photography – Ann Sinfield: Projects

The launching point

“I remove such stuff as could make visible the remainder as armature of a different value.”
Buzz Spector

Not objects as an end, but objects as jumping off points. It is the spark that is interesting, and the process, not necessarily the conclusion. Because the objects don’t really end, they just stop and offer up a waiting area for what’s next. Like a train platform, or a cliff ready for a hang-glider.

A man in the otherwise empty, serenely quiet gallery interrupted my looking, my thinking. He asked me, “Do you think the art is about the content of the books? Do you think the artist is interested in what the books are about?” Maybe this man has my usual approach in museums and doesn’t read labels. I told him to read the labels.

(OK, that’s not all I said to him. I was balancing the frustration of being interrupted by a man as I looked and thought. Did I appear to be doing nothing? As a woman, did I seem to be waiting for a man? Someone to ask me to help him out of his confusion? But then I realized this is something I’m actually good at, something I happen to enjoy: talking with people about art in galleries. And although my thoughts were nowhere near shaped yet, I stepped out of my head and entered into a conversation).

“Buzz Spector: Reading Matter,” installation view

At that stage of still standing on the shore, of not having really waded into the work yet, I gave this man some guideposts. I said yes, I think the artist knows what is in the books. And not only that, but I think he loves books. A lot of his work deals with books or their composite parts: paper, binding, words, communication. And I did suggest the man read the labels, because they are really helpful in providing, you know, context.

Books and their context: paper, words, photos of books, frozen books, books as building blocks, books deconstructed or altered (and pencils, but that’s a different post). And what books? Well, you can’t know just by looking, for most of them anyway. They are pictured with titled spines turned away, their pages are missing, or they are actually invisible, buried and unknowable within multiple stacks.

This is where the labels help in showing the bigger picture, explaining how the books and paper are not alone, they do not exist here as isolated objects. They are each physical (or pictured) items within extensive, interconnecting webs, which the labels themselves are part of.

The labels explain that an individual book, pictured or altered, can be part of a collection or refer to another artist’s work. Torn paper is just one element in an on-going conversation, across time and distance, and even academic discipline. The title might be funny or sly to those in the know. But for all of us who are not academics, or not-so-well-read-in-the-classics? A book whose pages have been carefully torn and reduced to beautifully feathery but illegible shapes becomes a decision point: is the vagueness of meaning acceptable enough (am I contented), or am I intrigued enough to put in some effort and find out who the fuck Actaeon is? The missing parts expose the curiosity of the viewer, who becomes part of the context. No longer just looking, they’re involved now, with thinking, with seeing; they are connected and the web is extended even further.

The content of the books is very important to Spector, but it’s not the primary focus of his work. He doesn’t, for example, make images that refer directly to the stories or arguments presented in the books. Instead, he removes the text, rendering the book unreadable. In tearing away the content, the structure of the book is revealed, exposing its utter strangeness. The loss of the text is shocking, but it is a void that brings the function of the book into the spotlight. If it can’t be read, what is this paper thing that usually communicates ideas across time and space?

Words connect people, and books for Spector are (maybe) just one form of something that holds words. Without their words, books are no longer disguised by a purported use and can be seen more generally for what they are: containers. It is not the words themselves that are important, but rather the ideas and connections that are carried and supported by those texts. Once consumed, the words become thoughts that can be shared and changed and expanded. And once pages are torn away, books are freed to become something else: beyond narrative or explicative repositories they are now unknown objects, mysteries for strangers to ponder, together or alone, in a quiet gallery.

The altered books challenge us to connect and question, to learn, or decide not to. Together we not only replace what is missing, but we expand upon the loss by exploring the books beyond their physical forms. From the muted, missing books we leap, get lost, maybe find help, and (stacking things, tearing things up), we connect and create.

“Buzz Spector: Reading Matter,” is on view at the Rockford Art Museum from February 4–May 29, 2022.

The Importance of Small Moments

The New Art Examiner just published my review of the exhibition, Nares: Moves, which is on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum until October. The text to the article is below, and the images here are mine. See the online article for the higher-quality images provided by the museum for press-use.

With this article I am now a contributing editor with the New Art Examiner. It’s a small moment maybe, but a really nice one!

The new exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum, featuring the work of Jamie Nares (formerly James), is an intriguing retrospective covering five decades work by an experimental, playful, curious and inventive artist. It also marks the first MAM exhibition curated by the museum’s director, Dr. Marcelle Polednik.

