Kate Gilmore

On Friday, March 18, 2011, artist Kate Gilmore visited our class and shared her video and sculptural work. You can see more of her work at www.kategilmore.com

Here are the reviews:


It is the lightheartedness about her that makes Kate Gilmore especially engaging as a speaker. She shares her work with such enthusiasm and no pomposity that is indicative of a truly self-aware artist. I found her work to be more shocking each time I view it. The sweet demeanor gives little warning to the gravity beneath the surface, perhaps a quality that can be used to describe her as a person as well. Like delicious hard candies, her videos entice you with their intoxicating colors and before you realize it, you have the candies in your mouth and you’re working your way through them, a process that is both time consuming and quite unexpected. I really enjoyed the element of surprise that awaits you in each and every video, an impressive feat considering the sheer amount of subject matter she covers.
What I found to be most encouraging about Kate’s lecture was her philosophy of viewing art. She was adamant about being open to all interpretations and that she was happy with any discourse that her pieces may inspire whether they be about gender, sexuality, race, class, or adversity. This way of thinking shows a maturity that I find can be easily buried under the need to speak in highly theoretically terms in order to feel included in the art world. Her determination as an artist and performer is one of the most impressive displays of willpower I have ever witnessed, leading me to think of none other than Marina Abramovic. Kate’s relationship to her body as medium is similar to that of Abramovic. I really appreciated her slight resistance to classifying her work as feminism and found that for that reason, I saw her work as inherently so. The female models in her pieces are women of strength, unwavering and dominant in their pursuit to overcome various obstacles.
The most alluring aspect of Kate’s pieces was the mixture of playfulness and gravity, a formula that she seems to have perfected. This blend results in aesthetically delightful, yet thematically loaded videos. Her videos are often sad, pathetic, and difficult to watch, but their visually entrancing qualities make it impossible to turn away. You feel drawn to the struggle, to the pain of finding one’s place. One of the most distinctly pitiable videos is “With Open Arms” (2005). The main character relentlessly tries to obtain approval by continuing to persevere on stage despite the obviously negative (and violent) responses she receives from the audience. The character appears to be some sort of analogy to the place of the artist as a clown and endless performer, perhaps something that Kate had in mind while producing the video. I couldn’t help but giggle, feeling guilty about it immediately as I realized that it was in fact the very sad journey of finding acceptance that I was laughing at. The characters that Kate creates, though we are given no information except for type of dress, seem to jump from the screen and come together as a motley crew of misfits, all grasping for the same answers.
Although they are meant to be different ordinary women, I saw the many characters as one in the same. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I saw them as Kate herself, but rather as one woman, the main character, trying to mold herself into so many different roles. Kate’s artist talk was inspiring, easygoing, and full of life, much like her art. It was especially rewarding to be able to speak with someone who seems to work with such ease, allowing art to flow from her rather than to dig for it.

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Katie Gilmore’s work is all about disaster. She mentioned that 9/11 greatly changed her work and her focus to more destructive pieces and this feeling of lose of control and hopeless situations. Her early videos are hilarious and entertaining but not as strong as her more recent work. The early video of her in a dress being the center of attention while having tomatoes thrown at herself embodies a very specific female character. Her more recent work has a more abstract female character, which is more relatable as the viewer. In early work she was acting like a character but as her ideas progressed she actually put herself in struggling conditions. The idea of failure is interesting that she has recently started to explore. I think that failure is inevitable and the idea of panic and failure would be an interesting layer to her work. Katie’s more recent work tries to incorporate the sculptural pieces into the exhibition of the videos. The video’s are strong because we see the struggle and energy to achieve something. The sculpture pieces without the actions are weak. The concept does not translate with the same energy. I think that she will resolve this over the next few years similar to how her work has changed from the beginning, which had a strong tie to 9/11. I am very intrigued how the ideas are the same as her early work of the papers falling from the fan with an American flag in the background, but the recent work does not need the gimmick flag to translate the concept. I enjoy the sarcasm that makes the work easy to engage in. The sarcasm helps to keep people from assuming her work is only about feminism. Even though her work has almost completely only female characters, anyone can relate to struggle and failure. The one problem with sarcasm is that today with youtube and people making their own videos of stunts that her work is understood through a different lens than when she first starting using video. Perhaps this is why she has moved toward large installation pieces with hired models. I would be interested to see how her work evolves over the next ten years. I would love to see how she responds to social issues of facebook and the ides of public privacy with youtube and facebook.

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I appreciate the aspect of play in Kate Gilmores work. I think this is an extremely relevant word for the art world today. It implies a preference to recreation for enjoyment over a “serious practical purpose”. Many discourses presently are devoted to creating systems of regulation and functionality; therefore it is even more imperative to carve out a space in the world for play. Art is a great venue for this endeavor as it has the ability to avoid (to some degree, or at least in theory) being measured and quantified along scales of progress or quality. One might even be able to argue that therefore all art is play as it is; manipulating and engaging with mediums for amusement through which one can learn about the things she/he is interacting with and create world of fantasy, which reflects aspects of reality. Doing this refutes the notion of right and wrong, of being able to quantify the world, and allows us to be much more comfortable with the uncertainty and flux of things. Play allows us to cope with the incomprehensibility and continuous change of life while also allowing us to gain some perspective on it through experience.

In her videos, Kate Gilmore creates small games or challenges, all of which have some sort of arbitrary end goal. While she always accomplishes these feats, there is no solid sort of “progress” attained- they are not amazing accomplishments for human kind, they do not provide us with a new groundbreaking information etc. Instead, and more importantly, they provide access to a sort of silly and personal experience, which while it may be physically rigorous, is not grotesque or disturbing. Her work makes us more aware of our bodies and how they relate to our constructed surroundings as well as the ways we choose to interact with those environments. Beyond the obvious ways that she “plays” – by constructing, climbing, breaking, lifting, etc, she also “plays” in a different form- through her characters. Dressing up in generic female costumes and choosing to film her performances, creates a small sort of fantasy (the way a as youth we might have playing dress up might have allowed us to access a sort of alternate reality). Creating and engaging with a character provides an opportunity to see and reexamine that character and its connotations in another context- enabling us to see what new information can be revealed. Finally to her work is that proves that humor is an equally important and effective way to consider and engage in our society and consciousness. In conclusion I am pleased that her pieces encourage play, which might just be the medicines for our overly complex reality.
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Paul Mpagi Sepuya @ The Studio Museum of Harlem

On Friday, March 11, 2011, we had the opportunity to visit Paul Mpagi Sepuya. He is one of three current Artist in Residents at The Studio Museum in Harlem. You can see more of his work here:

http://www.paulsepuya.com/

The reviews -

I was really intrigued by the honesty of Paul Mpagi Sepuya. His portraits, to steal your word, were sensitive, empathic and revealing. He laid everything about his subjects bare (sometimes literally) in front of you and I felt the art and process were very natural and pure. I am working as a photographer with the word and concept of exposure. What does it mean to expose oneself? Expose film to light? Exposure has all of these connotations of revealing a secret, possibly against someone’s will. Making the private public. Within the camera body, it is taking the impermanent and making it permanent. I see it as taking transient, fleeting ideas and making them tangible. Exposing things, sharing them, photographing them is taking the subconscious and making it conscious. I think that issue was incredibly similar and pertinent to Paul’s work. It was like seeing this idea that has been bouncing around in my head and seeing it right in front of me, realized through his work. He exposes these people so that they can see themselves better, so the world can see their personalities and temperaments, whether they are lasting or only momentary. The photographs are used as a window, to see into the people, but also in Paul’s studio life. Especially in the most recent photographs, when you see photographs within images, there is a layering system that places you in the context and fabric of Paul’s friendship circle. Everything visual is given away, but nothing else. Paul was very reserved about writing or explaining his pieces, which only increased their authenticity. The images were able to explain relationships and characters without words, which was refreshing and again, a very pure simple way of working.

