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June 2016
Review Tohono Chul Art Gallery A(MAZE)ING MAPS AND LEGENDS Reviewed by C.J. Shane |
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Tohono Chul Art Gallery is always a wonderful place to visit not only for all the great art exhibits over many years, but also simply because the gallery is located in such a beautiful desert botanical garden.
The current exhibit, A(Maze)ing Maps and Legends, is well worth seeing despite the somewhat muddled theme of the exhibit. The curator’s statement tells us that the exhibit “….unveils puzzling explorations into the varied realms of cartography and the structured systems of their legends.” Does the word “legend” here refer to a key to a map or to a traditional story? And what is a “structured system of a legend?” The statement further says that maps can refer to “unique paths carved by the creative process.” That is, if the artwork doesn’t seem to have anything to do specifically either with maps or legends, then it must have to do instead with “the creative process.” That’s really stretching the idea of maps and legends. It’s no surprise then that there are quite a few artworks in this exhibit that don’t seem to have much to do with maps or legends.
We’ll take up the issue of art statements and writing about art below. First, however, let’s begin with some of the works in this exhibit that do fit well into the maps theme.
The current exhibit, A(Maze)ing Maps and Legends, is well worth seeing despite the somewhat muddled theme of the exhibit. The curator’s statement tells us that the exhibit “….unveils puzzling explorations into the varied realms of cartography and the structured systems of their legends.” Does the word “legend” here refer to a key to a map or to a traditional story? And what is a “structured system of a legend?” The statement further says that maps can refer to “unique paths carved by the creative process.” That is, if the artwork doesn’t seem to have anything to do specifically either with maps or legends, then it must have to do instead with “the creative process.” That’s really stretching the idea of maps and legends. It’s no surprise then that there are quite a few artworks in this exhibit that don’t seem to have much to do with maps or legends.
We’ll take up the issue of art statements and writing about art below. First, however, let’s begin with some of the works in this exhibit that do fit well into the maps theme.
Shirley Wagner
Shirley Wagner takes up the age-old human urge to see what’s over the hill in her assemblage piece Wanderlust. A vintage map appears beneath layers of transparent and translucent layers. Tools we associate with measurements – ruler, protractor, triangle tool – suggest the many ways we attempt to discover where we’re going and how far we must travel to arrive there. The tools suggest the ever-present attempt to find our way. The number five in metal suggests how we use numbers to find places – street addresses, number of miles along a trail, how many hours until we arrive. The overall effect is both beautiful and a reminder of what’s involved in wandering.
Other artists have a different take on maps. Margaret Suchland tells us that her collages refer to “mental mapping.” Two beautiful collage/watercolor paintings by Yasmin Al-Mutawa include maps, technical drawings, and medical text anatomical illustrations to create beautiful works that Stay Connected and ask the question, Are We There Yet? the rhythmic sweep of both works suggest how we are often caught-in-the-stream of life despite our continuing efforts to draw, map, and illustrate events.
Other artists have a different take on maps. Margaret Suchland tells us that her collages refer to “mental mapping.” Two beautiful collage/watercolor paintings by Yasmin Al-Mutawa include maps, technical drawings, and medical text anatomical illustrations to create beautiful works that Stay Connected and ask the question, Are We There Yet? the rhythmic sweep of both works suggest how we are often caught-in-the-stream of life despite our continuing efforts to draw, map, and illustrate events.
Carolee Asia
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Robert Renfrow’s Cultural Mapping addresses ancient people’s movements and mapping of the earth surface. His work looks at geoglyphs, those large-scale earth surface designs created by ancient people from rocks and other durable features. Interestingly, geoglyphs have been taken up by some contemporary artists working in the area of environmental art. Carolee Asia’s Atlas Project is one of the very few works in the exhibit that integrates both the concept of maps and of legends as stories in one work. Her colorful three-dimensional atlas both maps the world and tells the story of Eurybia, the Greek goddess of navigation and of the seas. She watches over us as we set off in our ships to explore. |
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Another work involving maps and sailing ships, or in this case boats created of maps, is Kathleen Koopman’s Navigating the Desert Seas. Koopman explains her fascination with maps as evoking the “blurry terrain of memory, imagination as well as travel, exploration and journeying to the unknown, literally and metaphorically.” Just as important as exploration is Koopman’s investigation of water and the importance of water in the desert. She views her boats as metaphors for the preciousness and scarcity of water in the desert.
