Watson Reviews Seven @ the Warehouse

Another in a series of reviews by Amy Watson of The Artery.

Like the Wizard of Oz, the curator disappears behind the art in a good group exhibition and the dynamics of the show appear to spring naturally from the work itself. Group shows have the potential to create a dialogue between works of art that may never have otherwise met. Similarities form surprising connections and differences in points of view are more striking when the work of diverse artists is seen in one place.

Behind this particular curtain is Lenny Campello - gallerist, blogger, artist, and vocal advocate for the DC art scene. Campello took on no easy task - select a coherent and representative group show out of the thousands of slides in the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran artist registry - and threw in the complication of the Warehouse's labyrinth of exhibition spaces. He could have taken the easy way out and hung the show as a straight showcase of local talent. Instead he created seven separate but interrelated multimedia exhibits. This was the genesis of Seven, an exhibition of art by WPAC members at the Warehouse Galleries.

The narrow passages and unfinished rooms of the Warehouse remind me of a very compact Art-o-Matic. The comparison is probably unfair, but for better or for worse it lingers. Seven gains from a distillation of the best local offerings but potentially could have lacked the certain X factor I love about Art-o-Matic - the oddball experience you don't see coming, the sense of freedom and nothing to lose. Happily, Campello retains some of this quirky promise.

The ground floor gallery is split between psychologically tinged figurative work on one side of the room and abstraction on the other. The juxtaposition would be intriguing if not for the blandness of the abstract work, which is redeemed only by Rebecca Cross's whimsical Platters from the Guitar Series, 2004-05. Instead of interacting, the two halves of the room feel like separate and unequal exhibitions, making this the weakest of the seven galleries. The most questionable choice was Kristen Helgadottir's Frosty Midnight, 1997 - a terrible pseudo-Jackson Pollock with a jarring blue background.

Two pieces in particular help prop up the room. Melissa Ichiuji's I am beautiful and Everybody loves me, 2004, crouches in one corner waiting for a second glance. The battered wooden armchair features a gently naughty alteration - the wheel of feathers embedded in the seat begs the viewer to give it a try. Also worth a close inspection is Ben Tolman's drawing The Garden of Earthly Delights, 2002-04. Tolman's intricately rendered tangle of abstractions and Bosch-like demons surround a central cathedral structure. The building is flanked by two figures - the artist and his muse - given equal pictorial weight, and therefore in the language of iconography equal importance. With its blood red border and black mat, this is the most handsomely framed work in the show - and the attention to detail helps the drawing escape what could have easily felt like a run-of-the-mill Goth-kid doodle.

Four rooms make up the building’s second floor. The art hung in the hall connecting the rooms is uniformly uninteresting (mostly run-of-the-mill still life paintings), but the galleries hold the show’s most challenging work. The gallery closest to the street is full of odd forms and an unsettling edginess. Mark Jenkins' now familiar ghostly tape sculptures hover at the edges, oblivious to Linda Hesh's weak political installation (her themes of identity and racism have been better and more subtly addressed by artists such as Lorna Simpson). The red, horn-like protuberances of Graham Caldwell's exquisite glass and steel sculpture burst from the wall with a joyous blare that bounces off of Joseph Barbaccia's sexualized tools. Sustenance, 2005, is a pair of ladles holding perfectly carved wooden breasts. Naked Aggression, 2004, brings to mind a phrase from a novel by Dorothy Dunnett - “Music, the knife without a hilt” - but this knife cannot be wielded without taking a lifelike dick in hand. The piece resonates with complex associations: between masculinity and aggression, violence and masturbation, but refuses the viewer a definite meaning.

The two center galleries have the easiest themes to discern: the body, and text as form. "Text" is probably an inaccurate label for this group of work, which more often than not manipulates and distorts words until they become something more than letters on a page. Denise Wolff takes crumpled pages from the writings of theorists who have influenced contemporary art and photographs them like craggy rocks. Art students the world over can appreciate the metaphor - grasping some of these works can be akin to scaling Mount Everest. The sliced texts of Mark C. Boyd's blackboard paintings frustrate the viewer's desire to read the words traced there. The pieces reflect on the impossibility of communication and the imprecision of written language. The blackboard background implies that the roots of our difficulties may lie in the manner we acquire these skills. This abstracting of text leads to J.T. Kirkland's superb wood pieces. Kirkland's work gains an added resonance next to the other more blatantly textual works in the room. In Expanse, 2005, drilled holes meander across the wood surface like a reverse Braille, creating a kind of language of negative space. Beyond the more obvious relationship of the work to minimalism and drawing, the methodical precision and deep love of natural beauty recall the art of ancient Egypt. It may sound like a counterintuitive statement to make about such a sculptural work, but Expanse is the best painting in the show.

