PERSPECTIVE: 30 Days Hath September at Vox Populi, Part 1

City Paper welcomes Jonathan Wallis, assistant professor of art history at Moore College of Art and Design, to our Critical Mass team. His column, "Perspective," will run monthly in this space, bringing a critical eye to a visual art scene that continues to thrive in Philadelphia. Questions? E-mail Wallis at jswallis@gmail.com. PART 1: Chad Stayrook, "Shooting for the Stars" Mallary Johnson

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PERSPECTIVE: 30 Days Hath September at Vox Populi, Part 1

POSTED: Thursday, September 17, 2009, 7:00 PM

Filed Under: Arts

City Paper welcomes Jonathan Wallis, assistant professor of art history at Moore College of Art and Design, to our Critical Mass team. His column, "Perspective," will run monthly in this space, bringing a critical eye to a visual art scene that continues to thrive in Philadelphia. Questions? E-mail Wallis at jswallis@gmail.com. PART 1: Chad Stayrook, "Shooting for the Stars"

Mallary Johnson

On the night of the opening for 'September at Vox Populi,' visitors were privy to a performance by Chad Stayrook, who spent the evening busily preparing for and attempting the launch of a self-crafted rocket as part of his solo exhibition, "Shooting for the Stars." From the initial pre-launch sequence where he checked off squares on a piece of paper in earnest, to the final countdown sequence, Stayrook's performance contained a Goldilocks-like balance of action, suspense, humor and drama. With his pre-flight ritual complete, Stayrook went from technician to cosmonaut, removing his blue workman's outfit and changing into a space suit (consisting of a pair of moon boots and a very tight and uncomfortable-looking rubbery white get-up), whereupon he entered his homemade rocket. With the aid of a smoke machine that emitted the necessary fumes from the bottom of his four-panel cardboard contraption, the wannabe rocketeer went through a countdown and, with a rattle and some shaking, his rocket teetered and then hit the floor of the gallery ' hard. After recovering from the impact Stayrook exited the broken rocket, removed his Science 101 rubber goggles, grabbed a megaphone and announced to the crowd, 'We have a failure to launch.' But the success of his performance, and the rest of the exhibition, derives precisely from this failure. The theme of personal struggle against larger forces, gravity and the complexity of physics involved with launching a rocket on the one hand, and the resistance one meets in trying to be successful as an artist in today's society on the other, is not difficult to grasp. But the means by which Stayrook enacts the 'dream' of success gives the metaphor and the show its charge. The whimsical cardboard rocket that ascends on its apparatus through a touch-sensitive sensor on the floor with the aid of compressed air (that's the closest you are going to get to a successful rocket launch in the show), and a chair suspended by ropes and chains meant to simulate weightlessness and present the optical illusion of high-speed cosmic travel via a video projection, allow Stayrook to take us with him over the hump and into a world of accomplishment that is still, it seems, partially imagined. This isn't the first one-man show in Philadelphia this season to deal with a rocket launch. Tavares Strachan's exhibit earlier this summer at the ICA also involved the preparation and launch of a rocket through rudimentary tools, methods, and materials. But whereas Strachan takes himself very seriously, the fallibility of Stayrook's project makes its failure less of a tragedy and more a commentary on the personal drive to succeed and the ability to laugh at one's pitfalls. Yet, Stayrook manages to combine well-crafted DIY-style sculptures, meticulous drawings on graph paper, and software-generated video sequences seamlessly, which is not easy to do. There is a flow to the works in the exhibition that reveals his talents with sculpture, installation, and curatorial practice, and this draws attention to aspects of the exhibition that might otherwise be overlooked by the dramatic presence of the broken rocket. His simulation of an event that took place in early 2008, when two satellites collided over northern Siberia and spread a large of amount of debris into the orbital current above our planet's atmosphere, reminds us that the potential for dangerous collisions of objects just outside our range of vision is constant. Given an elegant narrative account through two LCD screens that chart the trajectories of the satellites and run loops of the collision and the post-impact debris, the crash's inclusion in the show raises serious questions: How many objects currently orbit the earth? How much debris is out there? Will the orbital ring soon become our new ecological bane, like the nomadic floating barge of Long Island garbage, or the trash vortex in the Pacific? Along with the obstacles and struggles that come with choosing a career as an artist, Stayrook's show also reminds us that caring for the planet is no longer confined to the terrestrial. Come back tomorrow for Part 2 of "30 Days Hath September at Vox Populi," wherein Wallis reviews Brent Wahl's "Arrival and Departures."

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