitted license plate, which reads “LUVARMR”.

As a point of comparison, “My Humvee (inversion therapy)”, a work created by Peter Hennessey, was featured at the Melbourne Art Fair just last month, and is now in the permanent collection of the University of Queensland Art Museum. Hennessey built a life-size replica of a Humvee, using black painted wood, and stood the vehicle vertically it on its nose. That simple action makes Hennessey’s Humvee simultaneously menacing and impotent. Hennessey encourages the viewer to connect many dots: the work references war, domination, power, wastefulness, architecture, and consumption. It takes your breath away.

“The cozy does obliterate the image of the Humvee,” explains Klinghoffer. “It looks innocent. It is the work of many hands who came together to open a dialog. It is giving voice to the fact that there are good people there for us, fighting—so it gives voice to the fact that we do have compassion for our troops. The interactive area of the exhibition is a venue for that understanding and sharing. If someone comes in and asks what this is about—that is something.”

Some viewers will subconsciously believe that visiting “Love Armor” and applauding Klinghoffer and Hewitt’s efforts is protest enough. Instead, political artists hope to light the fire of passionate action. Klinghoffer plans to tour “Love Armor” around the country. Perhaps “Love Armor” will help launch a broad community-based effort, the kind of effort that will pressure our politicians to bring our troops home.

Love Armor
Center for Contemporary Arts, Munoz/Waxman Gallery
1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe
505-982-1338
www.lovearmorproject.com
Through October 5

This review was originally published in the September 19, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Hair Apparent

2008-09-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Agustina Woodgate
Brush Series - My Great Grandmother Beba
silver brush, Beba's hair, 2007

Originally from Argentina, Woodgate has lived in Miami for the past three years. “Why do I use hair? “Woodgate continues with an animated laugh. “My work is autobiographical and narrative. I'm a storyteller. I research my own dreams, curiosities, and desires. I am interested in absurdity, so my work is never one thing. But I brought no hair with me to Santa Fe. I am not a hair artist. I am a conceptual artist. I use whatever materials best fit my ideas.”

Woodgate arrived in Santa Fe from Miami on Sept 1. Asked what she is planning to do in New Mexico, she grins and says, “I don't know yet. But you know how ideas happen. They are inspired by experiences or a place. And I love the desert. So we'll see.”

Woodgate is in Santa Fe as an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI), one of the most intimate and innovative venues for seeing contemporary art in Santa Fe. Located on the College of Santa Fe campus on St. Michael's Drive, SFAI hosts one of the smartest, free art events in the city—Open Studio. The artists who come to SFAI can easily slip in and out of town unnoticed. But if the art-loving public realizes what they're missing, that will change.

Once a month, the artists- and writers-in-residence open their studios to the public and welcome dialog with visitors, allowing anyone who's interested to see what most of us never see: the art before it is completed—when it is in its awkward (and exciting) adolescent state. There's free parking and free refreshments. Best of all, though, is the rare opportunity to ask questions, share stories, and get intimate insights into how artists think and work. One helpful addition would be a resident listing on the SFAI Web site, which would give visitors a head's up about who they will meet at the next Open House.

SFAI hosts an international array of artists and writers for periods of one to three months, all year long. The artists live in private, modern rooms at the Institute itself, and are provided large, open studios on site. According to residency director Gabe Gomez, “Our residents come from all over the world, so the Open Studio provides an opportunity for them to engage with the local community in meaningful way. The Open Studios are a combined event. We begin with readings from our writers and then we tour the visual artists' studios. Each Open Studio is different because of the constant rotation of residents. There's never a dull moment.”

And that's true. SFAI hosts artists who work in a dizzying range of media and approaches and come from every corner of the world. Some are young, emerging artists—others are well established. At the upcoming Open Studio Thursday, five writers and five artists will share their work, including Hisao Ihara, a video artist from Tokyo who now lives in New York, and Don Bogen, poet and writer whose work has appeared in The New Republic and The Paris Review.

