SOVER SCENE: Art that tweaks perception and purpose

By Anne Lawrence Guyon

On the topic of defining modern art, American conceptualist Joseph Kosuth had much to say in his 1969 essay, “Art After Philosophy,” which remains eminently relevant.

“Artists question the nature of art by presenting new propositions as to art’s nature. And to do this one cannot concern oneself with the handed-down “language” of traditional art, as this activity is based on the assumption that there is only one way of framing art propositions. But the very stuff of art is indeed greatly related to “creating” new propositions.”

Ever the steady source of new propositions, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center recently opened “In the Zone II,” a defiant, elegant declaration of newness that had me fondly recalling my first brush with the eternal novelty of conceptual art.

The ink still smudgeable on my art history diploma, it was my first day of work at one of San Francisco’s cream-of-the-crop contemporary art galleries and the director was earnestly showing me how to pack a sculpture in bubble wrap to prepare for its shipment to the collector who’d bought it. Each of the 100 elements needed padding, which was daunting enough but my jaw really dropped when he added, “Don’t worry if any break, the artist can make more — it’s toast.”

That’s right — toast, which is what I knew I’d be if I let the guffaw rising up my esophagus escape in a burst of uncouth unprofessionalism. I didn’t know which was more absurd, that an avid art patron had laid down 10 singed slices of Wonder bread presented on plywood shelving or that I was being paid (handsomely, I might add) to pack them like Faberge eggs.

Goes without saying that in my newbie nervousness I managed to break about an entire loaf’s worth during the process, but my boss serenely suggested I call the artist for “replacement toast.” More toast forthcoming, I chuckled at my preposterous “if they could see me now” moment, wincing at what my art history professors, much less my parents, would say. I eventually did tell Mum about it, which only elicited a sardonic inquiry as to why I hadn’t brought along a pot of tea and a jar of marmalade.

Perhaps it was the intoxicating cloud of enriched flour fragrance, but I started musing on the artist’s decision to use such an iconic, not to mention perishable, medium and by the time she’d delivered the fresh batch of toast I’d decided she was making a fairly pithy point about consumerism, our collective perception of value and the omnipresence, if not omnipotence, of products in our society.

I spent the next two years discussing, curating, displaying and crating every breed, creed and species of creative conceptual expression, from handmade cement blobs and alder wood frying in a pan to huge collages made of car floor mats that’d been stapled to the gallery wall. Heady stuff.

Having traveled through epochs of artistic archetypes in the context of academia — including Dadaism, minimalism, abstraction, pop, op, performance, process, graffiti and video art — I discovered that working directly with conceptual art on a daily basis gave me an understanding of it that I could have never fully attained in the lecture hall.

And yet, one of the most compelling qualities about this particular “ism” that cannot be said of many other modernist genres is that conceptual art is often accessible to everyone simply on the basis of innate familiarity. Whereas it’s a stretch for the average non-artist to be able to connect splashes of paint or a bronze sculpture to his or her own life, conceptual art often includes recognizable elements, giving it intrinsic inroads into just about every psyche.

Marcel Duchamp, the grand pooh-bah of conceptual art, taught the public that any object could be art, whether it was a bicycle wheel, a pipe, a urinal or a thermometer. It was a case of re-presenting the particular item in a new context, thereby investing it with fresh meaning by virtue of incongruous juxtapositions and shifting our preconceived ideas.

There is also an invigorating alchemy in the notion that a conceptual artist’s true achievement is concealed in the moment of cognition on the part of the viewer. The thought that went into the conceiving and construction of a work reaches fruition upon the observer’s interpretation and, ideally, grasping of intended meaning.

In BMAC’s show, for example, Lynn Richardson has constructed three spectacular installations that shove our sense of security outside the proverbial box and onto its existential knees with the pretty suggestion that even though the ozone is disappearing — and that, make no mistake, it will be gone eventually — we can still look fabulous.

In “Iceberg Fashion Fur,” a row of exotic winter jackets hangs along the wall, each affixed with a glaring orange life vest and in “Inter-Glacial Free Trade Agency,” a dazzling array of perfectly plausible products such as the “All new, hypothermic eye gloss” in fetching colors like Midnight Sun assaults our senses, both political and primal. Taking in what is a full shelter’s worth of ingenious, meticulously executed accoutrements de climate crisis — first aid kids, make-up, huge Swiss Army knives all carefully displayed as if in the window of an eco-disaster preparedness boutique — is a chilling experience, not only because of the patent probability of such a scenario, but aesthetically as well: everything is a perfectly icy, clinical blue, with a couple of foreboding Red Cross emblems emphasizing the doom of it all.

In “Icehouse: Artificial Hydroponic Fruit Juice Stand,” a grove of opaque white squares create a frozen chaos of fragile thin ice churned up from a melting sea by watery indigo plastic rafts, like an Arctic lunar module enclosing a desperate attempt at salvation in the form of a faux-botanical lab. These tableaux bluntly imply that what certain world leaders continue to deny is inevitable and the assumed corporate glee at such environmental tragedy makes the prospect all the more alarming.

Angelo Arnold twists the knife in an altogether different though equally unsettling direction. “Not Today” is a lovely high-backed chair, upholstered in a golden jacquard satin, with polished dark wood arms and legs — and it is decidedly annoyed. The arms are folded in obvious contempt and the seat divided but tightly clenched like a fuming lover who’s trying to make a point. “Loveseat” moves this novel concept from Seussian humor into surreal despair, collapsing in on itself with downcast headrest and sorrowful legs akimbo.

Considering the uncountable shades of humanity that regularly grace furniture — laughter, tears, conversation, lovemaking, sleep — such eloquent anthropomorphizing of these core household objects is profoundly evocative and made me wish there’d been a full room of Arnold’s emotive mascots.

Other work in the show is equally powerful, including Harriet Caldwell’s exquisite exploration of memory in “Brain Journaling,” with nearly a hundred sheets of milky vellum bearing weakly penned words, Rorschach inkblots and small, barely visible images, as if hidden in recesses of the mind.

Alicia Renadette’s “Harvest,” a delicate veil crocheted from collected hair and “Assume the Position,” a river of velvet-lined dishwashing gloves sprawled across the floor, are further examples of the visionary, refreshingly challenging work found throughout “In the Zone II,” astutely curated by MassMoCA’s Denise Markonish.

At its best, conceptual art is a sumptuous visual, intellectual and emotional feast, such as this show at BMAC (and at its worst, a bit like stale toast). There’s an admirable audacity in this caliber of innovation that will inspire close inspection — and introspection — for those wise enough to see it. The sheer originality of thought is extraordinarily uplifting in execution and impact, and I’d venture to guess Mr. Kosuth would agree.

Online: brattleboromuseum.org

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Archive: rutlandherald.typepad.com/soverscene