In the accompanying catalogue introduction, Polednik defines the challenge of presenting a retrospective of Nares’ work. “These objects,” she writes, “have little to suggest that they are the works of a single artist, much less that they are connected to a sequential biographical or art historical narrative.” Her solution is to present the works, not in strict chronological order, but rather in thematic sections.

Polednik’s curatorial approach emphasizes three concepts–gesture, time, and movement—which are interwoven throughout nine sections of the exhibition. These nine “chapters” are also explored in an accompanying catalogue and a gallery guide. Additional programming—film screenings, a dance performance and discussions with the artist, collector Julian Schnabel, and musical collaborator Thurston Moore–will expand upon the gallery experience.

Embedding the display within such rich programming and publications is an important choice for this material, as there is not much explanatory text within the gallery. It is helpful, for example, to more fully understand the impact of defining personal experiences, such as the artist’s youthful move to New York City in the 1970s. Details about unusual methods and materials are also informative and lead to a fuller appreciation of the works. The deeper dive not only provides more opportunity to grapple with the complexity of this work, but also provides strong reinforcement of the exhibition’s premise, that the lines of exploration threading through Nares’ long career are consistent across surprisingly varied media.

The exhibition’s organizational scheme is successful in demonstrating visual and conceptual relationships between works in disparate media from different periods of the artist’s life.

The introductory room, which also serves as the exhibit’s conclusion, presents a pair of works: the 2008 video, Riding with Michaux, and an untitled high-speed drawing from 2014. Although not far separated in time, the works intersect in multiple ways. The video’s imagery of sunlight on water has visual similarities to the linear forms of the untitled drawing but, more importantly, they share process. A relationship is made here between the artist filming with a camera on a moving train, and the artist holding a brush to a rotating sheet of paper. Motion, not only in the visual field, but as part of the making, is central to the artist’s practice.

Film and video have a strong presence throughout the galleries. From early works like Giotto Circle #1 or Game, shot in TriBeCa of 1970s New York, to Element #1 (2009) and a series of Portraits (2016), Nares’ long-standing passion for moving images is clearly evident. The subjects may seem at first unrelated—the artist drawing a circle on a wall, small hand movements, a heavy ball swinging over an empty street, the slow eruption of bubbling mixture—but all have important elements in common.

Pendulum (1976), with its groaning sound and almost dizzying, hazardous motion, explores the movement of an object through an eerily empty urban space. In the luminous Street (2011), made with a high-speed camera, scenes of now-occupied city streets have been slowed to a glacial pace. The camera, instead of focusing on moving objects, is here itself in motion, driven along city blocks, capturing unstaged images of people, the details of Manhattan daily life, made graceful and dramatic via slowed
motion. Both works chart time and movement to very different ends. Nares’ innovative use of a high-speed camera is only one example of the artist’s intellectual curiosity.

The monumental paintings presented in the exhibition fully display the artist’s capacity for invention. Nares has created luscious works with various strokes: thick and lumbering, made from tiny glass beads, thermoplastic “paint,” and a street-marking machine; or the single stroke paintings, delicate and graceful, made with elaborate, homemade brushes and, at times, interference pigments. At first glance, they bear no relation to each other—heavy, textured, black and white or gorgeous, delicate, ribbons of color–yet all refract light, suggest motion, and basically disrupt the expected experience of looking.

The show’s most recent works are a series of large-scale images with gold leaf. Originating as rubbings of cut-stone street surfaces in the artist’s old New York neighborhood of Tribeca, the works incorporate both a technological interest—with Evolon, a non-woven, high-tech microfiber paper—and a social acknowledgement unusual for this artist. The stone surfaces are described as having been cut by immigrant labor in the city’s early days. When thermoplastic street markings become abstract paintings, and 19th-century street stone is transformed into shimmering gold, the artist is not only an inventor but also earns the title of alchemist.

It is clear that Nares has been grappling with movement for a long time. A note from a sketchbook captures the artist’s interest in a playful way:

things in motion; motion in things

The phrase provides an opportunity for exchange, a back and forth, a circular form that is mirrored in the intentionally circular path within the gallery. The exhibition ends where it begins: with a video and a drawing, both exploring motion and time, with directness and grace. Nares celebrates small moments in her work, transforming simple gestures into fascinating experiences worthy of our time and consideration.