Sandra Clark, a photographer, and Evert Witte, are residents at SFAI for the second time. Ironically, their last visit was soon after Hurricane Katrina. “We thought we were coming here for our second visit under completely different circumstances, and then Hurricane Gustav hit,” Clark says with a resigned smile. “Three years ago we lost everything: all our belongings, all our artwork, all my camera equipment, all the documentation of our work. All I had left was a small briefcase of photographic negatives. That's what I brought with me to Santa Fe three years ago, and I brought them with me this time, too. I am not sure what I will do with them, but it seemed important to have them with me. ”

Witte mixes minimalism, structuralism and Abstract Expressionism in his oil paintings on canvas. His compositions start out as chaotic sets of forms and marks, sometimes with figurative elements. His goal is to organize that chaos-to place an edifice around the rat's nest of life. The desire for structure seems almost predictable in someone who survived one of the worst disasters in recent American memory. Yet out of the catastrophe came an opening. “I plan to work on paper—make smaller work that will inspire larger paintings later. I feel like the work is changing. It's more dramatic, more colorful. When we lost everything in Katrina, we also lost all our baggage. It's a new start.”

Open Studio at Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michael's Drive, Santa Fe
505-424-5050
September 18, 2008, 4-6 pm

This review was originally published in the September 12, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

The Ways of Nature

2008-09-07T18:47:00.001-07:00

(click on image for larger version)

The popularity of organic produce is due, in part, to the rise of genetically modified (GMO) foods over the past decade. In a country like the United States, where labeling of GMO foods is not required, it is likely that all but the most diligent organic consumers in America are buying and swallowing GMO products every day.

Genetic engineering has allowed scientists to create plants that produce human insulin and soybeans that won't die even when drenched in Roundup. Charles Amtzen at Cornell University is working on “edible vaccines” placed genetically inside of bananas.

In early 2004, the first genetically modified pet, a tropical fish that glows under ultraviolet light, was available to consumers. According to Jeremy Rifkin, president of The Foundation on Economic Trends, “GMO technologies allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether. You can take a gene from any species — plant, animal, or human — and place it into the genetic code of your food crop.”

The goal of all of this bioengineering is to create a food utopia — a world where there is no hunger, crop pests, or scarcity of medicine. And this sounds ideal. But it's still unclear whether the final outcome will be good or bad for the planet. One thing is for sure: Right now, humans are reorganizing nature.

And this is exactly what Ming Fay is doing in his sculptures and installations: reshaping the natural world.

Walking into the stark, white rooms of Eight Modern in Santa Fe, it's hard to miss the oversized orange, green and yellow hybrid fruits, vegetables, plants and insects. It's a sort of produce Disneyland in a sterile hospital. Or the end-result of an elementary school art class's collaboration with the new science teacher.

Red and green balls that look wet and pock-marked hang from spindly branches in wild groupings, sometimes along with a massive, cartoonish fly. And they move, slowly, turning in the gallery's air currents, creating stunning negative shapes and creepy shadows.

These sculptures are most successful when hung in tangled groups, the more densely, the better. However, on one wall in the gallery, individually placed fruits, leaves and insects hang equally spaced on the wall, like specimens on a medical table. This organization permits the viewer to inspect them closely. What the heck are these things, anyway? Animal, vegetable or mineral? Simulacra or science fiction?

“Flame Plant” is an orange and yellow form, hanging solo on the wall, curved slightly to the right. Several antennae-like branches snake along its sides. It's hard to know what this is — a plant? But which plant? Or maybe it's an insect?

Fay's materials are, like his ideas, hybrid combinations of the natural and artificial: paper, dye, wire, paint, polyurethane resin, and urethane foam. The urethane foam (or electrical foam) is the most recognizable material, and although it is helpful in producing the illusion of a morphing, oozing, live organism, it also looks like, well, electrical foam. After all the wonderful associations that Fay's work elicits, it's initially disappointing to look at and think about electrical foam. Then again, electrical foam is used to fill unwanted holes (perhaps like the holes we perceive in nature itself — the problems and inconveniences of nature — like disease, rot, imperfection, crop failure).

