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February 2017
Review Stillness Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery Pima Community College, Tucson Reviewed by C.J. Shane |
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As our world grows warmer and drier with more and more devastating weather extremes, and as we face a continuous and growing stream of environmental problems, artists are increasingly taking up the theme of humanity’s relationship to the natural world. It’s as if we are approaching the elephant of the natural world from various viewpoints, touching it where we can and trying to understand. We want to know where we humans have gone wrong, and how we could better fit in with life.
The current exhibit at Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery on the west campus of Pima Community College is titled Stillness. The exhibit takes up this theme of our human relationship to nature in diverse ways. Rather than conclude that nature elicits in us a state of stillness, we come to realize that stillness is an interior state that emerges from mindfulness, from careful observation, and from being still long enough to really see the natural world as it really is. The artworks in this exhibit call upon us to be still and consider.
The current exhibit at Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery on the west campus of Pima Community College is titled Stillness. The exhibit takes up this theme of our human relationship to nature in diverse ways. Rather than conclude that nature elicits in us a state of stillness, we come to realize that stillness is an interior state that emerges from mindfulness, from careful observation, and from being still long enough to really see the natural world as it really is. The artworks in this exhibit call upon us to be still and consider.
Sean-Paul Pluguez
Upon entering the gallery, we are confronted immediately with Sean-Paul Pluguez’s large scale sculpture entitled “The Genetically-Modified Forest.” The sculpture is made up of 150 eight-feet tall wooden grape stakes covered in 24 karat gold and mounted closely together on a birch base. In his statement, the artist tells us his work “speaks of man’s limited abilities to deal with his own planet.” Every element of this sculpture speaks to his assertion.
Rather than a real forest consisting of living trees, we see a “forest” of stakes designed intentionally to support the cultivation of grapes (viticulture). Of all the grapes grown worldwide, 71% are cultivated for a non-food product – wine. This means that we humans make very significant changes to the earth in order to produce this luxury product which exists for our pleasure, not our sustenance. Wine is not essential for human survival and yet that’s where most of the grapes go at a time when human hunger and malnutrition continue to persist worldwide. Some historians think that environmental degradation began with agriculture, or more accurately, unsustainable agriculture, and still it continues.
The stakes in Pluguez’s sculpture glitter with gold. This also reminds us of our strained relationship to the natural world. Like wine, gold also is not essential for human life. Our lust for gold is the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage, not to mention considerable armed conflict over the centuries. Gold mining and processing are the source of most toxic mercury pollution in the world. And as if to add insult to injury, Pluguez’s sharpened stakes point together at the sky like a forest of armed missiles, precision targeted and ready for launching. We are still for a moment and see an artistic expression of our human folly.
Rather than a real forest consisting of living trees, we see a “forest” of stakes designed intentionally to support the cultivation of grapes (viticulture). Of all the grapes grown worldwide, 71% are cultivated for a non-food product – wine. This means that we humans make very significant changes to the earth in order to produce this luxury product which exists for our pleasure, not our sustenance. Wine is not essential for human survival and yet that’s where most of the grapes go at a time when human hunger and malnutrition continue to persist worldwide. Some historians think that environmental degradation began with agriculture, or more accurately, unsustainable agriculture, and still it continues.
The stakes in Pluguez’s sculpture glitter with gold. This also reminds us of our strained relationship to the natural world. Like wine, gold also is not essential for human life. Our lust for gold is the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage, not to mention considerable armed conflict over the centuries. Gold mining and processing are the source of most toxic mercury pollution in the world. And as if to add insult to injury, Pluguez’s sharpened stakes point together at the sky like a forest of armed missiles, precision targeted and ready for launching. We are still for a moment and see an artistic expression of our human folly.
CBlakely_Figure IV/Ground Composition (Chimney Rock)
Colin Blakely, head of the University of Arizona’s School of Art, also takes up the question of our human relationship to the natural world in his exploration of the landscape. He tells us that “the landscape exists only as an embodiment of our collective cultural imagination.” Note the difference between the actual natural world which exists whether we notice it or not, and the landscape which is a human invention. There are plenty of examples in the news these days about the landscape as an embodiment of our imagination. One group of humans see a vast desert landscape as sacred land, as home for millennia, as the place where families have lived and worked, and live and work now. Others see the same landscape as two political entities (nations) divided by an invisible line and greatly in need of a high wall to make the line permanent and visible.
Blakely proves his point in his “constructed views.” For example, his “Figure IV/Ground Composition (Chimney Rock)” combines different photos to construct a new image of the landscape (left).
Blakely proves his point in his “constructed views.” For example, his “Figure IV/Ground Composition (Chimney Rock)” combines different photos to construct a new image of the landscape (left).