The next gallery's installation is primarily about the body as a physical presence. Body, not nude - none of these works resemble the classic nude and are all the better for it.
Photography makes the strongest showing, from Samantha Wolov'sradiant slide projection of bodies in heightened states of ecstatic carnality, such as Orgasm #2 (at right) to Fierce Sonia's quirky and tactile Choking on her eggs and Fire Starter, 2005. The heavy-handed Allegory of a Gay Bashing, 2000, is the room's Achilles heel. A Christ-like figure of a castrated man is strung up against a graffitied wall. The ham-handedness (especially the disconcerting presence of a cute puppy and kitten) of Scott Brook's painting undermines the potential power of the subject. A more mysterious icon is White Sugar Lily, 2005. In Susan Jamison's tempera painting a naked woman tattooed with twining flowers wears a collar of lilies, her head orbited by bees. The stillness and quiet strength of this work holds its own against the eroticism of Wolov and Sonia. The funniest work in the show is Ancestral Portraits: Dick(s), 2005 by Manon Cleary. Ancenstral Portraits is a collection of little snapshots of male genitalia altered by the addition of stuck-on googly eyes, making them resemble of all things the Muppets. One note they may be, but Cleary has managed to find humor in something our society still tends to take overly seriously.

The last gallery on the second floor is filled with an ethereal installation by Alessandra Torres. Photographs from Torres' Portable Winter Series hang on two walls of the small room. Entering the gentle hush is like stepping into a strange myth, where a spirit in white wanders the wintry landscape, dusting the world with snow. Her clothes hang in the room's closet. The edges and corners of the room itself are sprinkled with drifts of white powder. A vitrine occupies the center of the room, containing a miniature of the landscape in the photographs. Torres' melding of installation, photography and performance brings to mind Ana Mendieta's work in nature, though Torres's installation is far more surreal than Mendieta's earth-bound rituals.

Kathryn Cornelius has the sole video work in the show. Resolve was projected in a darkened gallery on the third floor on the opening night of the exhibit and has since been moved to a flatscreen in the streetside second floor gallery. The video records a woman in a black evening gown desperately vacuuming the sand from a section of beach. This tragically comical action goes beyond a feminist comment on "women's work" to encompass any of the repetitive and sometimes ridiculously futile aspects of our everyday lives.

The last gallery shares space with the Warehouse cafe. The heavy hitters - Chan Chao and Sam Gilliam - both have pieces in this room. The curatorial vision here is the most difficult to determine, a result of both the work selected and the function of the space. The pieces are strong, especially Chao's simple but lovely nude photographs, but seem to have little in common beyond their potential salability. Perhaps that is the point.

Washington is a far more conservative town than New York or Los Angeles, and it shows in the region's art production. With cutting edge, international exhibitions a regular part of the Hirshhorn Museum's schedule and New York only a four-hour drive away it's surprising that there isn't more challenging, thought-provoking art created and shown here. True to his curator's statement, the work that Campello selected seldom pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Instead Seven is a representation of some of the best Washington-area art. With the exception of the mostly tepid painting, the work is strong and the thoughtful installations more engrossing than a mere group hang. The success of the show, at least among the DC art crowd, should encourage more exhibits of local artists and add to the development of an audience here for the art-making that exists between touristy paintings of landmarks and the sometimes hermetic world of the professional gallery/museum scene.

Seven runs at the Warehouse Galleries through September 4th.

Images taken from the websites of the artists and used with permission.

Comments

[Scott]

Wow, that's a pretty hard-hitting review which I'm sure is going to ruffle some feathers. I may disagree with some of Amy's assessments, but I have to admire her honesty.