Ming Fay's installations have been exhibited all over the world, including the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris and MOCA Shanghai. He has created public art projects in several East Coast cities, Oregon, and Puerto Rico.

Fay was born in Shanghai. Now in his 60s, he lives and works in New York, where he makes frequent visits to the produce markets in New York's Chinatown for inspiration (and actual produce). The Chinese associate oranges with good luck and pears with prosperity, and these sorts of symbols, from Fay's cultural roots, are in his work. However, Fay's references come from the hybridization of Eastern and Western sources: from American roadside attractions to Shinto shrines to urban gardens in vacant lots — to the teachings of his two (American and Chinese) tai chi instructors.

In his show at Eight Modern, “Jungle Tango,” Fay has added small, wiry human figures to the sculptures. By adding the figures, Fay is recognizing and announcing his hand (the human hand) in all of this — this dance on the edge of biological re-construction. It isn't an understatement that the slightly abstracted human figures can be easily missed among the Frankenstein flora. It is, instead, a very loud message.

Jungle Tango, new work by Ming Fay
Eight Modern Gallery
231 Delgado Street, Santa Fe
505-9995-0231
Through September 21, 2008

This review was originally published in the September 5, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

Near and Far

2008-08-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

Era and Donald Farnsworth,
Electric Thangka, Jacquard tapestry

(click on image for larger version)

Imagine being a 14th-century monk traveling across the country. At each stop along the way a temporary temple will be set up, including all of the ritual paraphernalia and everything needed for an altar. Today we have 18-wheeler trucks for fancy road shows, but centuries ago, everything was transported on foot and by horseback.

Welcome the thangka. Originating in India, thangkas, or scroll paintings on fabric, were used by religious pilgrims when giving talks on the basics of Buddhist philosophy. Nomadic Tibetan monks adopted the thangka as an alternative to the temple fresco. Once monasteries acquired land and buildings, thangkas were hung on the walls.

Donald and Era Farnsworth are 21st-century collaborating artists who make contemporary thangkas — and at first glance their imagery looks very much like the iconography used in thangkas centuries ago. But on closer inspection, modern imagery appears: nuclear cooling towers, benzene rings, melting glaciers — often with the Buddha sitting calmly at the center. Their work is on view at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe.

Thangkas are records of Buddhist teachings transmitted pictorially — most often through images of enlightened beings, mandalas and stupas. A thangka is used as a visualization technique during meditation. The practitioner uses the image to locate, in herself, the type of wisdom represented by the particular deity she is contemplating.

In the Farnsworth's opulent and monochromatic “Electric Thangka,” a faceless Buddha sits perfectly still, surrounded by nuclear cooling towers, solar panels, wind turbines and stupas. What is immediately striking is the texture of the fabric itself. The Farnsworths' thangkas are woven tapestries — a departure from the tradition of painted thangkas. The weave is so apparent that the detail and physicality of the texture makes the imagery nearly abstract. The pixilated or atom-like weave communicates the Buddhist idea of no separation — the idea that each individual, the environment, and the spirit are absolutely linked.

It takes some looking to spot the nuclear cooling towers, and even more looking to locate the solar panels. In fact, a visitor to the gallery could easily miss the contemporary imagery and mistake the thangkas for traditional monastery objects. Yet it is the nearly hidden, contemporary imagery that is the most convincing part of the work and the core of the Farnsworths' environmental message.

The Farnsworths take many other liberties with the art form of the thangka. Traditional thangka painting is learned from lifetime masters, and apprentices study the form for at least a decade. Canonical rules are strictly obeyed. The process of making them is silent and meditative. This may be why many find these images so intensely beautiful. The artist's energy and devotion are sensed in the work.

In contrast, the Farnsworths digitally and manually manipulate reproductions of already existing thangkas in much of their work. They are interested in utilizing the iconography and the Buddhist philosophy in the traditional works, while adding a contemporary agenda. The desired intention is admirable, but is it conceptually successful?