Another great thing about visiting Paul was that we got to see firsthand what a fellowship looks like. It is one of the very few times someone can dedicate their entire life to creating, without worrying about showing or money or other responsibilities. I really think spending that much time in the studio would make his work evolve significantly, and I think it has. I don’t know if this was the final stage, his work is slowly transitioning and we met him at a relatively young stage in his life, so there is a possibility for so much more. I’m also curious to see the show to see where he ended up after a year of sitting alone with his work, which I personally think could be daunting and overwhelming. That said, Paul seemed incredibly comfortable in his own skin, surrounded by the people he cares about, trying to get to know them through his art. After meeting him, it definitely was a practice I would love to have one day.

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Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photographs were really good. I don’t know much of anything about photography, digital photography, networking, or queer culture, but I do know a well-composed image when I see one. His work seems to be something of an expression of the idea of life as art. All of his subjects, past and present, are very directly parts of his experience and identity. There is a very honest quality about this type of work, which uses form to explore latent content. Other than the somewhat tenuous presumption that this kind of work can expose psychological undertones of one’s social environment, it’s not very presumptuous. At no point does Paul say that his work will actually reveal to him the nuance of his social network, his family dynamic, or the world at large. Aside from a hope that patterns will emerge and visual cues will become clearer, the artist seems to have no expectation for how the work is to function.
And work should be made with no preconceived notions of how it is to function, as it’s pretty impossible to predict the future. By reacting to his environment, taking things in as he sees them, being true to his perspective, Paul is making the most me meaningful contribution an artist can make. To know that reality is worth exploring or contemplating is about as much lucidity that an artist can ask for; the rest, I imagine, comes with a good deal of trial and error.
While it is true that Paul’s work is truly less than perfect (some of the portraits border on full-fledged commercial work—though that’s not to say that isn’t reflective of his point of view and his career) he is certainly on the right track to an artistic life that reflects true devotion.
Though he himself seemed wary of this designation, I see Paul as a maker of documents. However personal his work, he is in essence cataloguing fashion and design and even demeanor from the perspective of a young gay male in the early 21st century. Tired as it may sound, he is like Baudelaire’s flâneur, taking impressions of his surroundings, which amount to his social connections and experience with media, and turning those impressions into reified images. These images do partake in a fetishization of subject, but it’s all part of the experience, and therefore must be part of the record.
But this documentary quality is certainly not all Paul’s work has to offer. In an image-obsessed society where the only constants are states of ephemera and constant change, the artifactual quality of printed photographs is something worth preserving and presenting. The auratic presence of a photograph, framed and installed as carefully as in one’s home, is one of the few things keeping lens-based imagery from functioning as mere data. Installation and physical context is crucial to the success of this work, and the success of much photograph-based explorations of self in general. In addressing the digital by resisting it (inasmuch as digital is not the final manifestation of the image’s form) Paul’s work in particular participates in a complex dialogue much too grand to comprehend at this point in time, but certainly in need of as many voices as possible.

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Visting Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s studio at the Studio Museum in Harlem was a welcome change from some of the other artists who have visited us. Though I enjoyed many of their presentations, and felt they were valuable experiences, hearing a young, working artist fresh out of school was reassuring and, I felt, represented a goal that many of us, as young artists still in school, are working towards and which could be attainable in the not-so-distant future. Paul’s intimate portraiture of his friends, acquaintances, and lovers recalled many aspects of the history of the genre of portraiture, especially in photography. It seemed especially reminiscent to me of Richard Avedon, and a little bit of Felix Gonzalez Torres, only without the heart-wrenching political and AIDS-related discourse. Though Paul’s work was clearly homoerotic, it didn’t seem to be focusing on a sexuality discourse or solely promoting itself as a homosexual work, but rather had more to do with the individual subjects themselves and their relationships to the photographer; as Paul said, the nudity and perceived sexuality of the image is already totally apparent and unavoidable, so the central focus of the work can move from the obvious to the underlying emotion of the subject and his relationship to Paul.
Though hearing Paul speak about his work made very clear sense to me, I found I didn’t quite see what he found important evident in the works themselves. I appreciated that they were all shot in the studio, in natural daylight, and the subjects, for the most part, posed themselves. However, I found that certain elements of texture, photographic composition, and emotion were lacking in the images. While I understood that Paul wanted the comfortable environment of his studio, with its usual accoutrements, I thought the subjects might have been much more natural, or shown a wider range of emotions, if they were in an environment truly familiar to them, and much more intimate (appropriate for the intimacy of the bodies), such as a bedroom or bathroom. Furthermore, many of the objects found in the studio which were inserted into the images seemed to me a bit compositionally sloppy, as though they had little to do with the interaction between subject and environment.
That being said, I did particularly like the simplest of these portraits, which Paul passed around in book form (Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited). This series featured straightforward portraits of men mostly from the mid-chest up against a plain white background. Though these were the least complicated of his photographs, I found them the most emotionally moving and visually interesting, since they relied merely on the faces of the men portrayed.

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It is a rare opportunity to encounter a working artist who can converse with a crowd as candidly as Paul Mpagi Sepuya was able to. His easygoing and colloquial air gave him a sense of familiarity that I felt was most relatable of all the artists we have had the chance to speak with. While artists like Beverly Semmes and Kate Gilmore appear to be quite established in their practices, Paul seems like he is yet to encounter more turning points in his work. His position as an artist is also one that I can see myself being in before even entering the realms of Beverly or Kate.

The questions that Paul attempts to examine in his portraits are ones that I find to be much more applicable to our generation. The way in which he looks at and illustrates the self-contained interactions and relationships between people of such a distinct subculture has the quality of exclusivity iconic of our generation’s social networks. Paul stated himself that he mainly photographs his own friends, a decision that I found a bit disappointing. The portraits become more about compiling an album of beauty, a task made simpler by the fact that almost every one of his subjects was a young and attractive gay man with an athletic or lean build, and not necessarily about investigating or dissecting the individual. Although his photographs were beautifully constructed with pleasant lighting and some interestingly staged objects, I found them to be somewhat surface. Perhaps they would have seemed a bit more convincing had he talked about them as if he had intentioned for the photographs to have that appeal. He said that he wanted to explore and illustrate the relationships between his subjects and himself as well as his subjects with other subjects. However, when every subject begins to look like one attractive person of an ocean of many attractive people, it becomes less about the individual and more about the whole group of people, a clique even, that you are unable to penetrate into. From what I gathered from the studio visit, Paul seemed to be trying to convey scenes of disrobing. However, by physically and literally disrobing many of his subjects, he ends up with many magazine-style shots attempting to look artistic, with images of nudity that ends up shielding the individual rather than revealing him. It is strange how that happens; the loss in translation that occurs when nudity actually acts as more of a veil.

I really enjoyed the books that Paul passed around that showed his collaborative works as well as the descriptions of the way in which he displayed his photographs in an installation setting. I think it is particularly important for an artist like him to utilize the flexibility of installation and other media to dive further into otherwise surface imagery in order to avoid the glossy shallow quality of magazines. I found that the most interesting images were in “The Accidental Egyptian and Occidental Arrangements,” the book that showed the works he made when he collaborated with fellow artist Timothy Hull to compose collages that incorporated his portraits through cutting and Xeroxing. It is exciting to meet an artist who will likely work alongside our generation when we try our hands at entering the art world and to see the various stages of investigation he is currently immersed in.

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The visit to the Studio Museum in Harlem was very interesting. I enjoyed Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photography, especially viewing it within the context of his studio as his photos involve his space so much. There was something about the simplicity of the photograph, referencing popular portrait photography, and the use of what would seem to be simple nude figures, revealing seemingly complicated relations and issues, especially as the photographs informed each other that appealed to me. Work that has this simplicity, leaving slight nuance to be thought over is very pleasing to me. Paul’s work functioned in this way. There was visual simplicity that directed straight at personal relationships. This personal or documentary aspect finds strength in the subject that it’s depicting. The nude male figure, and the gay community are not things that inhabit the popular consciousness or visual landscape. His presence as an African American within the art world is also present within this work, although not quite as strongly as the depiction of issues of sexuality.

