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01.25.04
CAC Exhibitions
Pleasure trumps pedantry in a place as similar to an art gallery as the CAC
by Annasue McCleave Wilson
Polly Apfelbaum: A Retrospective--through 2/29/04
Crimes and Misdemeanors: Politics in U.S. Art of the 1980s--through 11/21/04
Moshekwa Langa--through 2/15/04
"Crimes and Misdemeanors: Politics in U.S. Art of the 1980s" is a yearlong exhibition examining the most pressing social and political issues of the 1980s, but the works are rarely sublimated enough to sustain artistic interest outside of their context. While the viewer can agree with practically every point the artists are making, what the artists are making doesn't seem as much art as propaganda. Perhaps this is not news, either to the viewer or to the artist. And the iconic pieces included do rise above the pedantry. Julian Schnabel's "Anh in a Spanish Landscape" (1988), in the "Identity/Constructs" section of the exhibition, and Eric Fischl's "Vanity" (1984) and Mapplethorpe's "Untitled" (1988), in the "Sex/Kills" section, all implicate the dynamic inherent in looking and being looked at, yet somehow this is filtered through our awe at the beauty of each piece. Much of the rest is, at best, a valid history lesson. In their profusion these artworks lose power; it's exhausting to be finger-wagged that much.
So don't wait to be rescued by the massive elevator when you've been worn out by "Crimes and Misdemeanors," because you can't avoid watching Robbie Conal's "Guerilla Postering and Etiquette Guide" (1990), a strident video documentary just to the right of the elevator doors. The placement of this particular work made me feel the same way I feel when people who stand on street corners I can't avoid on election days shout at my car, "Honk if you love our candidate!"
No, walk up Zaha Hadid's airborne stairs to Polly Apfelbaum's retrospective, where, as New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl puts it, "beauty and wit occasion holidays from habits of mind, which, though our own, seem, for the moment, arid and boring."
Polly Apfelbaum claimed in a public discussion with Matt Distel that she was not interested in her "hand," in establishing a style or signature. It is possible, however, to discern a progression or pattern--a good word to use about an artist whose primary medium is fabric--in her works. She and Distel spoke of her journey from "potential" through "threat" to "fulfillment," all of which can be traced within this, her first, museum survey. Representing "potential" are early works such as "Daisy Chain" (1989), and "Pocket Full of Posies," consisting of wooden and metal patterns but no color. "Threats" to her artistic aspiration seem to come in the form of ready-made crafts in the eye-popping colors of mass culture, here represented in "The Color of My Fate" (1990), which is simply a cardboard box filled with bright rolls of crepe paper, and "Dwarves and Snow White" (1992), muslin sacks of shredded colored paper.
Her mature works, presumably "fulfillment," are called her "fallen paintings," masses of cell-like shapes segueing from one beautiful hue to the next, all over the floors. The colors of each individual piece bleed into the fabric and into one another and each was placed by Apfelbaum at the CAC over a two-week period ("I am an artist about process," Apfelbaum says). The Whitney Museum must have intuited that her oeuvre had reached an apex with these works, for they own the best one, "Ice" (1998). This work appears to be mostly dyed velvet, and its slick milky sheen has the effect of ice. I wonder if the artist realized that the shiny floor of the CAC peeks through some of the individual fabric pieces and brightly reflects the light from above, just like ice might do in sunlight.
"Reckless" (1998) and "Split" (1998) are similar in spirit, though the latter takes on a slightly darker mood. Resting flush with the wall, and beginning in blacks and whites and grays, it seems to seep from somewhere within the building like mold spores. The artist has an infectious laugh and a charming toothy grin, which she would probably employ if she heard the themes of redemption or resurrection suggested as "Split" springs into colorful life at its tips.
"Big Bubbles" (2000) is a work of unabashed joy, green and yellow quatrefoils running gleefully in concentric circles. On the wall next to this work is "Wallflowers (Mixed Emotions)" from 1990, another concentric circle of delicate flowers, which one cannot help but imagine is Apfelbaum's tribute to nature as a source of inspiration.
The artist says that gallery installations are still experiments in placing art into architecture and she clearly is playing with this concept in the site-specific piece "Oblong," in which she "wallpapers" one wall with faint ovals in changing color sequences. Though probably meant to avoid competing with the vivid colors of her fallen paintings, it is pale and unbeautiful.
"Bones" of 2000 is either an explanatory piece--the bones are rolls of fabric onto which Apfelbaum's organic shapes of color have been dyed--or perhaps a sign that this phase of her work may be over (although she says, "I don't like things to end"). "Title Page" (2003) suggests a further distancing from the fallen paintings; it appears to be a long list of phrases with some personal meaning to the artist, perhaps possible titles for the works, which she admits often come later. "Titles are a way into the work, narratively clarifying my thinking."
 I guess it matters little that the three separate exhibitions currently on view at the CAC are so very different. But South African Moshekwa Langa's work shares the second floor space with "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and suffers from this placement (did no one think of the implied hierarchy of those couple of steps down to this gallery?). His interesting--and also highly politically charged--work seems suffocated by the diatribe of "Crimes," as if the bigger exhibition had sucked all the oxygen out of the air.
Langa's "hand" is put to many tests: he draws and paints, uses found objects as his medium for sculpture, and is a video artist. His themes are the themes of apartheid: displacement and alienation, both a legacy and an experience for him. He was ten years old before forced segregation ended in South Africa but he has since lived for many years in the Netherlands. His melancholy references to leave-taking and travel are moving, old suitcases, maps defaced by duct tape and black plastic (his works bear no titles and are not dated). His large, hand-drawn maps made up of words are most intriguing, strings of authors and places and historical events in many languages that, like truly great works of art, remain a mystery, giving away only hints of the depth of his feeling.
--i--
Polly Apfelbaum: A Retrospective--through 2/29/04
Crimes and Misdemeanors: Politics in U.S. Art of the 1980s--through 11/21/04
Moshekwa Langa--through 2/15/04
About iRhine
iRhine is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that develops the focus of communication for the many diversified offerings in the historic Cincinnati neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine (OTR). Through the Web site, e-mails, educational meetings, events, and volunteering, iRhine has supported and encouraged socio-economic development for OTR and the Greater Cincinnati Region since 2000.
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Jul 31, 2010
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