Era and Donald Farnsworth,
Mythos VIII, Deluge Thangka,
Jacquard tapestry

(click on image for larger version)

“Mythos VIII, Deluge Thangka” is based on an 18th-century work illustrating the tale of Ghantapada, a monk who fell in love with a courtesan's daughter. In the Farnsworths' version, uncontrollable love is likened to uncontrollable global warming (which, unlike passion, does not decrease with time). The chemical symbol CO2 blocks out the sun. Glaciers melt in the background. In the foreground, a solo androgynous Avalokiteshvara, the goddess of compassion, shields her eyes. The contemporary images are tangible, familiar and jarring. But most viewers will recognize that the figure and the composition are not from our time. Because of this, works meant to get us in touch with current environmental realities instead take on the psychological and intellectual distance of an artifact.

In Nepal and Tibet, a thangka is created by an anonymous artist who does not express a personal vision. Thangkas are unique, singular works, created in solitude. They are spiritual offerings blessed by a recognized Buddhist master. The Farnsworth's thangkas are pointed environmental messages, created in editions on computerized looms, sold in contemporary art galleries. (The Farnsworths are the owners and operators of Magnolia Editions in Oakland, Calif., a studio that creates print and tapestry editions for artists such as Ed Moses, Chuck Close, Squeak Carnwath and Hung Liu, as well as for themselves.)

Some of the Farnsworths' formal choices cloud, rather than unveil, the intimate and contemporary messages they intend. On the plus side, the work is gorgeously crafted and aesthetically delicious. And the Farnsworths' environmental commitment is sincere: If we recognize that we are all Buddhas, not separate from our world and from our environment, we will take care of the earth as if it is our own body.

Thangka, new work by Donald and Era Farnsworth
Turner Carroll Gallery
725 Canyon Road, Santa Fe
505-989-9800
Public opening reception: Friday, August 29, 5-7 pm
Through September 15, 2008

This review was originally published in the August 29, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

All Tangled Up

2008-08-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

Brad Kahlhamer
Somewhat Sideways
oil on canvas
84 x 120 inches
2001-2008

(click on image for larger version)

Imagine the ledger drawings of the Plains Indians, the comic book art of Art Speigelman, the notebook scribblings of a punk-rock teenage boy, and the map you drew last week for a friend who was coming over for a beer----shake all that up in a Zip-lock bag and toss it out onto an Abstract Expressionist painting (De Kooning’s Woman 1 would be perfect). This is the work of Brad Kahlhamer, whose drawings, paintings and sculptures are on view at James Kelly Contemporary through October 11.

below : Silver Horn ledger drawing and a page from Speigelman's Maus series

below: Punk/Rock Vector Graphics and DeKooning's Woman 1

Kahlhamer was born to Native American parents of unknown ancestry and was adopted as an infant by Caucasian parents. He grew up in Arizona and Wisconsin. He received a BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He wrote and sang music, touring with various bands, until he was 26, after which he moved to and settled in New York. He worked for Topps Chewing Gum (remember the Garbage Pail Kids?), eventually becoming design director, a position that provided him access to the underground comic world. It was a while before he had the confidence to exhibit his work, but once he did, he snagged the attention of Deitch Projects, where he had a successful solo show in 1999. A monograph of his work was published last year by Charta.

Kahlhamer exists in between two cultural worlds: the worlds of his genetic, Native ancestry and the white, middle-class world in which he was raised. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are about the space in-between those two cultures. Kahlhamer calls this the “the third place”, and he explores its landscape in art and music. A CD compellation of his songs is on sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, where his drawings and a new, 9 ½ foot tall bronze totem pole are currently on view as well.

Packed with a gritty, sad, and funny turmoil that is energizing in minimalist-loving Santa Fe, Brad Kahlhamer’s paintings rely on Native cultural references examined from the outside rather than the inside. So many of us only know our cultural history through off-hand stories or history books--or revised versions of recipes that incorporate processed food--rather than from first-hand experience in the homeland itself. Many of us can relate to what it’s like to piece together a personal narrative. In Kahlhamer’s work, the process of putting a lost narrative back together isn’t easy—in its form or its message. But it is the story he is trying to tell.