Other than his work specifically, it was also nice to see the studio space of Paul that seemingly matched his art practice very well. Stripped down to a computer and a camera, with framed photos occupying the rest of the space besides a few seats that were visible within his work. Seeing a successful young artist and their practice is motivational. He certainly did not work in the manner of a traditional painter, and seemed fairly free in what he was doing. He didn’t seem too caught up in restrictions of his presentation and appeared very confident in what he was doing even though it seemed to be in an unfinished and evolving state.

The museum itself was not quite as stimulating as visiting Paul’s studio, but I did find the space pretty interesting in how it gave off a different aura to me than a traditional museum. I’m not sure if that is because I had just visited the studios above it, or because I had just been stuck in a back elevator, but it felt like it was breathing a little bit more than other places. The location was also probably part of this different feeling. It certainly is not Chelsea, and gives the museum more of a local feel than even most galleries in Manhattan.

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Visiting Paul Sepuya’s studio at the Studio Museum of Harlem is comparable to entering the fabulously lighted apartment of a dear friend. Immediately upon entering, Paul’s bright demeanor puts his guests at ease. Such a personality is well suited for the types of portraits Paul creates. There is a slight editorial air to them but it is also tempered by the comfort of his friends in the photos. By photographing people from within his circle of friends, Paul is sure to produce an image of his subject that is pure. The simplicity of the photographs allows the beauty of the body and the light that they are cast in to be fully appreciated.
As a fellow in the Studio Museum of Harlem’s artist in residency program, Paul has been given a small corner studio to make his own. With white washed walls and oversized windows that allow the light to pour in, Sepuya has created a workspace that is perfectly tailored to his portraiture. There are no frills or elaborate props, just a simple back drop for his subtly complex images. This is a functioning workspace from the photos tacked to the wall to the orange peel delicately juxtaposed with a lusciously green plant. A study in still life.
On the surface, Sepuya’s photographs could be compared to still life portraiture. They are static, unmoving. Yet, upon closer inspection the faces and gestures of his subjects truly breathe. Without the self-imposed barriers of clothing, the protective armature of daily life, the subjects of the photographs are baring themselves to the viewer. Sepuya has stripped down his subjects to reveal their truest essence, the way he sees them and cares for them and loves them.
In many ways Paul Sepuya’s images are about love. Not necessarily amorous love, but the unwavering love of a dear friend. The type of love that never passes harsh judgment. It is under the protective gaze of the watchful lover that the subjects of these photographs relinquish their vanity and thrive in vulnerability.

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It is always a fascinating experience to visit an artist’s studio, see how and where they work and get an opportunity to discuss their work and process. Paul was delightful genial, spry and insightful on his work and made me appreciate and understand his work far more than I would have had I stumbled upon them at an exhibit. While portraiture has been done inside and out throughout art history, I was very intrigued by the manner of his presentation which managed to elude many of these conventions. The unmounted photographs, sprawled on tables and ledges throughout the studio, turned his works into a cohesive installation in which the different portraits around the room interacted and informed one another as opposed to single portraits which stand on their own.
In the art world and market, it seems that artists who represent a minority are often pigeonholed as creating work within the paradigm of their minority. Chitra Ganesh spoke about how many people label her work as “Indian” and dismiss many of the other aspects of her work. Many women seem to also be stuck in this labeled mode of feminist work, regardless of the content. Often it seems that only white males create mainstream work and everybody else is tied to his or her “other” identity (not that this is a particularly novel or profound concept, just something that I hope we can overcome. I have seen Gabriel Orozco described as a Latino artist, an aspect that you would be hard pressed to find in much of his work).
Paul faces this pigeonholing on two fronts; he is both an African-American as well as a homosexual. Paul’s work would not be categorized as “African-American,” especially compared to the other artists we saw at the Studio Museum of Harlem, although he is a fellow there, a position only African-American’s can hold (which perhaps is a testament to the Studio Museum’s desire to not only have African-American artists whose work deals with their own heritage.). Paul’s work, from people’s reactions and the way he spoke about it, is considered “homosexual” artwork. The models are predominantly male and often overtly homosexual and Paul(the photographer)’s relationship with many of these men is not platonic but clearly intimate and sexual. However I reject the idea that his work is within a paradigm of homosexual artists. Unlike artists like David Wojnarowicz and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose works deal directly with homosexual themes and struggles, Paul’s work is concerned not with the sexual orientation of the men in the photographs, but their relationship to one another, the photographer and themselves. It is almost irrelevant if this connection is a homosexual one, to me that is not what the work is about and I hope that Paul is able to escape superfluous and dismissive readings of his work due to his sexual orientation.

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In this society creating art, by nature, is necessarily a social and political act. Not because it can function to produce social or political commentary, but rather, because by engaging in the practice of art making you are declaring the importance of the existence of art in and to society. Good art, in my easily humbled opinion, must be aware of this. It must comment on its own existence, for better or worse. It is not enough to “use art” to say, for example, “conservation is important”, it must also advocate for why art is the best mode or venue for relaying such a message- otherwise, why not just go and live in a tree? Truly great art is aware of the connotations it has not only embedded in it’s imagery, materials, and location, but also in the modes of its production and commerce. Because artists are not addressing the question “what is art for?” or “how it should function to humanity”, it has become, by default, too aligned with commodity and entertainment. If one is to over simplify the situation they might say, artists make art because they went to school it in, they got a degree and it, and the trade has turned into a game which equally rewards ambition, connections, and digestibility, as much as it does talent. Thus, making art is not enough, one must investigate why we are compelled to make art and how it changes human consciousness- or at least own up to art being a big fat commodity and let it live closer to entertainment.

For this reason I was a little disheartened by Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s response to why he feels he makes art and how it should function in society. He simply put it that he made art because he had to. I have a few problems with this response, and it is one I have too often heard. First, it often implies an opposition to a “desk job”, they are compelled to make art because they couldn’t work at a desk job. It almost makes art sound like an alternative only practiced due to an inability to function in the alternative occupation. It places art making in the career world, comparable to “desk jobs” the role of artist is simply another way to make a living. While I can’t argue with the practicality of the matter- especially since I am not in a position where I have to fully provide for myself at present, I think that this is not something to be written off as essential to art. Furthermore, I have a problem with the art rationale “I couldn’t image doing anything else”, because it quite frankly seems like a cop out. I find it to be an excuse for not having thought through the matter more. Possibly because if this reasoning had been examined, than it would always followed up by the because. For example, I feel compelled to make art because it is the one place in society where we constantly evade a system of measuring success, because it has the ability to place greater importance on experience over understanding, and because it is so problematic that it accounts of the dynamic nature of life.

Now, to be fair, when looking at Paul’s work I wasn’t unimpressed. In dealing with portraiture- a relatively outdated subject matter, he does seem to make a claim the importance of the way that photography is able to change our understanding of relationships. Whether the relationships be between the pieces, as acknowledge through his careful arrangements in distancing the works based on social reasoning, or the relationship created between us and the objects which we believe to convey a sense of “humanness”. I think his work is successful, engaging and interesting, however his response made me wonder if it was consciously. While this was only a short studio visit with Paul, and I don’t want to judge him either way without truly knowing him or his work, I just feel that this issue comes up again and again with many artists. The lack of consistency in the matter makes me wish that artists voice their beliefs in and for art more. At the risk of being dramatically over dramatic, I honestly believe that the state of the world is too important to not take an increased responsibility for our actions. If making art is the action in question I think as a whole we are failing.

