Another Bouncing Ball: November 2010 Archives

If Joesph Beuys is right that anything can be art and John Cage is right that anything can music, then Roy McMakin's furniture makes perfect sense. His chairs, tables, chests and stools both deliver and undermine the idea of utilitarian subservience. Within the fine craftsmanship of  their construction is a subversive insistence on a right to be wrong.

Currently at Ambach & Rice is McMakin's Five Chairs and Ten Tables, a sweet little show with a large contemplative back beat. 

Remember Alice's uncertain relationship to an occasional table? That table was what McMakin's rarely are - an innocent bystander.

John Baldessari, whose home is full of McMakin's, described McMakin's endeavor in an essay included in Roy McMakin: When is a chair not a chair?

A love of minimalism (while slightly poking fun at it), a Mattisean love of color, a goal of keeping others off balance, and a love of removal/absence, a quest for the paradox of simplicity and complexity. But overall, a mission to sharpen perception, it's a significant accomplishment to get one to really see and understand a chair (and not feel self-conscious in sitting on it). I don't think Roy has designed an ironing board yet, but I'm sure it would double as a painting.

Michael Darling called him a "master craftsman with the heart of a conceptualist." His tables and chairs are facts with a twist of dry wit, as in the table top that doesn't quite fit its base.

In 1965, conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth created One and Three Chairs (a photo of a chair, a chair and a dictionary description of a chair). A point of view that is austerely tough-minded in Kosuth is sweet, almost goofy in McMakin. Kosuth invites us to consider a rigorous idea by turning it over in our minds. McMakin insists on taking the body along for the ride. His work is a voluptous challenge, a reminder that, as long as we're awake, we might as well be aware, and take no chair for granted.

Through Dec. 5.

...for the memories, America. (Via Michelle Nicolosi)

She's serving roasted cauliflower:

Looks like broccoli to me, which reminds me of E.B. White's tagline for a 1928 New Yorker cartoon drawn by Carl Rose (Image via)
On Thanksgiving in Seattle, a pipe froze at my house and burst, just in time for a house guest, who's arriving from Portland in an hour or so. Fortunately, we are eating elsewhere, and there are buckets of snow in the bathroom for that homey historic touch. As Strauss wrote in her email:

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Whether you celebrate it or revile it, have a great day filled with love.

Those in the market for gifts might consider Strauss' America, my favorite book from 2008, already a classic but still available on Amazon for $19.77.

Chris Engman's photos are evidence of his interventions. Using the deserts of Eastern Washington as stage sets, he constructs material plays about his process. Six barrels become a triangle, the red always in the middle bottom and the other colors rotating. He shoots a photo, rearranges the barrels and shoots again. Time passes in the sky, which shades from blue to mottled dark to white.

VARIATIONS, 2010 Archival inkjet print 52 x 44 inches Edition of 6
Titled Dust to Dust, the exhibit at Greg Kucera Gallery is overhung, which is a problem for an artist whose strategizing can devolve into the aridly clever. These photos need more space than they get. Like crabs in a barrel, however, the ones on top manage to hook a claw over the edge and climb out.
In Equivalence, a grid of empty frames becomes a rickety kind of Coptic cross. The top beam and arms are filled with photos of the sky, rephotographed. In the final print the sky is clear except for clouds in the cross. It's a trick, but I like that it's not a good trick. The structure is already falling apart, and the paper on which the clouds appear is visible on the left. His title is a nod to Alfred Stieglitz, whose series of the same name attempted to find in ordinary skies an alienating  distance verging on abstraction.

EQUIVALENCE, 2009 Inkjet print 38 x 48 inches Edition of 6

Abandoned Crates needs no back story. Into a verdant harmony, what is made by humans floats on a lake. The photo is an immaculate version of the messy masterpiece, Aguirre, the Wrath of God. (There's meat floating by...) Vanity, vanity; all is vanity.

ABANDONED CRATES, 2007 Archival inkjet print 40 x 49 inches Edition of 6

Through Dec. 24.

Rachel Maxi paints landscapes and still lifes you can carry in your pocket, your purse or briefcase. Larger ones are never bigger than two arms extended. She gives her portraits of ordinary places an extraordinary glow, as if a street sign, garbage bin, stretch of roadway or flower in a vase were a monk at the moment of enlightenment.

I missed her recent exhibit at G. Gibson Gallery, but Gail Gibson was kind enough to unwrap a few to show me.

From 12th Ave S., North Beacon Hill, 2010 oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

From Columbia City, 2010 oil on panel, 16 x 24 inches

Toronto's Kelly Mark belongs to the generation that identifies itself with the word "slack." In 2006 in front of the Henry Gallery (website currently down), she reprised her performance from Toronto's The Power Plant. Carrying blank signs, her group presented an opening night audience with her idea of militancy, chanting:

What do we want?
Nothing!
When do we want it?
Never!