Nares: Moves is on view from June 14 to October 6, 2019 at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Represent

My project from last fall, in conjunction with planning for some upcoming exhibitions, is making me think more about abstraction and representation: if these terms are useful and where they are relevant. Complicated words, they each have multiple layers and definitions that vary by context.

Chloë Bass has considered abstraction, wondering if it is a privilege, but concluding instead that it is essential for bringing people together. This approach is relevant, not only to my exhibition of Dan Ramirez’ work, but it speaks to many other recent exhibitions that focus on or unearth or explore the work of artists of color working in abstract, minimalist, or non-representational visual styles. How are these approaches interpreted by museums?

That is, of course, if there is actually any work by artists of color in the museum to be interpreted. It seems that some museums have finally caught on to the imbalance of their collections. But what will they do with the work once it has been purchased and accessioned? Will it go into storage with the other 92-98% of the collection? Will it stay there for 20 years without being researched or interpreted?

(When I say “interpret,” I mean display. When a museum displays a work of art it is interpreted: selected, installed with other works within a larger scheme or organizational structure, lit and labeled, accessible during open hours, for an admission fee or not, under electronic or human surveillance, climate controlled, documented, stanchioned, managed by museum etiquette like do not touch or no flash photography please, hash-tagged, pictured on posters and greeting cards in the shop, nicknamed, examined, and seen by hopefully very many people. Adding text in the form of a label or a docent tour or a curator talk or an audio file or a web exhibition is an additional layer of interpretation. The museum identifies the work with artist, title, date, medium, and credit line, which is interpretation. If you don’t agree, have you ever asked an artist about the date when a work was completed, the title of a work, or whether they used graphite or pencil? The answers that make it onto the label are interpretation).

Rashid Johnson has talked about how representation of the Black body has offered a way into museum spaces for Black artists. (I would say this goes for Latinx artists too. Figurative work by artists of color is easier for white curators because it is clearly identifiable as culturally-specific. Maybe images of cholos, madonnas, or sharecroppers are easier for marketing teams, too?) But what about artists who do not work in representational modes? If Sam Gilliam’s detachment of canvas from stretcher can be understood within a history of protest–in Johnson’s words, as “emancipation”–is this dichotomy, representational and abstract, useful at all?

Such limited terms obscure similarities and suggests a non-existent conflict. For example, when artists are interested in perception, in creating work that unsettles our understanding of what we see, is there only one path available? Is it either, or? Of course not. Both Dan Ramirez and Faisal Abdu’Allah make art work that questions how we make sense of what we see, and their work and practices could not be more different.

Ramirez’s approach is unapologetic. He is not interested in discussing his latinidad, damn it, he is applying paint to canvas or graphite to wood, and thinking about our ability to understand the world. He plays perceptual games using geometry and light, surface and depth. The play is deeply connected to philosophical pursuits, along with his considerations of belief and doubt. His work makes you question what you see.

Abdu-Allah’s approach is figurative and community-based; he uses photography, printmaking, weaving, and other media to represent gatherings of people. FauHaus and Visage were collaborative projects, developed in partnership with groups of students. But his objects also refer to groups of people: a gold barber’s chair standing in for the important sociality of the barber shop.

His two Last Supper tapestries picture groups of people also, but what is represented is not easily read. The iconography has been mixed up—the typical Eurocentric Christian Last Supper is transformed here with women and Muslims, or contemporary dress and a display of weapons. Not only is the imagery changed, but the medium has undergone an alchemical transformation from photograph to Jacquard tapestry, playing again with the Eurocentrism of the title. These works make you question what you see.

If the display of Ramirez’ Aletheia: Scribe’s Reveal was a dramatic statement about the artist’s career and aesthetic vision, Duppy Conquerer is Faisal’s own coming out. Using imagery that is forthright and insistent, this is a loud and clear assertion of himself as an independent artist within an international art world. With a nod to his Jamaican heritage and an I-don’t-have-time-for-your-shit stance, in black clothing and mask, he is a story-teller and magician, mentor and scholar. He represents. And yet, with photograph transformed into tapestry, individual into icon, the work makes you question what you see.

Perception is a tricky thing. Michelle M. Wright calls this interaction between work and viewer the “physics of Blackness”:

In any given moment, when the spectator engages a work of art, different valences of Blackness may formulate, expand, or multiply, qualitatively and quantitatively. What is Black art? That may very well depend on the time and the space of the moment.

So, how do museums interpret the work of Black or Latinx artists? Representation and abstraction are complex terms that indicate what happens when the viewer is engaged. What is it that you think you see? That’s the question.

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