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Beverly Semmes

Last Tuesday, March 1, 2011, the AAPNYC Seminar class had the opportunity to visit the studio of Beverly Semmes. Below are the pieces written y the AAPNYC students about their experience. You can see more of Beverly Semme's art here:
http://www.beverlysemmesstudio.com/images.html

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The ability to talk with Beverly Semmes and tour her studio lent me an informal look into the life of a professionally successful artist. I found that much of Beverly’s work is emotional, driven by a visceral impulse that does not necessarily come from over-analysis of art criticism. This debate, between interpretation and feeling, has been one that I’ve been struggling with lately. Even reading Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation made me think of some of Beverly’s pieces. Her artwork requires emotional reaction, a sentiment that an installation’s overall atmosphere can bring. The vibrance of her colors, along with the vastness of her fabric landscapes creates a sublimity that cannot simply be ascribed to feminist criticism. I found it especially relevant that she wanted her work to simply affect, to not have simply a feminist reading. I found the dresses, although there is some reference to feminism, to be whimsical and personal. They seemed to be something out of either a children’s book gone wrong or a dream. Yet they became elevated to the status of waves or sand or mountains. I was instantly reminded of Martha Graham’s school of dance, in the way that the body could be come a landscape or an abstract shape. Beverly’s garments have a similar transformative ability.
Another concept that I found interesting in Beverly’s work was her allusion to literary references. I thought her piece Kimberly became especially evocative, simply because she had given a name and thus a personality to the object. Olga and Ophelia had a similar affect. One could instantly recognize the story and literary weight behind the piece, giving the dresses an emotionally significant facet.
Beverly’s connection to sculptors like Louise Bourgeois, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and especially Ann Hamilton stuck with me as well. I instantly recognized the similarities between Ann Hamilton and Beverly because of works such as Petunia and Pink Potatoes. The idea of a color or an ephemeral material leaving a trace is vastly important for both artists. In Petunia, Beverly leaves a trace of the physical presence of fabric on the floor. It is solidly fixed in one instance, and absent in another. In discussing Pink Potatoes, Beverly mentioned that she wanted their painted coating to leave markings upon the ice, much like drawing. Ann Hamilton’s work Myein has a similar affect, not only because it is also pink. The work makes use of colored dust, falling and revealing Braille text upon the wall. The presence of unseen text is revealed, along with traces of dust that are carried with the audience throughout the Biennale pavilions. Both artists’ works make use of this concept of transient materials in their installations. They are concurrently able to strike the balance between creating landscape and atmosphere, but not swinging entirely towards abstraction. In Beverly’s case, what struck me about her incorporation of the body rather than the abstract form was that she could more easily make decisions. Yet she is able to take the “found object” of a dress and transform it into something that does retain abstract qualities, such as landscape, texture, and space within a gallery.

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Its difficult to pin down an artist with such a deep breadth of work like Beverly Semmes, who has been working for over two decades and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Spanning multiple mediums, her work is connected by its attention to detail and expansive nature (even within her smaller works). Within her various objects, whether it is ceramic “pots,” elongated gowns or crystal work, there is a beautiful and delicate nature that is exceptionally intriguing.

One of the disappointments of not being able to actually see any of the works (aside from the few unfinished sculptures in her studio) was that I felt a sense that I was missing out on a beautiful and essential aspect of her work. The materials she uses for her sculptures and linked to the visceral character of her pieces and is perhaps what ties them all together. The reason I believe many have categorized her work as feminist, a term which she rejects, is not only because of the fact that she creates dresses, but because of this visceral element in all her work. Her work exudes a sensuality that is directly tied to her existence as a female sculptor. The carnality of her ceramic work (the material itself is directly linked to nature and earth), with its protruding limbs and human gestures, undoubtedly has a sexual undercurrent that runs through all of her work.

Perhaps it is because of this that I enjoy her ceramic and glasswork more than her dresses and coats, which I find difficult to interact with. While I recognize the beauty in these works (and perhaps it is because I am male), I am unable to connect with these works. To me they read as purely aesthetic entities in which one tends to lose themselves within the stitches of the fabric and not much else. One thing I noted during her presentations is that she often refrained from analyzing her own work and the majority of her presentation dealt with the materials and installations. While she did discuss that others label her work feminist and that she was incensed when Roberta Smith called one of her works menstrual, I wish that she had gone into more depth as to her thought process when making these works and had told us what she hoped the viewer would take away from them. Overall however, it was a great learning experience to catch an artist within their “native” environment, getting a glimpse into her process and at some unfinished works.

***

At one point Beverly Semmes spoke about her extravagant use of color as her attempt at trying to make things beautiful, and then later trying to push that beauty. Certainly the enormous dresses are captivating as they invade floor space with lush color, but are these dresses really full of feminine connotations? The artist herself never thought so. For her the genesis seemed to come from a new way of using the figure in nature, which created a basic urge to create clothing devoid of any political consciousness. In one of her later exhibitions she positioned four dresses on the wall (not quite the overflowing largess’s of previous years) against a cluster of her glass sculptures on pedestals in the center of the room. Perhaps it is the sculptures lack of color that attracts me to them in the context of her work, but I feel that this face off (between the glass sculptures and slightly scaled down dresses) is the realization of Semmes comment about pushing “that beauty.” The two sets of objects posed against one another ask the viewer what are the qualities that make something beautiful? Color, fabric, material, craftsmanship are all players in this debate. But still the work offers little room for feminist interpretation. Her very latest work however, involving the bitch character and the super puritan, I feel is the most directed towards a feminist sensibility or even critique. The opposing nature of the bitch and super puritan’s relationship seems to highlight the major problem with labeling oneself a feminist (or any other generalized term). That problem being the fact that no one is ever wholly and absolutely aligned with such a particularly loaded term, and that these terms often end up polarizing rather than unifying. In any case it was an incredibly unique experience to be able to speak with such an established artist in such an informal, relaxed setting. Ms. Semmes seemed to be making work from a place of intuition rather than overwrought theory and philosophy and that was a refreshing thing to see.

***

Beverly Semmes, like her artwork, is captivating as an artist and lecturer. The alluring quality of her speech as she shifts fluidly from one piece to another is reminiscent of the type of artist I thought was now obsolete—dreamy, elusive. The free flowing rhythm of her explanations added a further layer of mystery and poignancy to her work. I was impressed by the absence of overtly academic terminologies in her descriptions, like when she discussed her place as an artist in terms of feminism and how her work does not attempt to force entry into any specific realm. It was refreshing to hear an artist speak about her art as actual organisms, removed from any sociopolitical agenda, especially when she talked about how she realized the political implications her large-scale dresses only after she produced them. It seemed more important to her to remain entrenched in the process until completion, rather than force the inevitable completion to move or guide her process. This technique is definitely evident in her pieces once they were finished. Her ceramics and her dresses are all somehow methodically whimsical, an oxymoronic effect that makes sense considering her process of working.
Although I was intrigued by how she manipulated and transformed the known form of the dress into something more surreal and less recognizable, I found myself most drawn to the landscapes she seemed to have created from the actual fabric once the material made contact with the ground. The ocean of fabric that fell from the dresses was exquisite and worked well in duality with the altered interpretation of the once recognizable dress form. The pieces seemed to reference Karla Black’s work, though Semmes is more experimental with bold colors. One of my favorite pieces that she spoke about was “Petunia,” an installation she set up in Holland in which she included the participation of the museum guard. This piece, too, had that same methodically whimsical air about it, especially when she discussed the effect of the guard’s presence in the piece. It seemed that one of the most important parts to the piece that made it so successful was realized only after she saw the absolute completion of the work. It was exciting to hear her speak about how much she enjoyed the joining and separating of the guard from the ocean of magenta fabric every time she removed herself from her seat in the center of the piece and walked about the atrium to do her job. I am not sure how to describe this discovery as anything else but methodically whimsical. It is obvious that Beverly is very aware of the direction of her pieces as she works through them, but I sense that some aspects must be somewhat of a serendipitous occurrence.
Listening to and speaking with Beverly was an incredibly encouraging experience. She seemed completely self-aware without being self-conscious, a careful balance that I think is essential to moving forward as an art student and artist.

