Title: Do Not Touch: an exploration of delicate obsessions
Dates: January 26 - February 27, 2000
Location: Consolidated Works, Seattle, WA
Artists: Nayland Blake (New York), Cris Bruch (Seattle), John Fraser (Chicago), Colleen Hayward (Seattle), Maria Inocencio (Portland, OR), Michelle Kelly (Seattle), Michiko Kon (New York), Matthew Landkammer (Seattle), D’Arcy McGrath (Seattle), Stephanie Speight (Portland)
As the director of visual art for Consolidated Works I was faced with a challenging situation. We had been provided with the opportunity to inhabit a 30,000 sq. ft. warehouse from October 1999 – July 2000, which left just enough time for four exhibitions in the gallery. The first exhibition, Artificial Life filled the 4,000 sq. ft. visual art space with powerful work including a large installation, robots in a car-sized case, a herd of life-size fiberglass sheep and much more. In looking ahead it only seemed logical to curate exhibitions with works that would emphasize and utilize the 35ft. ceilings and the large exhibition walls.
As is true to my nature I questioned and then balked at this obvious use of the space. I became fascinated with the idea of juxtaposing delicate works with the vast physical structure. As I began the curatorial process on this exhibit I explored extremely ephemeral works, being driven by the artist’s choice of materials to fulfill the concept. Maria Inocencio, a Portland artist creates subtle line drawings on paper with her own hair. Connecting each strand of hair end to end, Inocencio marks time, making a calendar of days or a document of each session of hair brushing through the painstakingly intricate and time-consuming process of gluing the hair to sheets paper. Another Portland-based artist, Stephanie Speight, wound cash register tape into 75 large balls that lie in piles on the floor or hang from the ceiling suspended by nylon cord. This first round of artists also included D’Arcy McGrath who has devoted much of her artistic life to sculpting tiny figurative pieces made of carved soap and bits of paper. Many of her tender figures stand balanced on pins and paper nut cups, and few hold their own hand-scrawled signs with messages like, “please don’t harm me.”
In examining this first grouping of works I found that it not only the ephemeral nature of the works that bound them together, but also the obsessive nature in which they were created. Releasing the show from its focus on media, and spinning it towards the conceptual led me to artists like Michiko Kon. This New York-based artist produces objects made from sticky, wet and sometimes repulsive food items including chicken feet, octopus, and fish heads with eyes still glistening in combination with fruit and flowers. The forms these sculptures take are often garments, forcing the viewer to imagine intimate contact. Kon doesn’t display the objects, but rather photographs them in vivid cibachrome and luscious black and white. This archival form makes the rancid ultimately seductive.
Rabbits by nature are sweet, timid creatures, and Nayland Blake has focussed on their likeness for more than a decade. His rabbits however are intolerably sweet, and also ridiculously comic and at best truly menacing. The series of six drawings and seven-foot neoprene bunny suit included in this exhibition perfectly exemplify the range of his obsession and the depth of exploration his years have produced. Blake’s work sits beside John Fraser’s an installation of 196 antique shirt collars hung in a mesmerizing grid where the shadows produced are as strong as the objects themselves. The installation the eye is bombarded with pattern and repetition first, and then upon closer inspection, the joy of the uniqueness of each linen collar.
Each of the artists described above and the others in the exhibition have chosen to devote an incredible amount of time and energy in creating temporal works that are not only obsessively time consuming to create, but challenging to view. In the end, these precarious and delicate works prove powerful enough in their large surroundings to not just grab the attention of visitors, but demand intimate investigation.
As is true to my nature I questioned and then balked at this obvious use of the space. I became fascinated with the idea of juxtaposing delicate works with the vast physical structure. As I began the curatorial process on this exhibit I explored extremely ephemeral works, being driven by the artist’s choice of materials to fulfill the concept. Maria Inocencio, a Portland artist creates subtle line drawings on paper with her own hair. Connecting each strand of hair end to end, Inocencio marks time, making a calendar of days or a document of each session of hair brushing through the painstakingly intricate and time-consuming process of gluing the hair to sheets paper. Another Portland-based artist, Stephanie Speight, wound cash register tape into 75 large balls that lie in piles on the floor or hang from the ceiling suspended by nylon cord. This first round of artists also included D’Arcy McGrath who has devoted much of her artistic life to sculpting tiny figurative pieces made of carved soap and bits of paper. Many of her tender figures stand balanced on pins and paper nut cups, and few hold their own hand-scrawled signs with messages like, “please don’t harm me.”
In examining this first grouping of works I found that it not only the ephemeral nature of the works that bound them together, but also the obsessive nature in which they were created. Releasing the show from its focus on media, and spinning it towards the conceptual led me to artists like Michiko Kon. This New York-based artist produces objects made from sticky, wet and sometimes repulsive food items including chicken feet, octopus, and fish heads with eyes still glistening in combination with fruit and flowers. The forms these sculptures take are often garments, forcing the viewer to imagine intimate contact. Kon doesn’t display the objects, but rather photographs them in vivid cibachrome and luscious black and white. This archival form makes the rancid ultimately seductive.
Rabbits by nature are sweet, timid creatures, and Nayland Blake has focussed on their likeness for more than a decade. His rabbits however are intolerably sweet, and also ridiculously comic and at best truly menacing. The series of six drawings and seven-foot neoprene bunny suit included in this exhibition perfectly exemplify the range of his obsession and the depth of exploration his years have produced. Blake’s work sits beside John Fraser’s an installation of 196 antique shirt collars hung in a mesmerizing grid where the shadows produced are as strong as the objects themselves. The installation the eye is bombarded with pattern and repetition first, and then upon closer inspection, the joy of the uniqueness of each linen collar.
Each of the artists described above and the others in the exhibition have chosen to devote an incredible amount of time and energy in creating temporal works that are not only obsessively time consuming to create, but challenging to view. In the end, these precarious and delicate works prove powerful enough in their large surroundings to not just grab the attention of visitors, but demand intimate investigation.