Kahlhamer begins with thin washes of paint, reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist painting. Abstract Expressionism is often described as the first truly American art, and in Kahlhamer’s work, America is sorting itself out. On top of a landscape of spontaneous paint, Kahlhamer spreads out a series of disconnected cultural references and symbols, all painted with a loose, gestural hand: smiley faces, American Indians, sexy chicks in black underwear, eagles, bears, skeletons, skulls, buffalo. There are floating words as well: “spirit skin”, “Lupton”, “secret”, “slow”, “tooth”. Thin, tender, map-like lines connect eyes to mouths on skulls and smiley faces, creating a welcome path around and through everything. The addition sign (+) also dots the paintings, as if to suggest “this plus this plus this”. Everything is inter-dependant.

In Somewhat Sideways, the largest painting in the exhibition, the central image is a woman’s head, and she is gasping (in horror? shock? ecstasy?). According to Kahlhamer during a phone interview, the paintings in the show at James Kelly are based on the life of one person, a model who was sitting for him until recently. In each of the paintings she is the central image, and she is never fully separate from the dozens of skulls and smiley faces that surround her, imagery that literally presses in on her from all sides.

Kahlhamer’s compositions are based on Plains Indian drawings. The lack of western perspective is one of the most convincing choices Kahlhamer makes in the work, simply because it eliminates a single hierarchical point-of-view, and this makes every part of his narrative equally important. Kahlhamer’s mark-making, the history of which bleeds through layers of translucent oil paint, reveals and hides itself at the same time, just as his narrative does.

In addition to new paintings and one large drawing, the exhibition includes double-sided portraits on wood, and dolls made from found materials. Kahlhamer began making the dolls in 1982 after viewing figures in the Barry Goldwater Collection at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Totaling nearly 90 in all, the figures are a community Kahlhamer has created for himself, organically, over time. The largest of these figures is the new 9 ½ foot bronze totem pole at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. According to Kahlhamer, it is his ultimate figure.

The disorientation in Kahlhamer’s work is an accurate representation of how complicated culture and history really are. Whether there is a convincing message in Kahlhamer’s work--beyond the fact that history and culture are muddled places--remains unclear, but his uncensored rummaging is worth a detour off the Plaza this weekend.

Brad Kahlhamer: The Slow Game
James Kelly Contemporary
1601 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe
505-989-1601
Public opening reception: Friday, August 22, 5-7 pm Through October 11, 2008

This review was originally published in the August 22, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.

"I've Never Been on a Buffalo Hunt"

2008-08-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Kade L. Twist, The First Syntax Rebellion, mixed media on panel, 12 x 24 inches, 2008

(click on image for larger version)

A woman at an exhibition of Norman Akers’ paintings told him that his work wasn’t Indian enough. “I’ve never been on a buffalo hunt, what do you want?” he remembers replying. His curt response points to the complicated question of what makes something authentically Native, a question that can make us aware of our tendency to stereotype. And that realization can help us get back to looking at the art itself, on its own terms.

Akers’ work is included, along with eleven other artists, in Without Limits: Contemporary Indian Market Exhibition at Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opening on August 15 with a public reception on August 22. The artists in Without Limits have located themselves in a contemporary art practice based on complex and varied cultural and educational experiences. In addition to Akers (Osage), the exhibition includes works by Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Yatika Starr Fields (Cherokee, Creek and Osage), Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu), the collaborative team of Lisa Holt (Cochiti Pueblo) and Harlan Reano (Santa Domingo Pueblo), Frank Buffalo Hyde (Iroquois), Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo), Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee), and Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo).

The work that is freshest and most exciting is by emerging artists Yatika Starr Fields from Brooklyn and Kade L. Twist from Phoenix, as well as Santa Feans Norman Akers and Emmi Whitehorse. It would be a mistake not to also mention the emerging artist Rose B. Simpson. Without Limits will include new clay sculptures by Simpson; however, her graphic work, recently shown in Snap Crackle Pow! at 516 Gallery in Albuquerque, is her most innovative visual work. Chiaroscuro could have taken a chance on her graphic drawings and, in doing so, more bravely supported the exhibition’s theme and title. However, you can see Simpson’s graphic work at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in the exhibition Comic Art Indigéne, on view through January 4. Simpson’s honest and moving drawings use the formal structures of tattoo and comic book art to express what it means to be a young person living within Native tradition and American popular culture at the same time.