Her videos, drawings, wallpaper, sculptures and photographs strike a deadpan note, like Buster Keaton but minus his anxiety.

I Don't Need A Therapist, 2008 Crosstitch on linen 24" x 30 " x 1/2"

EXIST 2009 Powder coated aluminum w/ LED lights (altered Exit sign) 7.5" x 12" x 2"

Master of the laid-back she may be, but work takes work. When she wants to relax from the heavy cogitation and technical issues of doing it, she fastens a magnifying lens to her eye and hunches over a table, making interior blizzards full of press type.

Twenty of these time-out, going-nowhere-fast drawings are at Platform Gallery through Saturday.

Meek 2010 Letraset on archival mat board; 19 x 24 inches(detail on the right)
 

From Patrick Holderfield's cell phone. A narrative is easy to sense but hard to decipher.

Portland's Ellen Lesperance won the Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Award in September, much to to the befuddlement of many in Seattle, who'd never heard of her. She has an exciting website, especially for feminists who appreciate the wider progressive history of their movement. Her site opens with rousing chants from decades-old street actions, currently, We don't want Cruise!

Using archival footage, Lesperance photographs sweaters worn by demonstrators and  recreates them, first in yarn, second abstracted in gouache on paper. Five of these drawings hang at SAM, and they are inert: Paul Klee in a coma. What is lively in Klee's line is dead in hers. Just because she has an appealing back story doesn't mean her drawings are any good at all. Looks as if this year's Betty Bowen jurors were seduced by intent.

We Will Cover Your Fallen Body, Beth O'Brien, and Tell You That It Was Not in Vain. The Forest at Eagle Creek Remains! Let It Echo Your Most Valiant of Names: Horehound...Horehound.... 2010

In the 11 years he has operated his aesthete's paradise/curio and jewelry shop in Ballard, called Souvenir, Curtis Steiner has never featured himself in a solo show, till now, through Dec. 3. The insects in his ink drawings on paper - Insects and Alphabets - step on dainty feet out of 19th Century England, when entomology was a pastime as common as chess, surrounded by the kind of elegant handwriting that helped define the leisure class.

Each insect holds court on the page, antenna twitching, surrounded by the calligraphy known as cursive. Last year, when my nephew Rafferty was five, he showed me a sample of his, calling it "curse writing."  ("Cursive," I told him. "No," he said with a scowl, "curse writing.")

Rafferty is a fan of Steiner's, thanks to Steiner's interactive project at the Seattle Art Museum titled, 1,000 Blocks.(Steiner's manipulations here.) Steiner's arrangements are top hat and tail; Rafferty's are dockworker, blocks roughing each other up in muscled heaps.

Steiner's interest in lists of things is not so nearly extinct as his fine hand. The urge to categorize and define animates the work of his polar opposite, Gregory Blackstock, who from memory draws images he has seen in dictionaries, encyclopedias and other source books, starting with outlines and shading in. Each of his drawings is a list, and the paper is often cut and taped together into a kind of scroll, punctuated by block writing.

We inhabit the world by naming its parts. In times of upheaval, names blur and opposites stand in for each other, perfectly illustrated in 1942 by Henry Reed, whose mind in the middle of World War II productively wandered between sex and death.

NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
        And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
         Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
        Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
        They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
        For to-day we have naming of parts.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]

Image (part of a series titled Shanghai Expo), comes from Marsha Burns' daily photo stream, which she sends to a fortunate few via email. There is no other way of seeing it. You have to know her.

No matter how wide the panorama or abstract the result, all painting is still life, a frozen arrangement of shape, color, mood and space. Ripe: Juicy Contemporary Still Life at Seattle Pacific Art Center takes a more traditional view, focusing on objects painted in cunning display, or, in the case of Linda Hutchins, sewn.

When I think of ripe and juicy, Marilyn Minter comes to mind, and John Currin. I like my ripe in the edge of rotten: leaves in the fall, not early blooms in the spring. For hard core still life, nobody beats the 17th Century Dutch, although in France Chardin achieved a mournful reply, his simplicities achieving a depth to rival Vermeer's. In the 20th Century, Morandi in Italy stands above everyone else. Pop art is not juicy, but Wayne Thiebaud's cupcakes in San Francisco staked a claim to the quality and brought it home. Luscious and moist, they are nevertheless billboard-style streamlined.

Curated by Katie Kresser, Ripe comes down firmly on the side of subject matter instead of execution. Since my understanding of art reverses the two, there is much here that is not up my alley. By my lights, Natalie St. Martin is a botanical illustrator. Her fruit are ripe, but her delivery is dry. Gregory Jacobsen paints messes, yet the mess is disengaged. Steve Levin specializes in fussy excess. The gooey riot of his forms is sterilized by his delivery.

I didn't see Zack Bent's video, not being aware that it's only on view 1 to 3 p.m. Don't let the sign in the gallery give false hope. It claims a gallery attendant will be able to produce a key to trigger operation, which ain't necessarily so.

