Once upon a time, sculptors sought above all to achieve “objecthood.” Minimalist sculptors rejected the compositional dynamics of geometric and expressionistic abstraction. They created objects – pure objects, without reference – industrially fabricated, of industrial materials. And they were uncanny, those objects – resembling nothing, except for a kind of non-functional industrial bi-product.
But somehow, pure objecthood was never achieved. The fingerprints of the maker, the choice of materials, the nature of the fabrication, were signatures that betrayed a phenomenal relationship – qualities, character, predilection. The inevitable “thingness” of their objects was their failure, if in their pursuit of the pure, those artist weren’t inclined to give up on objects altogether. But we are fated to live in world of things – specific things, not general things. Things address our subjectivity, tell stories out of school, bring with them their own history and make a mess on the carpet. “These things – here,” surround us, face us, exist in relation to us – this is our world of phenomenal things.
“Objecthood”may still be the goal, but sculptors now know that they can’t get there from here by stripping an object of its lateral associations. Instead, they pile it on. Contemporary sculptors create and assemble objects so loaded with associations and thingness, that they may confound recognition and short-circuit the phenomenal process of perception. Betsy Coulter’s and Christy Thompson’s objects in “Toggle Wand” enter at this point. What these two artists do is to play with those defining qualities of objects that characterize “thingness.” They play with specificity, presentation, history, purpose and connection. Things in “Toggle Wand,” may not be what they seem.
A decoy is a thing, that resembles another thing. It is a Homeric siren for lower life-forms, an animal Lorelei, that signs, “Over Here! (sucker).” Decoys are functional illusions – primate cousins of art. A decoy is a thing that isn’t what it appears to be, a seducer conquering through deceit. Betsy Coulter’s decoy deer has, in addition to its essential decoyness, two additional cups, in the characteristic shape of cups made from Styrofoam (but which are actually made of rubber). What is this thing? Is it part of the exhibition? The cups, sitting on the decoy, suggest that the decoy is a remnant, reduced to a convenient shelf, not the object of contemplation in the gallery. A decoy, in an art gallery, poses as art. Cups, sitting on the decoy, make it non-art. Styrofoam cups, made of rubber, make it art again.
* * *
“Thingness” is defined in its particularity, “a thing which is just this one, ” or, “this thing – here,” and speaks not only of the thing itself, but also of the subject who shares that space with the thing. “It” faces “me.” “I” address “it.” “It” emerges from the world of generality into the world of specificity. Like furniture on the street. My world. My world of experience. “It” is some “thing” to me.
When I was a child, the concept of “disposable” didn’t really exist. You threw out wrapping paper and food scraps, and that was about it. Everything was used and reused until it was broken beyond repair. So things then, in retrospect – they seemed like huge containers, invested with enormous feeling. The desire for the thing, the saving and the waiting and the anticipating and finally the getting and the holding and the using and the safe-keeping and the breaking and the fixing and the losing – this is what I remember about things growing up.
* * *
Christy Thompson’s things remind me of that desire. They’re charged – they glow internally, magnetically, irresistably. They hang, suspended, comically oversized or slightly out of reach. These things, these containers of memory and desire, are not Proustian madeleinesmade of butter and sugar, but new stuff, made of resins, plastics, synthetic polymers. Her cast objects hanging from the ceiling in “Toggle Wands” are made with expanding insulation foam, sprayed it into molds – disposable and unknowable materials, strange and uncanny. Her giant vinyl oven mitt, though holding the promise of added features, is basically dysfunctional. Maybe these things are not really things at all, just longing shrink-wrapped, extruded, injection-moulded. “These things – here,” are Lilliputian or Brobdingnagian – never our size, never within our reach.
Gordon Hatt
No comments:
Post a Comment