Rethinking the Familiar in Art
By Daniella Walsh, Art Critic
Art derived from familiar objects - now there is something we have not seen in a while. But let's stifle a yawn for the time being. "Ideas in Things," curated by Tim Jahns, educational coordinator at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, might not offer much that is new, but it is a well-thought-out show, centered on the concept that commonplace objects of art in their own right or with a little help from creative minds.
Seven artist offer, for the most part, witty takes on things like spent recording tape and old stereo equipment (William Anastasi's Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" and "Sound Object"), dress patterns (Terry Lenihan's "Framed") and other objects that we lesser mortals are taking for granted.
Lynn Aldrich arranged a number of aluminum crutches (Primary Virtue #2 Hope) into a dramatic wall sculpture, thus transforming objects usually associated with injury and pain into things of beauty. Aldrich also offers food for thought, literally, via "All I Know So Far", a shelf featuring "books" made from cactus leaves.
The show is a departure from the past when artists merely aimed for shock value, and the gullible paid fortunes for used toilet fixtures in place of couch art. Instead, some challenge viewers to consider an object like a decrepit, three-legged chair not only for its aesthetic appeal but for its history. David Ireland's "Three-Legged Chair" features a screaming yellow stump where one leg had been sawed off, and the once sturdy seat is bereft of caning and paint. Thus, the work elicits sentimentality combining pity and musings on the vicissitudes of old age.
Conversely, I was struck by Lynne Hendrick's work "Several Theories," which evidenced the artist's patience in weaving together a roughly 10-by-4-foot tapestry made entirely from typewriter correction ribbons and her message that technology, regardless of how brilliant, is transient. Immersed, like most of my contemporaries, in computers and the accompanying jargon, I saw the tiny reversed letters as quaint hieroglyphics of a different age and culture.
Things get a bit lofty in David Ireland's "Three Attempts to Understand Van Gogh's Ear in Terms of the Map of Africa." Here we are presented with an apple-green table bearing three roughly formed concrete bases into which crude coat hanger antennas, presumably representing ears, are stuck. Crowning the arrangement is an "elephant ear" which, indeed, resembles a map of Africa. What came to mind were unfocused melancholy musings about genius, exploitation and death.
"Ideas in Things" contains several site-specific installations such as William Anastasi's "Pour," which consists of a gallon of black, high-gloss paint poured down a stark white wall into a shiny puddle on the floor. While the more pragmatic among us might decry the mess, I pictured a gigantic Martin Luther throwing his ink pot at the apparition of Satan.
Site-specific works are fun that way. One can interpret them in several ways and also know that one is sharing something unique. Try as they may (or may not), artist can never replicate a work in the same manner elsewhere. Tom Freidman's "Toothpaste," loftily billed as an installation, is painted straight onto the wall in a color and wave pattern recalling David Hockney's swimming pool.
Things get more light-hearted in Rachel Lachowicz's "high Heels," a pair of shoes that could give even the most insecure females the stature they crave. Roughly a size 7, the shoes are covered in fake leopard fur and attached to roughly 4-foot high stiletto stilts. Hardly commonplace, the work wittily puts a mirror to the ludicrous lengths some women (and men) go to be fashionable.
Speaking of fashion, an accompanying show of fashion photographs by a group of young Los Angeles photographers offers a refreshing change to some of the murky, barely decipherable fare that has cluttered fashion magazines for ages. "Pho-Fashion" is a collection of fashion shots that range from the straight-forward to the campy, as in "Sailor Girl" by Kevin Kerslake, to the erotic, as in Graham Kuhn's untitled shot of a wholesome blond, dressed in see-through lace, precariously perched on the deck of a picturesquely decrepit fishing trawler.
This smalls how features work that with little or no pretension aims to find a meeting point between commercial and art photography. Nothing is blurred to distraction, over-or-underexposed and the models look as if they, at least occasionally, indulge in a meal.
That alone is worth a pint and a cheer!
The Orange County Register, October 3, 1999, p 30.