***

It is not so seldom that our teachers tell us to “figure out what kind of art we want to make” or “get ready to have a real concrete theme for your senior thesis.” And these statements are terrifying. I teeter back and forth on how I feel about claims like these: do I need to figure out what I want to say and how before it’s too late? Or can I meander through the world of visual arts forever, simply letting my interests inform my work?
Beverly Semmes scared me out of my wits. Her work, spanning thirty years of production, seems to tiptoe around almost identical forms and concepts. How many giant dresses can one woman make? And when those get old, how many pots or pillows can she match them with? How many years will it take for her to shift media? And all the while, I’m asking, who cares? She is successful and her work is interesting, end paragraph.
By means of horrific exaggeration, what I am getting at is that Beverly’s work all rotates around the same central concepts: feminine crafts, bright colors, silence. She has marked her success by refusing (or rather, never wishing) to move away. And this has yielded her huge amounts of success. Terrifying news for a young, confused, indecisive art student.
Even more terrifying is her nonchalance about these concepts. “I just started sewing these dresses because something about realistic forms seemed right,” or, “I enrolled in a ceramics class at the Y…and I just pile the clay up and maybe it looks like a utilitarian object to some people…” While we are taught daily to back up our ideas with prolific writing and historical referencing, Beverly just makes stuff. Then, marked by a passion for this production, and a huge breadth of it, the critics imbue it with all sorts of value—value that perhaps was never really intended (eg. Feminist critiques). She speaks quite clearly about her work, her intentions, her involvement with certain forms or materials. Then she lets the work, itself take over. Quite impressive, really.
On another note, I found some of her external interests quite poignant and interesting. Her pottery has clear connections to the work of Louise Bourgeois, while her installations have very interesting relationships to those at PS 1 by Ursala Von Rydingsvard. Thinking about these relationships undoubtedly makes her work more interesting for me, brings it to a new level and engages it in some conversations that may not have been apparent without that mention. Therefore, in her presentation, I would have loved for Beverly to take a firm position on her work as part of a larger art historical discourse, and present it as such.

***

The studio visit last week gave us insight into the life and work of Beverly Semmes, whose studio space is situated in the Brooklyn Navy Yards. The work was shown first without any commentary from the artist; it was left open to the interpretation of the viewers. After the work was shown, she then explained her interpretations of and motivations behind her work. This was interesting because such an action establishes a dual interpretation of one work from two perspectives; one being from the viewer, the other being from the artist. For example, one of her pieces involved a video in which she kicks around objects on a snow surface. She films this looking down at her feet; the viewer sees that she has clothing that matches the object being kicked. When I first saw this particular video, my first impression of the meaning of the work was the artist wanted to establish a strong relationship between object and person. I thought that she wanted to convey an idea of an otherwise static object becoming dynamic in a way that responds to the human body. When she finally explained her intents and interests, it was revealed that she was actually interested in the sound that the object created rather than the object itself. She also conveyed an interest in the footprint that the objects left behind. This footprint wasn’t something that she was looking to create, however. It was an interesting observation that she came across after producing the work.

I was also very interested in her sculptural work. While her sculptural works had a very interesting architectural quality, I was also interested in the structural qualities of the piece from an architectural standpoint. One particular piece was composed of heavy solid pieces on top and more linear thin elements on the bottom. I was curious as to how such a piece could stand. She clearly thought of materiality and the actual composition of an object that appears to be solid on the outside. The top pieces that appeared solid on the outside were made hollow on the inside so that they could sit on the thinner members of the bottom of the piece. I found her architectural approach to a sculptural piece very innovative and unique to that particular work.
I also discovered that she is very interested in light quality and its effect on the work that she produces. Again, from an architectural standpoint, I found that aspect of her work very interesting; not only is she thinking of the work itself, but also the role that surroundings play on the perception of the work. The fact that she wants to control lighting shows how much she values the way her work is portrayed and perceived. As an architect, the smallest control over surrounding lighting conditions could make the greatest difference in how a space is perceived. The slightest change in the way light is distributed throughout a space could make it all the more desirable to inhabit. These are things an architect must think about so that a space can reach its fullest potential beyond its physical qualities. In a way, Beverly Sims used lighting to her advantage so that her work could reach its fullest potential.

While she may have not intended to do so, her work takes on several qualities that are found in works of architecture that are conceptually and visually compelling. I was personally amazed at how much I could relate to her work because of these qualities. I was impressed prior to considering the works’ architectural implications, but such implications allowed for a deeper engagement into the work. I find work such as hers to be more successful than others because it draws elements from worlds outside of art.

***

Venturing into the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the dark was a rather entertaining experience. After getting by the guards who told me to “Go down and take a right,” I eventually ran into building 21. Inside I was introduced to the work of Beverly Semmes. Running through a slideshow of images, she was not verbally explicit with her concept but rather explained the sequence and manner that she has arrived at her current projects. Her reflections of the changing art world were also informative as she reminded of the rejection of ceramics as a craft external to fine art when she was originally thinking of her ideas, and how today they exist in a completely different environment.

Being an art student, one thing that struck me was how Beverly Semmes has stuck to similar projects throughout her career, while continuing to explore, expand, and change them. Throughout the years she has continued to have a feminist undertone, while engaging architectural aspects of gallery spaces with large works that pronounce themselves to the viewer. Although she continues to produce completely new work such as the censored found images currently hanging on her walls, she has also steadily updated and adjusted her older works, giving them new life, and letting them engage the viewer in new ways. With her large dresses, she has done this through color, as well as animating them by moving them within the gallery space by motor. She has also developed her ceramics and other work to be added into and presented with these dresses.

Being able to enter and see Beverly’s process within her studio was also very informing. It revealed a lot about how she works, taking her ideas and experimenting off of them. This studio was certainly not in a state of disarray, with neatly stacked ceramic pieces, and well lit works on the walls and on pedestals, one could see how the artist takes her ideas, creates small pieces, and then assembles them into completed works. Seeing the assemblage of her clay sculptures, small pots and forms simply assembled together one on top of the other was fascinating as her rather simple process creates profoundly interesting and odd shapes and forms.

I was most interested in Semmes new works of censorship on enlarged magazine images. Although I have done a similar project on magazine covers in a much smaller scale with non pornographic imagery, Semmes’s position as an established woman artist whose work applies to feminist ideas excites me much more than my own work did. It also seems to be working in a very different manner than the dresses, while continuing with a discussion of women within society, it replaces the rather traditional dress and replaces it with a much more contemporary looking altered image printed digitally. Seeing just the clay sculptures and these new images together in the studio, makes me curious to see if Beverly do an installation similar to that of the dresses but replacing the formal dress with the digital print.

***

Beverly Semmes’ anecdote about her first Roberta Smith review set the tone for the rest of her presentation. Expressing her horror and concern that her very first New York Times review contained the discussion of menstruation and feminism simultaneously made her endearing while urging me to reevaluate her work. Earthenware vessels and larger than life gowns made of lush fabrics immediately conjure themes of feminism, but Semmes claims that this was not her original objective. Semmes work, and discussion of her work, belies interpretation. Ever elusive with the source of her intent, Semmes shies away from interpretation. This leaves her work open-ended, allowing it to be freely interpreted by the viewer.

In my opinion, Semmes work is strongly feminist despite her claims that her work was not made with such ideas in mind. Her newer work most certainly illustrates the interplay between feminist and modern woman. Dealing with pornography, the images handles the autonomy of the models in a peculiar manner. Semmes admits to wanting to cover the vulgar parts of the pictures out of her “puritan” side but also reveals her inner “bitch” by working from pornography. Using such images as her medium Semmes is taking part in a hotly debated feminist argument. Pornography can be seen as both exploitative and empowering and the line Semmes draws between the two is quite unclear. Despite her puritanical efforts to conceal the crudeness, there are ghosts of the women in the image that suggest the removal of their agency.

Semmes works seem to exist purely in a state of flux. Her creations are neither here nor there and embrace their ephemeral quality. It is in this state that the viewer becomes a part of the work. The gowns, for example, beckon the viewer to take part in their existence from their monumental size and inviting, opulent pools of fabric. Inhabiting the spaces left empty by Semmes, the viewer is able to engage in a dialogue with the artist.

