Personal Space
Cheekwood's latest installation series brings out provocative social commentary
by Angela Wibking
Concept Metro: New Installations by Six Nashville Artists
Through Jan. 2, 2000 at Cheekwood, 1200 Forrest Park Dr.
9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thurs.; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.- Sat.; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun.
Admission included in regular gate fee.
For more information, call 356-8000
Yards of white silk, buckets of green paint, and piles of sticks have transformed what were once the horse stalls off the courtyard of Cheekwood’s Frist Learning Center into a series of artistic musings on modern life. Each of the local artists in Cheekwood’s current show has created a distinctive work within the confines of his or her individual stall, yet there’s a connective thread of social commentary that runs through all the installations.
Adrienne Outlaw’s stark white installation, for example, addresses issues of personal space and trust. The work consists of three silk-draped forms suspended from the ceiling. When the viewer steps close to a form, it begins to deflate slowly; when the viewer steps away, it reinflates. Motion detectors and small computer fans hidden underneath the silk orchestrate the movements. “Of course, some people may come into the space and never get close enough [to cause the forms to deflate], and that’s part of the whole trust issue too,” Outlaw says.
Patrick DeGuira also wants viewers to consider their relationships with others, the environment, and themselves. In “We Are Natural,” the artist has washed the entire space, from walls and ceiling to track lights, in green paint. A soundtrack of a pulsing heart and spoken words reverberates through the small enclosure. Eight oval frames, all painted the same green color, are arranged on one wall. On the wall opposite are two small square photographic images of cupped hands. Besides these photos, the only non-green objects in the room are a bunch of black pills strewn in the corner. A child-size walking cane is propped in another corner.
“I wanted to set up a situation that was soothing and inviting,” DeGuira says of the color coating. “It creates a feeling of safety and also of dissociation, so the viewer doesn’t get what’s going on right off the bat.” What’s going on, of course, is open to the viewer’s interpretation, but DeGuira says his intent is to reference themes that permeate modern society: consumption (the pile of pills), wanting and taking (the cupped hands), and the synthetic re-creation of nature (the color of the installation itself).
Eric Johnston addresses the collision of nature and man in more basic terms—and materials. His “Infertile” installation recreates, using thousands of sticks, the form of a beaver mound. Unlike the structure in nature, though, this one is streaked through with rust, a substance that also covers the walls. “When I was in Louisiana last year, I saw these mounds on the bayou and I saw them as sculptures,” Johnston says. “Later, I learned how the runoff from farms was tainting the water and poisoning some of the animals. The rust in my work mimics that poisoning.” The installation’s soundtrack of grinding farm machinery reminds the viewer of man’s presence.
If DeGuira’s and Johnston’s work engages the connection between nature and humanity, Paul McLean’s “Sirens and Conflagration” wages a technological battle with the viewer’s senses. “It’s Saving Private Ryan meets Ulysses and the sirens,” McLean says of his work, which incorporates video, animation, music, computer graphics, ceramics, poetry, robotics—and a whole lot of black paint. The walls and ceiling of the space have been thickly layered with black paint, which in turn has been covered with myriad images. There are soldiers in World War II gear, bombers flying overhead, crosses, and funereal flowers. An ancient Greek warship in full sail is painted on one wall, and projected on the sail is a short film by Brent Stewart featuring a siren, played by Nashville Ballet dancer Nicole Johnson.
Stewart is one of several collaborators on McLean’s installation. Others include Ellen Rudnick, who designed the liquid crystal display that runs on a flat-panel monitor; artist Megan Walborn, who created the ceramic wall urns and flowers; and Sharon Gilchrist-Janis, who composed the original music that plays on a soundtrack. Besides the painted elements, McLean also created an animated sequence and wrote the poetry seen and heard in the installation.
The two other installations also speak to important issues, albeit on a more personal level. Passing through the light-blocking curtains into Karmen Polydorou’s work, the viewer enters a bittersweet remembrance of girlhood. One’s eyes are drawn immediately to a phrase referencing fairy tales that has been lettered on the wall. A white cotton communion dress is neatly spread out on the floor below. A projector casts a collage of childhood snapshots and Walt Disney’s Snow White onto the wall next to the words. In a few elegantly composed images, Polydorou summons up feelings of forgotten innocence and fairy-tale dreams deferred.
Finally, and perhaps most effectively, there is Richard Painter’s streamlined and slyly humorous installation, in which the artist references both his own creative process and the vagaries of the commercial art world. Painter’s work consists of blank white walls, eight ash-filled cotton bags, and a small TV monitor. The monitor displays footage of hands at work on a sewing machine creating the cotton bags and burning pieces of wood being reduced to ashes. Each cotton bag, strung up on the wall with twine, is neatly labeled as a work of art in a gallery would be, complete with title and price. While the bags are nearly identical and all bear the same title, except for a numerical designation, the extravagant prices vary. Painter thus slyly poses the question of how work is evaluated, priced, and promoted as “important” in the commercial art world.
While the other installations create environments that raise questions about trust, feminine identity, media overkill, and the environment, Painter’s work poses the question of what is and isn’t art. The answer here, as in the rest of the show, is in the eye of the beholder.
Installation art, by its very nature, won’t fit nicely over a sofa. Like live theater, it lives in the moment, and if it is recreated elsewhere—even in a similar space—it will be substantially different. Its appeal lies in its ability to provoke each viewer into unexpected associations and conclusions that go beyond billowy silk forms, rusted sticks, and bags of ashes. On this level, Cheekwood’s site-specific show succeeds very well indeed.
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