One thing I do disagree with is the statement "It may sound like a counterintuitive statement to make about such a sculptural work, but Expanse is the best painting in the show." I don't disagree with the sentiment expressed about the quality of JT's work -- I happen to think it's great. However, I'm not sure about the "painting" part.

I've heard JT describe his work as painting, and that has always puzzled me. The wood coloration and grain may have painterly qualities. But don't you have to use paint, even just a little, to qualify as painting?

Maybe I'm too hung up on semantics or too rigid in my thinking about the boundaries of painting, but I'm having a hard time getting my head around this one.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Yeah, it is hard-hitting! I love it!

About "painting." First question: what is paint?

I'm glad someone finally broached this subject. Let's run with it!

[Joseph Barbaccia]

OK I'll bite. Paint is pigment suspended in some sort of fluid binding agent.

[Scott]

I'll second Joseph's definition.

I'd also love to hear Amy's explanation of the statement.

[J.T. Kirkland]

OK, "fluid binding agent." But we all know that paint (on a "painting" at least) rarely stays fluid. It hardens right?

Next question: This is more of a to-think-about question... what causes the various colors in wood?

Since that isn't a question to really answer, here's a different one: who must "apply" the paint to be a painting?

Additional food for thought: look at the nearest wall. It's painted right? Is it a painting? Why or why not?

[Scott]

I feel like I've triggered some diabolical trap, but I'll keep going nonetheless.

"who must "apply" the paint to be a painting?" - the painter/artist. I suppose there are situations where the "artist" directs others, but even then somebody is applying the paint at the artist's direction.

"look at the nearest wall. It's painted right? Is it a painting? Why or why not?" It's probably not painting, because there's no intention to create a painting. The intent is simply to cover a wall.

Now here's a question for you: why do you want your work to be considered painting?

[J.T. Kirkland]

No traps here, Scott! It's safe.

In terms of "who" must apply the paint, what do you think about Nature applying the paint?

As for the second question, we've established that intent makes the painting vs. a wall. So, think of land art. Think of the contextualization of nature.

No fair! You can't ask questions! But since you did... it's not so much that I "want" my work to be considered painting. It's more that I do consider my work painting. I don't really care what you consider it to be as long as you enjoy it. And I don't view it just as painting. I obviously see sculpture, but also drawing. I think that's why it functions so well. It really crosses the lines of all three genres. Some pieces are more painterly while others are more sculptural.

One more question from me: when you think of typical painting, what does it look like? What's the size and proportion?

[Amy]

I'm glad the review is generating discussion. It's just my opinion, and I think other people have opinions just as valid as mine, so don't take anything I write as me thinking it's the end all and be all... if that makes sense. I prefer the conversation!

So if it isn't a painting, is it a drawing? A sculpture? Is there a better word?

I'm not totally married to the word painting here, but lack a better term maybe. I could have said it was the best "wall piece" but that sounds lame, and too general.

Lucio Fontana poked holes in his canvas and slashed them - are these still paintings, because they use canvas?

Are all "paintings" necessarily about the paint? I wouldn't say Fontana's works are about paint at all, even if some of them have been painted.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Amy -

You are about 3 steps ahead of me. I was going to ask a few questions of my own about Fontana (here's a good link: http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/works/record.html?record=1019). I think there is much to be said in regard to his work and like we discussed at Seven, Land Art.

Thanks!

[Scott]

"what do you think about Nature applying the paint?" I guess Nature can apply the paint, but I wouldn't consider that to be a "painting". I'd consider it to be wood or rock or vegetation or whatever.

As far as land art, I guess I'm not drawing the connection. Are you talking about stuff like Spiral Jetty? If so, while I'd consider that to be art, I probably wouldn't call it painting.

"when you think of typical painting, what does it look like? What's the size and proportion?" I can't really answer that. I don't think I've ever thought of a "typical painting" and can't really conjure up one now. I guess if I were really pressed, I'd say: "Something that can fit on most of the walls in my house." Why?

Finally, I'm kind of bummed that you don't "want" your work to be considered painting. I think there could be some interesting reasons to want to force it into that category even though it's a pretty tight fit.

Anyway, I do enjoy your work regardless of whether you call it painting, sculpture, land art or experimental photography. It's good stuff!