***

Our visit with Beverly was a really good combination of a studio visit and a presentation. I really enjoyed having Beverly giving us a chance to silently experience her work, understand her background, and be acquainted with present work, before we saw the actual pieces in the studio. I think without context, our background I would not have appreciated her growth to the pots, and her passion for them. These pots have been something that she has finally resulted with, after having them “snuck” (her words) into exhibitions her entire career. To see them delicately places in her studio on pedestals made them little worshiped objects and made the visit more sentimental. Her love of them made me love them. I was not seeing art objects, I was looking at her finally being able to recognize her dreams after years of being attached to cloth dresses.
I felt like the dresses were a stereotype or iconic style of her work from so early on she was constrained by them. The pots on the other hand were her. Her sitting placed on top these dresses, complimentary in color and looking awkwardly paired, or even, as she told us, in the gallery battling the dresses for attention. She had the dresses folded in an old gym bag in the corner, and handled them carelessly. She seemed more amused by the silly dog pattern than emotionally invested in it. It was as if, after all this time, the dresses had lost meaning, attachment, sentiments of any kind. It was sad to me. I completely understand from an artist’s view how old work is treated; sometimes it loses its magic, other times it’s just as magnificent each time it’s pulled out. These dresses, however, were completely new, about to be shown for the first time, and she looked at them like a relic idea she was pulling out to hold together her beloved pots.
That said, I personally found each one individually stunning and think they were a huge success in her work. They did not need fashion influences, or a certain time period historical significance, they were simply dresses. The iconic shape was reduced to its simplest form. I really appreciated her simplicity in art and her strong desire not to constrain or cloud anyone’s reading of her work by talking too much about them. Her ‘art is art’ philosophy is something I really admire and wish was more prevalent in the art world we are experiencing here in New York. The dresses were able to be dramatic, and bland simultaneously, they held landscapes and texture, light and color. It was what is valued in art brought to an object. I really agree with her that there was so much more to them than a “feminist” reading. It reiterated my feelings that art should not be forced into context or concept. Art should be timeless and free. Like Beverly’s pots.

***
Beverly Semmes’ fully considered pieces seem to feed off of one another, relating beautifully to each other and whatever space they are adapted to. It is so refreshing to see how fluidly and seemingly effortlessly the conceptual and formal relations between the works operate and enhance one another. The extremely different mediums, fabrics, glass, ceramic, drawings, scans or prints, are able to live cohesively as they all breath the same sort of essence, this can only happen when an artist is genuinely invested in and fully understands the concepts and ideas he or she is working with. In her pieces, equal attention is paid to the ideas of utility, the body, surface, touch, color, space, and material, no matter what medium. This can be seen in her latest work, still under construction in her studio. Giant digital prints of edited penthouse images help to inform the totem like ceramic structures witch they confront spatially. The flattened blocked out forms draw in into abstract shapes linger in-between having function (to block out) and being aesthetic abstractions. Likewise, the sculptural pieces imply function (covered in handles), but live more as form. The tremendously physical mark making of the drawings reveal a type of frantic commitment to editing and concealing. Seen in relation to the extremely handled surface of the ceramic works the prints inform the handling and make it more aggressive.

However what I find most interesting about all these new works is how they pulse between, as she puts it, “the bitch” and the “super puritan”. While she seemed to polarize the two I think they are much more cohesive. Even in the separated costumes this can be found. The Super Puritan though covered is labeled with two scarlet letters; the self conscious mark which shows that perhaps the prude is not glorified in her mind. Similarly, the bitch attire is made out of a dog-patterned print. While it is a nice play on words, the kind and kitsch faces of small dogs on a very modest full length dress is less than hostile. This same duality of character lives within all of her new work, especially her prints. Her edited pent house images both reveal a voyeuristic desire to examine these taboo pictures, as well as hide them. What’s more is that end products often lend the women or what’s left of them a sort of power. Creating new interest and compelling audiences want to re-examine and stay with the images even longer. By blotting out everything but two piercing eyes in a sea of green marker, the attain a new stare which lingers between helplessness and seduction, between the pure and the bitch.

***

Beverly Semmes is a very strong compelling artist. I felt privileged to hear about her process and for her to share her body of work with our class. I appreciate the way in which Beverly Semmes produces her work. She does figure out every detail or how her work will turn out. I think that is a quality that is often ignored today in school. I have not taken many art classes but especially in architecture there is a set idea of how a project will finish. Beverly’s method pays more attention to the creation and process of working. I think that her method is a much more conscious method of choices and open to the evolution of work. There is a very strong connection between all of her work over the years that does not need to be explained, but is simply understood as a result of her process.
I value work that can be interpreted and appreciated without requiring an explanation. I also enjoy that Beverly is open to circumstances, especially with the security guard as the model. She was open to the idea of the person sitting and walking around and how that would change the piece. She had no idea what would actually happen or how it would be perceived. Beverly has played with a live person in many show and she learns for each project as and evolving process.
I found the introduction of ceramics intriguing in her work. The clay pots sitting on the dresses just seem to work. They do not need to be explained. The texture of the pot and the texture of the dress have a strong relationship. Her most recent posters even portray this connection but on a 2d surface. The childlike scribbles o the posters were very closely relation to the texture of the dresses and the ceramic pots.
In architecture we constantly document every step of work and photograph ever object that we create. Beverly has an interesting take on this. The photographs she took seem to be more sentimental to capture a memory than and an actual documentation of the work. I wouldn’t say that she ignores documentation, but this also contributes to the idea of not knowing what will happen with an idea. I have been trained to take a photograph of every step, but I think that is hinders my creativity and ability to just let go of a project. Perhaps this is why her work is so compelling and successful.

***

Our studio visit with Beverly Semmes gave us a comprehensive overview of her work, but in a very satisfying way, left certain aspects of her work unanalyzed and un-interpreted. This is one of the things I liked best about the artist, and her massive, unwieldy dresses and ceramics – that there was no need to rationalize every single decision about her methods or her display. Semmes is an artist who works instinctually, even to the point where she is not necessarily aware of all the readings and connotations of her own work. While I do not necessarily think that this lack of awareness is a strength in an artist’s work, it was refreshing to hear someone speak to the different kinds of interpretation that can come unconsciously, or after the work has been made.
While we were looking at her work, I wondered about the importance of functionlessness as it relates to Semmes’ objects. It seems inevitable that Semmes’ ridiculously large, awkwardly put-together dresses and whimsical pots that physically would not be able to hold any sort of liquids or small objects must relate to the object, and an object’s relationship to function and utilitarianism. Both clothing and ceramic pots are items that are born of necessity – the necessity to clothe oneself, and for protection from the elements; the necessity to store vital substances, such as water, or food, or to carry any of these things over distances. Over time both these items have become artful, commodified, and beautiful for the sake of beauty. In many instances clothing and ceramics have become art objects, whether in the fashion world, where clothing becomes a symbol of cultural savvy, money, or taste – or in the sphere of display in the home, where ceramic pots serve the double function of fundamentally decorative and status symbol. Clothing is still necessary to keep us warm. Ceramics have become almost completely nullified as necessary objects for storage. Tupperware is a far cheaper alternative to glazed pots or other crafted containers – the decision to use ceramics in the home is a purely aesthetic choice.
Semmes’ works take the un-‘useful’ nature of both clothing and ceramics and literally blows them completely out of proportion. Her dresses have arms of uneven lengths, or arms that join together to form a circle of rich fabric, or are made to fit lopsided giants. Her pots climb impossibly upwards, with myriad handles and orifices that could certainly not withstand water damage. Having rendered both of these items completely and utterly functionless beyond the realm of ‘contemporary functionlessness,’ Semmes is free to use both objects outside of their original contexts and create lushly beautiful landscapes of floating, transparent silk in vivid colors, marked by pots as totemic monuments. Both objects have an undeniable relationship to the body in their original conception (as objects) as well as the scale at which Semmes creates and displays them.