Rose B. Simpson, Objectification Series: Seductive Woman with TV, 2008 , at the Museum of Indian Arts and Cuture

Emmi Whitehorse, Palo Verde, 2007, oil and chalk on paper mounted on canvas, 50 x 78 ½ inches

Emmi Whitehorse has spent long hours in vast landscapes, watching the movement of light across the surfaces of land and water. This is what she paints: not an illustration of what a landscape looks like, but the experience of what it feels like to be in and of the landscape over time. Whitehorse works on paper mounted on canvas. She starts by rubbing the paper’s surface with paint, creating a vaporous atmosphere on which shapes appear and disappear. Markings that Whitehorse describes as a “personal alphabet-like cipher or code” also float by, seamlessly linking internal and external space. These are beautiful paintings; comparisons to both ancient petroglyphs and Cy Twombly seem equally relevant.

Norman Akers, Rebirth 2000, oil on canvas, 66 x 60 inches, 2000

Norman Akers’ expressionistic paintings represent the intersection of cultures that make up his daily experience. In Rebirth 2000, a tree with severed limbs and roots floats above a vintage car, a floating acorn, and three telephone poles that suggest the crucifixion. Scientific illustrations of turtle fetal development frame the left side of the canvas. Akers’ paint is lush and varied, thick and painterly as well as flat and graphic. The Baroque compositions spin and churn; life is in a constant state of flux. No matter what has been lost, it is clear that new opportunities will be born, and we will be forever between the boundaries of past and present, tradition and hybridity.

Yatika Starr Fields, Collision on Central Park South, Oil on canvas, 87 x 72 inches, 2008

Yatika Starr Fields has lived in Brooklyn, working as a bike messenger, for the last four years. He attended the Art Institute of Boston for two years and became enamored of graffiti culture. The energy of street life is in his work. He will exhibit a single large painting in this exhibition, Collision on Central Park South, in which horse heads emerge from a whirlwind of graphic swirls and architectural forms. There are exciting possibilities within this collision of Native culture, graffiti, and European painting tradition. It will be exciting to watch Fields’ ideas develop over the coming years.

Kade L. Twist’s minimalist, conceptual paintings (see image at the top of this article) are the most impressive works in the show, not only because they are visually gorgeous (no reproduction can do them justice), but because Twist’s ideas, about Indigenous art and culture, are subversive and smart. “I wanted the work to resemble candy—specifically Jolly Ranchers. I wanted them be digestible, approachable works,” Twist said during a phone interview.

Are Jolly Ranchers a clever reference to colonialism? Perhaps. Within the shiny, sugary, minimalist surfaces, symbols from the Cherokee syllabary float by in random groupings. Each painting looks as if one is peering into a Petri dish at the cellular structure of a person, made up of a language that is trying to conceal itself. The work is a brilliant commentary on current biogenetic mining and genomic research projects involving Indigenous peoples, as well other forms of “cultural mining”.

Twist studied with Edgar Heap-of-Birds, who pushed him conceptually and intellectually to comment on culture through metaphor. Twist, who is primarily a writer and installation/video artist, won the 2007 Native Writer’s Circle of the America’s First Book Award, and one of his installations is presently on view in Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. Twist is also one of the founders of Postcommodity, the cleverly-named collective of three young, Native artists, who, according to their website, “… create art that builds a culturally relevant bridge for American Indian people between inherited cultural traditions and the dynamic innovations of contemporary global society.” Work that results from this level of intelligent inquiry, by contemporary artists from every cultural background, should be featured more often in Santa Fe.

Without Limits: Contemporary Indian Market Exhibition
Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art
439 Camino del Monte Sol, Santa Fe
505-992-0711
August 15 – September 13, 2008
opening reception: Friday, August 22 from 5-7 pm

This review was originally published in the August 15, 2008 issue of the Journal Santa Fe, in the column Object Lessons.