Unfortunately Koopman’s work is displayed very high in the main gallery that has a ceiling that must be at least 12 feet high. The boats are well over most viewers’ heads, far too high for most of us to get a very good look. The same problem appears with a David Adix sculpture mounted where the wall intersects with the 12-foot high ceiling. Koopman’s artwork involving boats and her fascination of water is but one of several works in the exhibit which addresses an unstated but obvious theme of this exhibit - environmental art. Although the definition of environmental art is still emerging and is definitely flexible, in this context it means artworks motivated by ecological consciousness. |
Kathleen Koopman
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William Lesch
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A prime example of this unstated theme is the work of photographer William Lesch. He presents us with two large-scale montages of aerial photos of surface mines in southern Arizona. His informative artist’s statement tells us that he wasn’t interested in providing a document of destruction. He saw the changes caused by mining as huge abstract earth sculptures which transformed into “road maps of our way of life, the results of the decisions we had made to extract these minerals for our steel and copper.” His montages are not documentary, but instead an artistic piecing together of multiple views of earth movements caused by mining. The results are beautiful and colorful and rather horrifying when you think of what you are seeing. There are other examples of environmentally-related works in the exhibit, among them Karen Bellamy’s Fracking, Alexandra Bowers’ Remembering and Tom Baumgartner’s visually-rich prints showing gila monsters, hummingbirds, and Sonoran Desert landscapes with native cacti. |
Ruben Urrea Moreno
Another ecology-related artwork that is the best example of map-legend/story integration in the exhibit is Ruben Urrea Moreno’s Mother Nepal. Moreno’s is a quite different kind of mapping. Here we see the mapping of water and the nopal cactus. The mapping involves rain, roots and the trails made by ants in the dirt, the desert coyote and jack rabbit, the flowers, the fruit, the sun, the human child and the legendary mother watching over all. Moreno told me that this female figure is Mayo Medicine Woman named Maclovia Borbon Moroyoqui. As for me, I saw Dolores Huerta who has been so important to the people of our bioregion .
Reading the curator’s statement and all the artists’ statements for this exhibit and then seeing the artwork brought to mind a Wall Street Journal article a few years back by Eric Gibson titled “The Lost Art of Writing About Art.” Here “writing about art” refers not to art critics or arts journalists but instead to the curators’ statements and artists’ statements that appeared with the artwork at a Whitney Biennial in New York City. Gibson reports numerous complaints from artists and art critics who described the writing about art as “unalloyed gibberish.” Gibson also noted that the public was not consulted because the art world mavens considered the public a bunch of philistine know-nothings.
Here’s an example of the unalloyed gibberish from the Whitney exhibit: “…invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs to seek congruence in seemingly incongruous situations, whether visual or spatial……inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion." We conclude that artists’ statements and curators’ statements had become so incomprehensible at the Whitney that no one could make sense of them. Gibson reports that those who complained were demanding more accessible writing, including the radical notion that the writing might be enjoyable to read, too.
As mentioned, the curators’ statement in A(maze) Maps and Legends veers toward this inaccessibility as do several of the artist’s statements. The ideas and concepts underlying any exhibit are significant and worth considering when viewing the art. In this case, the obfuscation of maps and “structured systems of their legends” lacks clarity.
This obfuscation is carried over into the artworks, many of which seemed to have only the most tenuous relationship to either a map or a legend. Artists can become quite clever at writing artist’s statements that are stretched to fit the theme of an exhibit, or which are confusing to the point that we cannot decipher what the artist thinks about his/her artwork. The reason why many artists so dislike writing artist’s statements is because they think they are supposed to write this “unalloyed gibberish.” Not so.
Wouldn’t it be far more helpful to art viewers if we wrote our statements in a clear and simple way? I think gallery visitors will thank curators and artists for helping us to more easily understand and contemplate the art we are seeing.
Needless to say, artists, curators, and galleristas should always remember how important it is to check statements for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors. There’s a fair amount those kinds of problems as well in this exhibit’s statements.
And yet, despite the fuzziness in the curator’s and artists’ writing about art, the artwork is, for the most part, very good and definitely worth seeing.
Learn more about Tohono Chul Park and Art Gallery here> http://tohonochulpark.org/
Reading the curator’s statement and all the artists’ statements for this exhibit and then seeing the artwork brought to mind a Wall Street Journal article a few years back by Eric Gibson titled “The Lost Art of Writing About Art.” Here “writing about art” refers not to art critics or arts journalists but instead to the curators’ statements and artists’ statements that appeared with the artwork at a Whitney Biennial in New York City. Gibson reports numerous complaints from artists and art critics who described the writing about art as “unalloyed gibberish.” Gibson also noted that the public was not consulted because the art world mavens considered the public a bunch of philistine know-nothings.
Here’s an example of the unalloyed gibberish from the Whitney exhibit: “…invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs to seek congruence in seemingly incongruous situations, whether visual or spatial……inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion." We conclude that artists’ statements and curators’ statements had become so incomprehensible at the Whitney that no one could make sense of them. Gibson reports that those who complained were demanding more accessible writing, including the radical notion that the writing might be enjoyable to read, too.
As mentioned, the curators’ statement in A(maze) Maps and Legends veers toward this inaccessibility as do several of the artist’s statements. The ideas and concepts underlying any exhibit are significant and worth considering when viewing the art. In this case, the obfuscation of maps and “structured systems of their legends” lacks clarity.
This obfuscation is carried over into the artworks, many of which seemed to have only the most tenuous relationship to either a map or a legend. Artists can become quite clever at writing artist’s statements that are stretched to fit the theme of an exhibit, or which are confusing to the point that we cannot decipher what the artist thinks about his/her artwork. The reason why many artists so dislike writing artist’s statements is because they think they are supposed to write this “unalloyed gibberish.” Not so.
Wouldn’t it be far more helpful to art viewers if we wrote our statements in a clear and simple way? I think gallery visitors will thank curators and artists for helping us to more easily understand and contemplate the art we are seeing.
Needless to say, artists, curators, and galleristas should always remember how important it is to check statements for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors. There’s a fair amount those kinds of problems as well in this exhibit’s statements.
And yet, despite the fuzziness in the curator’s and artists’ writing about art, the artwork is, for the most part, very good and definitely worth seeing.
Learn more about Tohono Chul Park and Art Gallery here> http://tohonochulpark.org/