***

Although I was unable to see her work in person, after research, I find Beverly Semmes' pieces incredibly compelling. I can only imagine the scale in real life, but even in the pictures, one can sense the impact and consuming effect each of her clothing pieces have. Her statement of the injustice of gender role stereotyping is clearly shown by taking feminine clothes, and thus the role of the female, out of context and pushing the viewers to question their purpose and identity. A dress becomes not a universal symbol of the female, as on a bathroom sign, but a texture and material creating a sort of painting much like Sergej Jensen's. But, unlike Jensen, Semmes' work lives on not only the walls but on the floors, clearly defining different spaces, highlighting some areas, leaving others as background. These intrusions on the floor suddenly make her pieces more interactive, putting it on the same plane as the viewer, and her folds that ruffle over smooth concrete surface invoke an idea, a different imagination of the existing space; waves of an ocean or a rug. The textiles she chooses to work with bring vibrancy to her minimalistic designs for each clothing piece, emphasizing the symbol of the clothes. Also her photographs are striking, especially 'buried treasure' and 'petunia'. The first playing with the familiar idea of a treasure hunt with an x marking the destination, somehow reminds me of the forgotten importance of people sometimes, and that humans are "behind" everything; society, progress, civilization, etc. The latter places a bountiful field of fuchsia flowers inside of a stark church, an image that I will remember, although not knowing why yet.
The other works by Semmes that I enjoyed were her glass pieces, like 'shot # 10, dancing james'. The glass work seems to be mobile, never in a stable shape. Similar to her clothes, these works of glass seem to un-shape the conventional form of certain objects, like a pot or a vase, giving them not only a whimsical aesthetic but also a new definition for the names of these objects. But unlike her works that occupy a wall or floor these glass pieces are not so much singular objects as objects within a larger whole. They are linked to one another becoming a larger entity, through their organic boundaries and transparency of material. Semmes is an artist with work that I understand and find extremely pleasant visually and aesthetically. I am glad to have a chance to get to know her work, and hope to be able to see similar inspiration in the future, whether it is her or another artist.

***


Beverly Semmes was a generous and honest speaker and host. She was completely candid about her process, patient with the questions we asked, and very respectful of the opinions we expressed. Her work was very interesting to look at, and it was a privilege to see some of it in person before it is even displayed in a gallery. Her entire body of work has so much to offer us as viewers—they contain so many rich textures and vibrant hues that it seems like one could get lost in front of any of them for hours (I wouldn’t know for sure because I’ve never seen it in person). And for all of the work’s formal intricacy and originality, it has a kind of accessibility that is somewhat rare in contemporary art.

Though the work is certainly conceptually complex, it carries with it a set of material concerns and considerations that are wholly comprehensible even to the most unseasoned gallery visitor. By addressing two of the most basic concerns in art (visual and haptic stimulation) with ultra-familiar materials (fabric, clay, and glass) and a strikingly contemporary palette (which draws cues from commercial signage, product design, and advertising), Semmes creates a hybrid brand of works that can entrance any viewer. Her work seems to me the perfect marriage of worlds—of hands-on creation with cool, industrial production: fingerprinted pots coated with matte fluorescent orange, simple, rustic dresses at an unbelievable scale composed of the most outrageous patterns, austere crystal dripping and swirling about, forming living spindles to invade the space around it.

What was best about visiting Ms. Semmes’s studio, aside from getting to see her work in progress, was the completely honest talk she gave us. We were very lucky to have a speaker open up so much for us. As students, we need as much insight into the processes of working artists as we can get, and Ms. Semmes gave us everything she could. From inception to realization, we were given a clear and honest sense of what it took to create those works. When a work came from an unlikely stroke of inspiration, such as the Pink Potatoes piece, she was quick to let us in on its origins, however mundane they might be. She seemed to take a healthy fascination with the ordinary, to question the most basic norms.

All of Semmes’s work seems to ask, “Why utility?” Why should a dress or a pot or a chandelier or a vase have any function at all? On one level, her work is very much eye candy; it fills up a visual field very nicely with all sorts of vibrant colors and lush textures. It contributes to the discourse on formalism (which, according to Wikipedia, is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form), which pretty much gives it enough critical/theoretical clout to be acceptably complex—in other words, you can talk about it in terms of ontology and Platonic essentialism, and the latter’s manifestation in the forms related to Greek pottery. The dresses, too, can be seen in the same formalist (not feminist) light if you’re clever about it, positioning them as some kind of Platonic women’s attire.

That read, at least, seems more plausible than the oversimplified feminist one, which takes the stance that any dress in a gallery (save one painted by an old master) amounts to a feminist work.

***

Beverly Semmes flowing, ethereal dresses and sturdy, thumb-printed pots at first seemed to me to have nothing in common, but as she spoke about her process and evolution as an artist, I began to appreciate the interaction between them. Though the breadth and amount of her work was quite overwhelming, I was amazed by the same-ness (or similarity) of it all; though she has been working as a professional artist since graduate school, approximately 20 to 30 years of work later, her interests, style, and creative integrity and goals have not wavered. Furthermore, her explication of the work was fluid, but fixed: her intentions have not changed, but she is open to the possibility of discussion about and interpretation of her work (for example, when the interpretation of a feminist discourse was brought up, Semmes admitted that although she hadn’t had that specific intention while creating the work, she could understand that reading of it). It was refreshing to hear an artist speak with such conviction about their work while still remaining open-minded and not concrete about its position.
While the craft element of Semmes’ work evident in her pottery and ceramic making is evident, I found I preferred her work in fabric, particularly the oversized dresses. I wish we could have seen them actually hung in a space; I imagined the conversation between the dreamy, ephemeral organza and chiffon and the thick, bottomless crushed velvet, and then imagined that conversation five times larger than life-size and hung on a gallery wall above me. Petunia is a personal favorite. Simply the amount of fabric (and amount of the color pink) was at the same time overwhelming and pleasing to the eye. In these large-scale pieces and installation work, I found the mass of fabric began to look like a moving body of water, with its rippled texture.
Another group of pieces which were especially eye-catching (besides the obvious neon) were the large dresses with the mile-long sleeves, which Semmes twisted into shapes and designs as they ran along the floor. The piece Alphabet Dresses also played with this idea of body or clothing extension, but seemed to push the notion even further. Besides elongated or mismatched sleeves, other aspects of the clothing were slightly off-kilter: a gaping O in the middle of a shirt, tattered trails rather than a hemmed edge, tiny or enormous neck and head holes. Though I might be reading too much into the work, this appeared to be an interesting study of body extension, mutilation, or separation through the clothing.

Feng Membo @ PS1/MoMA

As a person that grew up in Asia at one point in my life, there is a certain kind of nostalgia that comes with games like street fighter and super mario. At home, they are the small boxes, about 2' x 3', of colorful noises and low-resolution action; ones that hitting the buttons arbitrarily (there are all of two) with much force and speed, in multiples of 100, is your best strategy for winning. Somehow there is a culture of people, hierarchy, and space that is only obvious after experiencing first-hand. If you normally just walk by, it might just seems like a random placement of objects with seats that are clearly too small for even a 12 year old. But there is rank of people, a small hush when the real experts of the game come by to play, and order, which, if you are not very good, you really don't get to play much, just watch. There is a specific technique to not spill over too much in front of the store next door and an unspoken reason and joy for why these certain games are too small in size. Regardless that they look as if 3 year old toddlers should be playing there, I know that most of the participants' ages range from 12 to 18, some that are above 180 cm tall. After accepting these games for what they are, much like people, you start to enjoy them for the abnormal qualities, and associate a familiar comfort with them. So, Feng Membo's Long March: Restart was a strange trip. Half of me saw the enormity of the installation and decided it was the ultimate gamer's dream. But, for the rest, it was disconcerting to have a space that, for me, used to consist of a 10 foot cube, suddenly transform into an in-my-face 150 foot long corridor. It was a paradoxical feeling, being in a place that is both childhood oriented but clearly with more adult motivations, familiar and unfamiliar, with a tactile medium but a scale that was ungraspable. And to me, the distance from what it used to be, forced me to see street fighter/super mario in a completely different light. There was an organization to the game, and a distortion that was happening at various stages of the installation, from the super pixels to the game itself. The scale also placed the viewers as interact-ers, both as the game controller but also being inside the game. There was a slight shift in paradigm (although subtle) when observing a game set-up like this. Something I think installations of this sort should do more often.