CBlakely_Yosemite Valley (After Bierstadt)_
Even more intriguing is Blakely’s “Yosemite Valley (After Bierstadt),” another constructed landscape with a subtle, beautiful color palette quite unlike the rather dull original photo (shared with me by the exhibit’s curator, David Andres). (right) Blakely refers to Alfred Bierstadt, a 19th century American painter known for his dramatic and romanticized landscapes of the American West. Bierstadt was associated with other painters in the same vein, such as Thomas Moran, who were interested in creating a picture of the American West as a place of endless possibilities. I once saw a very large-scale Thomas Moran painting in a museum that covered most of the wall from floor to ceiling. I found it rather overwhelming. It was as if Moran thought it necessary to greatly dramatize and romanticize the landscape or else it would fail to be interesting to the folks back on the East Coast who would never go to the American West and never see the real thing.
Intriguing also is the connection of Blakely’s “Yosemite…” to Chinese Qing (pronounced “Ching”) dynasty paintings, specifically during Kangxi (pronounced Kong-Shee) emperor’s rein from 1654 –1722. The landscapes during that period more accurately placed humans in their proper position in the landscapes. The humans are small, not dominant at all, and barely visible beneath the karst peaks of the southern Chinese mountains. Note the similarly-sized humans in Blakely’s “Yosemite…” with easily overlooked tourists admiring the landscape.
Intriguing also is the connection of Blakely’s “Yosemite…” to Chinese Qing (pronounced “Ching”) dynasty paintings, specifically during Kangxi (pronounced Kong-Shee) emperor’s rein from 1654 –1722. The landscapes during that period more accurately placed humans in their proper position in the landscapes. The humans are small, not dominant at all, and barely visible beneath the karst peaks of the southern Chinese mountains. Note the similarly-sized humans in Blakely’s “Yosemite…” with easily overlooked tourists admiring the landscape.
CWarden_Gradient_
Claire Warden is a Phoenix artist originally from Canada whose photography takes a very different approach to the natural world. She calls her series of manipulated photos Mimesis, defined as simulation, mimicry, or imitation of the real world. In Warden’s case, it is the subject of identify that she explores, and specifically her own identity. She tells us that her own family is of a “diverse, ethnic heritage,” and this heritage has led her to “reflect on the fluid, abstract nature of identity.”
Warden uses manipulated photos of her own skin, saliva and other body fluids to create black and white, abstract images to address the various ways we can approach the question of identity. The natural world in the form of her saliva becomes a means and method of exploring her own personal existence in the world. Her work is largely self-referential, and as a result, less about discerning our human relationship to the natural world and more about her own attempts to go beyond culture, gender, and ethnicity to define herself. This kind of self-exploration is less relevant to questions regarding the human relationship to the natural world than the other works in the exhibit. Because it is so self-referential, this artwork has less of that personal-yet-universal appeal of the best artworks.
Warden uses manipulated photos of her own skin, saliva and other body fluids to create black and white, abstract images to address the various ways we can approach the question of identity. The natural world in the form of her saliva becomes a means and method of exploring her own personal existence in the world. Her work is largely self-referential, and as a result, less about discerning our human relationship to the natural world and more about her own attempts to go beyond culture, gender, and ethnicity to define herself. This kind of self-exploration is less relevant to questions regarding the human relationship to the natural world than the other works in the exhibit. Because it is so self-referential, this artwork has less of that personal-yet-universal appeal of the best artworks.
KBreakey_Banded Sand Snake_
Kate Breakey, on the other hand, starts out with the intention of classifying her personal memories of the natural world in her multi-piece work “Taxonomy of Memory.” In the process, she creates a set of images that are not only personal but have a universality about them that speaks to us all. Breakey’s work says a lot about our place within the natural world…not as observers, but as participants. She recounts that as a child, she developed a fascination with life’s diversity. She tells us in her artist’s statement that the life forms she encountered seem to “radiate a silent message,” secretive and mysterious, that she attempted to discover in her artwork. What child has not been captivated by a praying mantis or the petals of a marigold? Alas, perhaps that is all changing these days, unfortunately, because fewer and fewer children in developed countries have a direct experience of the natural world, stuck as they are like glue to digital devices.
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Breakey’s artwork is hung in the gallery in the form of a large eye shape. Thanks to curator Andres for pointing that out to me. The eye is a metaphor again for the stillness we must have in order to be able to see not just the parts but the whole as well. She uses her photos enhanced with graphite and color pencil and captured in bee’s wax to reveal the creatures that make up the whole of the natural world. Her encaustic works include images of flowers and birds, fish and insects, eggs and fruit. Her one image of a human, a female nude, places the humans within the panoply of creatures, not above or outside them. One of the best in this series is her “White Swan,” a bird so little interested in what humans are doing that the swan fails to even look at the photographer. Yes, the world can go on without the humans.
This exhibit is well worth the time and effort it takes to see it because it generates within the wakeful viewer some interesting and challenging questions, and it requires to live up to the challenge in the exhibit’s title. Can we be still and look? Can we be still and see? Stillness is at the Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery in West Campus Pima Community College Center for the Arts, 2202 W. Anklam Rd., and will be on display through March 10. There is an Art Lecture scheduled for 7 pm on March 1. For more information, go to: Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery |
Kate Breakey
KBreakey_White Swan_
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