|
|
“re/order” seeks to call attention to an abundance of contemporary art
in which artists mix their metaphors and intentionally make work that is
about more than one thing. In art, the tradition of “re/ordering” often
stems from a desire to look more closely at and understand how something
is made or put together. The subject of this scrutiny might be an
object, an artistic convention, a cultural phenomenon, or even a set of
assumptions. Movements such as Dada, Cubism, and Surrealism all
depended on methods of re/ordering in order to express a need for new
ways of seeing and a rejection of existing orders. Today, the desire to
look more closely at and understand things and ideas often leads artists
not to reject existing orders, but to use several at the same time.
Thus, re/ordering is not only a matter of collaging materials but also
of hinting at or explicitly stating a perceived complexity.
In the exhibition “re/order,” this creative and questioning attitude
gets focused on a host of things, from kitchen appliances to the sound
of a voice. Some artists, such as Allen Topolski and Buzz Spector, make
work that seems to emerge out of an interest in overarching concepts.
For instance, Topolski scavenges 1950’s era appliances and alters them,
simultaneously destroying their utility while playing with sculptural
form and evoking a nostalgia for a “golden age.” Spector’s books and
prints challenge our notions of the relationships between words and
images, using our personal histories with reading, and the book as an
epistemological symbol, to question how we create meaning from
experience. Both artists employ common and/or found objects in ways
that are slightly out of context; the book and the appliance are
familiar to us, but their function has been changed.
Found objects and images are also a source for some of the other artists
in “re/order.” For these artists, however, altering and combining
pre-existing images are tools for the making of narratives. Artist
Shelle Barron, for instance, creates technically dazzling mixed media
works which flood the senses with information. The scale of the work
and the wealth of detail only slowly give way to an awareness of
thematic coherence. Deborah Muirhead, in her book “Practical Speller,”
uses a children’s spelling primer as a backdrop for narrative vignettes
that expose the horrors of slavery. The innocence of the book is
transformed, as simple words are added, obscured, and rearranged to form
dark and sad sentences about stolen lives. In artist Susan Weisend’s
prints, images float and touch in an atmospheric space, creating
visually poetic elisions. In Weisend’s images, narratives are not
stories with beginning, middle, and end but are instead dreamlike
intimations of unexpected connections.
For all of the artists in “re/order,” images and ideas are explored
through materials. The paint, page, and clay give form to experiments
and inklings, questions and statements. For some of these artists,
image and idea precede and determine the ultimate body of the object.
For others, it is the act of physically manipulating materials that
points the way to the final form, image, or concept. This approach
involves a kind of high stakes play, where the result is just as likely
to be failure as it is the achievement of that rare and precarious
balance that can make us see things freshly, as we haven’t seen them
before. In the work of sculptors Mitchell Messina and Jonathan Kirk and
the painter Chuck Haas, we feel this sense of surprise and wonder; forms
conflict and harmonize in the same moment, creating allusions to images
while clinging to the beauty of metal and pigment.
“re/order” is an opportunity to consider a wide range of contemporary
approaches to art making. Connected by an interest in forging what is
already there and hard to see into a new and illuminating order, the
fifteen artists in “re/order” challenge our vision and share their
insight.
|