“Intra-Venus”, 1994 Hannah Wilke @ PS1

“Intra-Venus” 1994
Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke’s sixteen-channel display “Intra-Venus” at P.S.1 floored me. The Intra-Venus Series was first displayed in 1994, a year after Wilke’s death resulting from lymphoma. The videos chronicle her deterioration. Her husband, Donald Goddard, filmed her in the last two years of her life. All sixteen videos are arranged chronologically in a grid from left to right so it is easy to read Wilke’s transformation from happy, middle-aged woman to unrecognizable, bald, and on the brink of death. Throughout these sixteen small windows into her last years, Wilke displays a range of emotion and experience. She sits in the tub, smiling at her husband filming and talking quietly; she solemnly takes stock of her chemotherapy-induced weight loss in the mirror. The imagery is overwhelming and hard to look at. The voyeur is turned on his head – though we are afforded the most private, most typically forbidden of views, it is not one that we want to see.

Wilke’s stated intention with this work was to bring to light the experience of the invalid, and to reject the doctrine of containment and concealment promoted by clinics and hospitals. As I watched these videos, I felt a lump rising in my throat. Seeing another human in pain is an incredibly visceral experience. And, unless one has had a loved one die of some sort of prolonged illness, most do not experience this profound level of sympathy and understanding. Despite my understanding of Wilke’s intention, and despite my own recent experience with death, at one level I felt upset with her for making other people, maybe other people who cared about her, deal with this difficult imagery of herself. Yet it is exactly this reaction that made this work resonate so strongly with me. These videos challenge the institution of ‘dignity’ as it relates to sickness and death, and they challenge our own complacency with these ideas. They also starkly make the point that millions of other people across the globe who are not born into a country with standardized hospital systems live with death in their homes, as relatives and children die simply without access to medication or expensive treatment. With her body as site, Wilke exhibits and embodies the universal experience of death, and jolts us into compassion.

This work builds on an earlier permutation of life and death juxtaposed – “A Portrait of the Artist with her Mother, Selma Butter” (1978-81) places an image of Wilke herself, young and pink, next to an image of her mother in the throes of breast cancer. She is emaciated and frail, and one of her breasts is missing. The other stretches thinly over visible ribs and sternum. “A Portrait of the Artist” uses the placement of two images side by side as its display strategy, implying the progression of life (young to old) while sparing us the narrative in-between. “Intra-Venus” supplies every detail from start to finish. The Intra-Venus Series marks the symmetry of mother and daughter, both succumbing to cancer, and both making use of their withering bodies to make art.

Sophie Calle, The Address Book @ PS1/MoMA, The Talent Show

In The Address Book, Sophie Calle uses a calculated method of documentation of her interactions with the contacts in an anonymous man’s address book. She presents her piece almost as a series of journal entries. Each print corresponds to a separate day and describes her interaction and conversation with each person in the address book. Her work reads more as a compulsive study of one man, getting to know him through personal accounts from his acquaintances or friends. She channels these interactions, which could be mundane conversations in any other context, into what is essentially a massive “database” of information about this man--Pierre D. His presence is created despite his absence. Pierre D.’s “negative”--the stories and truths told by his friends and contacts--comprises a positive portrait.
Calle’s melding of art and life is carried through many of her pieces, including Exquisite Pain, Take Care of Yourself, and The Address Book. Her installation of Take Care of Yourself presents itself as a collection of 107 different responses to a break up letter, signed “Take Care of Yourself,” that Calle received. She asked women from a range of professions and backgrounds to interpret the letter in the manner that best matched their line of work, thus amassing a treasure trove of autobiographies. The installation reflected more the personalities and accounts of the women analyzing the letter than the reality of the man who wrote it. Similarly, The Address Book displays evidence of real interaction, as a testament to the work’s entwinement with Calle’s own life.
Calle’s work often evokes similar qualities to the work of Walid Raad, especially his ability to blend life, art, and protest. His political discoveries, and realistic representations of the war in Lebanon, for example gathering bullets and photographing the findings, are similar to Calle’s astute observations and documentations of human interaction.
The fact that Calle’s work focuses on a diversity of background, along with the innate desire to experience and learn from individuals’ stories is reminiscent of the photographic processes of Niki S. Lee. In photographing groups, Lee integrates herself within a particular culture of people, achieving her photo only after she has spent weeks with them. Thus, Lee’s work instead becomes more about human interaction and relationship than about the photograph. Similarly, Calle’s work is truly a series of detective missions, in which Calle seeks to diagram the inner workings of conversation, of relationships, and of personal accounts. Her resulting accounts are simply the method of documenting the occurrence of her artwork as it parallels her life.
Formally, Calle’s work appears in a myriad of forms, ranging from photography and video to found object sculpture to embroidered text on linen. The Address Book tamely presents itself as a series of prints, evoking an almost newspaper-like quality, complete with low resolution photographs on each page. Accompanying the text prints is a lithograph of the address book cover, and Calle’s own conclusion to the event at the end of the linear display. Calle uses exacting, almost scientific techniques within the body of her text, recording the precise date and time of each interaction, any dialogue, and her own thoughts. In her conclusion she states, “Pierre, I have ‘followed’ you, ‘searched for’ you, for over a month. If I ran into you on the street, I think I could recognize you...” Calle’s observations in the end are romantic and strikingly informal. It’s as if you could be talking to Sophie herself, right there in the museum, or reading her diary on a living room couch. Ultimately, the whimsical spontaneity that Calle’s life already contains is what makes her artwork so accessible, so humanistically real.

Adrian Piper's, Context #7 (1970) @ PS1, Talent Show

Adrian Piper’s, Context #7 (1970), part of the “Talent Show” currently up at PS.1 Moma until April 4th, reinforces the exhibition’s theme of the constructed and ever-changing spheres of public and private space, as well as the notoriety or obscurity we prescribe ourselves in those spaces.

Originally, Piper presented “the work”, or, as it was in 1970, a binder full of blank pages, in the MoMA exhibition Information, with the instruction “You the viewer are requested to draw or otherwise indicate any response suggested by this situation (this statement, the blank notebook and pen, the museum context, your immediate state of mind, etc.) is the pages of the notebook beneath this sign. The information entered in the notebook will not be altered or utilized in any way.” Today, at PS.1, photocopied pages from that original presentation are behind glass, lining the walls of a small white room. This new context pushes the original presentation of the work’s intent even further, but perhaps in the opposite direction. The once democratic space of the notebook is now closed off and made private, thus destroying its idealistic aims opening an area for free-expression. It is a brilliant example of how our attempt to hold onto a historical artwork has instead degraded its integrity and even identity.

Originally the work attempted to break down the discourse on the spectator, inviting them to participate in the creation process, giving them the possibility for anonymity or infamy. But what I think was even more powerful and poetic about this piece in the 70’s was its implication of the infinite. The blank page is a site for any mark a pen could make, ink or indent, tear or fold, addition or edit, but most importantly, it is a place that can easily grow. In its unbound state, one can simply add more pages, add more opinions, and be forever in flux. The opportunity for change and amendment is what made this work a truly democratic space. While the MoMA limited who was able and likely to participate, the implication that the gesture could continue anywhere, allowed the work to surpass that simple audience. Instead, that implication has been destroyed. The pages are hermetically sealed off and instantaneously stripped of their freedom in hopes of preserving the work as a symbol of freedom, rather than a site for actual freedom to continue to exist. Why let people participate in their own free will when they can pay to see how that liberty might have existed for a moment in the 70’s? By not being provided a space for the work to continue, we are instead left what feels like a failed utopian dream turned to an example of a historical exercise in theory—or perhaps for the even more pessimistic, an act of freedom turned commodity.