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City Paper welcomes guest Critical Mass columnist Jonathan Wallis, assistant professor of art history at Moore College of Art and Design. His column, "Perspective," runs 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.
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Ben Pranger, Spaceship Log |
REVELING IN THE MYSTERIES >> With so much video on display in Philadelphia at the moment, my sensory faculties are almost pre-programmed to expect sound, movement and action when entering an artist space or museum. But when I walked into the single-room exhibition at Tiger Strikes Asteroid to view their current show, "Unveil," the effect was the opposite: silence and stillness. It rattled me. I had to slow myself down and consciously step out of my life-stream running on virtual communication and "connectivity" and put myself in neutral. The room contained two and three-dimensional work that shared something distanced from me of late: It felt distinctly human in a way difficult to describe. I felt a form of empathy through art that had been dormant for some time.
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Donna Ruff, Aurelia series |
"Unveil," curated primarily by two members of the TSA collective, Alex Paik and Alexis Granwell, is a matrix of mysteries addressed through artistic exploration and production. But what is unveiled in these works, according to Paik and Granwell, are not answers, but questions — and much of what is seen is itself coded in various ways. Ben Pranger's sculptures transcribe texts from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Buckminster Fuller into Braille, and are made manifest through thin wooden pegs inserted into sections of raw, cut trees. Whirlwind Revelation, a large swirling staircase of wooden blocks with text from Revelation 21 (scroll down for image), was generated by submitting the sculptural process of "becoming" to angular shifts dictated by the recurrence of specific words within the biblical text. Donna Ruff's paper pieces enact a mysterious personal ritual inspired by Afghani goldwork, Islamic calligraphy, and scarification to transform surfaces into abstract, organic codes.
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Hunter Stabler, Sator Square |
We are taken into more arcane mysteries in Hunter Stabler's Sator Square, which layers an exquisite cut-paper skeletal dragon over a Latin palindrome configuration that has remained alluring since its discovery in the ruins of Pompeii. Linguistic codes are paralleled by visual cues in Corey Antis' paintings of spatial encounters that elicit the tensions between surface modeling and illusion (his work in the context of this show brought to mind Ernst Gombrich's discussion of two- and three-tone codes in Art and Illusion). The show is not without humor, and Adam Parker Smith's hand-cut paper collages offer both contemplative and light-hearted readings of the show's themes. Salami, a photographic collage of genitals, nipples and lips, and Hella Diamonds, consisting of cut shards of paper from Art in America, are both humorous and a bit profound — driving home our continued obsessions and attractions to sex and material goods, while also harking back to more ancient references, mysteries and worship (the earliest known ritual use of diamonds was in India as religious icons, and sex ... no explanation needed, I think).
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Corey Antis, Blur (Yellow Room) |
I want to return to my initial response to "Unveil," and digress into a broader discussion about Paik and Granwell's group show at TSA. My appreciation of this show's overall effect was equal to my enjoyment of the individual works within it. A distinct feeling of empathy resonated strongly with me as I confronted the work in the small, chapel-like room at TSA. It wasn't until later, though, on reflection, that I was able to put this intimate experience into context: In his 1957 article for ArtNews, "The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art," Meyer Schapiro examined the nature of abstract art and its opposition to the industrial and cultural production of modernity. "It is primarily in modern painting and sculpture," he stated, "that such contemplativeness and communion with the work of another human being, the sensing of another's perfected feeling and imagination, becomes possible. Paintings and sculptures, let us observe, are the last handmade, personal objects within our culture. Almost everything else is produced industrially, in mass, and through a high division of labor. Few people are fortunate enough to make something that represents themselves, that issues entirely from their hands and mind, and to which they can affix their names."
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Adam Parker Smith, Salami |
Yes, much has changed since Schapiro wrote these words, and the digital age offers seemingly limitless potentials for artists along the same lines as those he mentions with regard to painting and sculpture. And the notion of being alienated by a Culture Industry has also seen revisions. But there are burning questions today about the nature of humanism in the growing virtual age. Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (recently featured in The New York Times) posits a skeptical future within the realm of virtual communication (Web 2.0). Lanier claims that we are being forced further and further into digitally constructed frameworks to define ourselves within "multiple choice identities," while also losing our individuality through digital collectivism that promotes what he calls the "hive mind." I can't help but hear echoes of Schapiro's modern "world of social relationships which is impersonal, calculated and controlled in its elements, aiming always at efficiency."
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Ben Pranger, Whirlwind Revelation |
This is not a slight against art driven by new technologies. On the contrary, those modes contain equal potential for artistic expression, communion and meditation. The interest here is in a distinct form of communication and empathy with the work of another human being through art. The work on display at TSA brought back to me forcefully a distinct quality of individually handmade objects and abstractly coded content. The work was there and ready; I had to do my part by disconnecting from one stream, and preparing to enter another where I was not privy to instantaneous or efficient communication (or narrative for that matter) in order to fully appreciate what was set before me. With so much information and so many "answers" provided by the collective "hive" of the Internet (what kind of knowledge, exactly?) available at our fingertips 24/7, perhaps the recent trend in popular culture for books and movies touting arcane knowledge, secret societies and conspiracy theories illustrates a sublimation of some of our desire for a different kind of comprehension (think Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Sherlock Holmes, National Treasure, and the endless spin-off books, etc). Could it be a twisted form of industrial supply-turned-entertainment to fulfill a demand/desire for something other than flat information accessible via the Internet?
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Adam Parker Smith, Hella Diamonds |
The human connection with the work at TSA that serves as example for this discussion is not retrograde. It is not art backpedalling itself to the time of modern divisions between cultures of production and the sanctuary of an avant-garde art. There are timely qualities to be read into the work in "Unveil" that evidence contemporary tensions. The works in the show serve up various entryways into communion with the spirit of humans as "makers" while also denying access to easy solutions, whether through transcriptions, translations or abstractions of linguistic and visual codes. And yet, ironically, by the very act of submitting to outside restrictions that dictate and restrict the degree of individually controlled creativity (such as in Pranger's Revelation Rising), some of the work suggests how those forces affect us and compete at present.
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| tigerstrikesasteroid.com |
| Installation view, "Unveiled" |
Much of the work in this humble show at TSA plays with sophisticated levels of legibility and illegibility. I welcome the difficulty, even the frustration. I mentioned earlier that the curators avoided a search for answers, and I'm happy to be left in the dark and forced to think and feel a bit differently. "Unveil" reminds me of how powerfully fulfilling this particular form of human activity can be for viewers, and also demonstrates the necessity and relevance of this type of work in a growing digital/virtual age where we are more and more "connected" (to what? and how?) and "occupied" (by what?). Maximus to the crowd: "Are you not entertained?" No, thankfully, I'm not.
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