Susan Kaprov: Captivating the Public Sphere
John Perreault
Like many
artists, Susan Kaprov tackles a full range of techniques and formats: from drawings
to large public mural installations, to photographs, to paintings for galleries
or private collections.
She has worked
on paper, canvas, wood, and aluminum, and produced a 54 foot enamel-on-glass
wall installation. Think of it as the Picasso effect. Once one goes beyond mere
formalism, then what one says can take many forms. In fact, exploring new technologies,
whether digital processes or flat-bed scanners, can offer the challenges that
trigger inspiration and invention. Picasso covered the gamut of format and media
for his time —- from painting and printmaking to sculpture and ceramics.
And although he did not tackle photography, he even tried his hand at plays and
poems.
But there
is a drawback. When an artist works in a number of genres, techniques, and technologies
it is sometimes difficult for the casual viewer to discern continuities.
It used to be a juried exhibition commonplace that if the slides entered by one
artist might conceivably comprise a group show, the artist had to be rejected.
Is sticking to only one theme and image the only sign of seriousness? Or was
it because galleries (and museums and critics and curators) need art that can
be branded?
Fortunately, the
puzzle of Kaprov’s body of work is easily solved. Some might initially have
difficulty in seeing the common denominators of her jigsaw puzzle paintings,
her scanner photos, and her public art commissions, but at least two things unite
her oeuvre: a personal palette of bright, highly saturated color and, structurally,
the assemblage of discrete units into larger wholes. The color pops out at you;
it is luscious in the flower pieces, radioactive in the digital mutation images,
rich and moody in the jigsaw puzzle paintings, and appropriately up-beat in the
public commissions.
Color is very difficult
to particularize and it takes getting to know the artist’s work to be able
to pick out a palette. An exercise for art students or art historians might be
the following: using paint chips, from memory assemble a Matisse palette, a Rothko
palette, an Ellsworth Kelly palette and perhaps not in the too distant future
a Kaprov palette. Many of my victims, I suspect, might fail. It is easier to
recognize a palette than to recreate it on the spot from memory. Structure, on
the other hand, is easier to remember.
In most of the works of Kaprov’s that I’ve seen the all-over
repetition of discrete units is the structural principle. In earlier works on
paper such as Kingdom, in the flower scanner photographs that make up her “Nature?last
modified” series, and in some of her public works such as Urban Helix (2002)
at Polytechnic University the units are consciously ordered, are “composed.”
In other works, the units are assembled by chance, as in the jigsaw puzzle paintings
or the proposal for a mural on Houston and Broadway called Mandala for the 21st
Century. Kaprov says she “loves color.” and she “loves to use
chance,” feeling that her random juxtaposition of pre-painted puzzle shapes
opens up the artwork to combinations that she herself—-or anyone else, for
that matter—-could not have come up with. I agree. The freely painted puzzle
shapes are in themselves small paintings; when locked together at random they
create fresh and energetic fields of color and abstract paint-handling.
The big names in
public art started out producing gallery art: Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra,
Christo, Dennis Oppenheim. Kaprov may be doing it the other way around. She’s
already completed thirteen commissions; the gallery exhibitions will have to
follow. She is already in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (with 20th Century
Dilemma, a 14 foot photomontage on aluminum done in 1983), The Air and Space
Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many other public collections.
Kaprov’s
foray into public art has become a calling. At a certain point she decided that
she did not like working alone all the time in her studio. Also, more people
see public art than ever see art shown in galleries. To prepare herself to compete
for commissions, she took courses in architecture and model-making. Eventually
this paid off. She was able to communicate her vision; the commissions started
rolling in.
Work space requirements
are another advantage to a focus on public art competitions. Not too long ago
Kaprov had to give up her Manhattan studio when the rent tripled. Since most
public art is produced at factories or ateliers outside the artist’s personal
work place, a huge, expensive studio is not absolutely necessary. The imagery
for Urban Helix was created on Kaprov’s computer and the actual glass panels
made in the famous Franz Mayer glass studio in Munich.
Kaprov, of
course, now is confronted with the predicament that all artists working in the
realm of public art face. With a few exceptions, the art world simply does not
track, never mind evaluate, the genre. Consequently, there is little art criticism
that addresses particular works or, in fact, the field as a whole. Some will
answer that the works are spread far and wide, and sometimes inaccessible, particularly
if they are commissioned by corporations. Plus public art is on the whole quite
wretched.
I would counter
that earth works were spread far and wide and were often really, really inaccessible,
but critics and historians had no problem writing about them. Furthermore, most
public art is wretched because there is no art criticism. There is no feedback
except occasional public outcry, usually uninformed, usually off the mark.
There’s another
reason why there is virtually no art criticism about public art: the sale has
already been made.
But isn’t that the case with most art shown in museums?
Not always,
particularly when it comes to art borrowed for an exhibition. Besides, there’s
always more work by the same artist ready for sale somewhere else, often close
by.
For the record,
I actually went to Brooklyn to see Kaprov’s Urban Helix, which is what inspired
this more general treatment of her work. It is an easy ride on the N, and to
see Kaprov’s spectacular glass wall installation you don’t even have
to pass the metal-detector in the lobby of the Joseph and Violet Jacobs Building
on the MetroTech campus of the Polytechnic University. The theme of fractals
and other scientific images totally fits the situation and the space. It’s
a breathtaking piece.
A studio visit
confirmed my suspicions. Kaprov is someone to watch. I particularly like the
jigsaw puzzle paintings. Her flower scanner photos are gorgeous and there’s
a lot to be said for the mutant vegetable images she recently showed at the Santa
Barbara Museum of Art.
Where does
Kaprov fit in the larger scheme of things?
Neo P&
D? She certainly utilizes the grid, in an anti-minimal manner. But she does not
intend the feminism or the decorative nose-thumbing of the original Patterning
and Decoration movement. I’d say that since science is one of her
themes the use of rational schemata is a natural. Since nature is another, saturated
color is a natural too. In the meantime, her public art works multiply and certainly
enliven a multitude of public spaces. Public art requires a specialized talent
and Kaprov has it.