Christian van Minnen deserves to be in an exhibit of this title, but unfortunately, he seems to be poised in the middle of a difficult transition. His strengths include a Medieval sense of form and a ghoulish intensity to his delicate paint handling. Recently, however, reactionary Pop elements have reared their ugly heads.

In Uvas, the Peter Max-like rainbow and stars shooting out of the head of the figure made of dusty, translucent grapes does it no favors.

Ditto the Valentine heart and comic-strip butterflies in Hearthead.

His fabulous intestinal snake protrusion at the painting's lower right, however, highlights what is wrong with Jacobsen's work. Like van Minnen, Jacobsen glamourizes rot. Rot is Jacobsen's subject, but his execution does not grip the subject. His work is a map to a place instead of place.

Linda Hutchins' real jade plant sewn into a transparent organza shroud is lovely. As in the Biblical promise, that every hair is counted, every leaf is honored.

That leaves Eric Elliott. The space in his paintings is a contagion. It sticks to leaves and cramps their blooms, which press powerfully back, holding their own. He animates sludge, which is no small thing.

Through Dec. 3.

There are moments when the correct answer to the question - What are you thinking? - is nothing. You're listening to your stomach gurgle or staring at your shoes, your hands, your sleeping dog.

Public personalities are paid to snap, crackle and pop. Curated by Sara Krajewski, Harry Shearer's The Silent Echo Chamber at the Henry Gallery presents them as they wait for the go light and the text prompt. They sit in their seats with nothing to do and no one to share it with.

Surrounded by dead air, they slump and grow slack. I'd love to see Shearer's video series paired with Walker Evans' subway photos from the late 1930s and early 1940s. Concealing his camera, he took pictures of people who hadn't bothered to arrange themselves for presentation, even to themselves.

Walker Evans, image via

Another kind of dead air inhabits SuttonBeresCuller's project with the title, Panoptos, taken from panoptic, which means a single, clarifying view. I'd like to think that the horror here is conscious. Alas, listening to the artists hold forth and reading curator Krajewski's brochure, I fear a sunny-side-up intent.

Panoptos is an interactive installation with 150 works taken from the Henry's collections that cover the walls, not salon style as much as storage. The lighting is bad, and there is no information about any of the artists, including even their names. Making matters worse is a long vertical apparatus with an LED light that travels in front of everything on view, offering a final and fatal distraction.

Looking gets the audience nowhere. To see what's allegedly there, they have to leave the gallery and proceed down the hall, where they can operate a joy stick to focus on individual works, again, with no information.

Museums are where we go to see originals. If we want to see reproductions, we can stay at home. The 150 artworks are thus negated to the apparent pleasure of the curator, who is charged with their care.

I can't think of a more disrespectful show since Marcel Duchamp's Mile of String in 1942. Asked to participate in a Surrealism retrospective, he draped everyone else's work in string. Duchamp, of course, intended the insult. Do SuttonBeresCuller? Does it matter? Reverse what they say their intentions are and we've got a winner. Either way, I'm on the side of the 150 artworks. From Duchamp to the Seattle trio, subverting the art of others leaves a sour taste.

Online image captures from Panoptos here. So what? What's lost in these captures is everything.

Last September, Artist Trust announced the finalists for its new Arts Innovator Award, which delivers $25,000 to two Washington State artists each year, the first three years funded by Dale and Leslie Chihuly. Early in October, the Artist Trust panel picked its winners: Leo Saul Berk and Margie Livingston. 

The pleasure of engaging a old task comes from the tally-ho sense that a time-out will produce improvement. Surely a refreshed and renewed writer will find purpose, tone and image to clarify complexities into an amplitude. The chess master in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union had no such hopes about his game. Returning to test yet another challenger, he said, "All the blunders are there on the board, waiting to be made."

Onward to blunders: In New York last month, I imagined time spread out before me like Wallace Shawn's dinner with Andre. Instead, thanks to an infection I insisted on ignoring (mind over bacterial matter), time contracted into fast food. As an adult, I have never been in New York for as long and seen less. A few things, however, stick with me.

Kara Walker at the Museum of Modern Art: Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Things of One Young Negress and Her Heart 1994 (Images via)

On a wide, white atrium wall, her cut-out silhouettes had the space and time they needed to make a world. It's a world inside the world, where, as Henry Miller once put it, "chaos is the score on which reality is written." After more than a decade of international prominence, she continues to weasel out with sinister exuberance the crazed core of her American experience.

Gone, An Historical Romance is a deliberate misreading of texts, chiefly Gone With The Wind.  Her Surrealism comes to her as naturally as breathing. She reveals what is tricked-out about the movement, past and present. She does not have to struggle to inhabit a molten core. It's hers already.

I'm back, better and will post Monday. Thanks for your patience, notes and concern.

Antibiotics, take a bow. 

Tobias Wong