Bunker Than Thou
Jerstin Crosby
"Bunker Than Thou" is the third and most comprehensive bunker-themed exhibition produced by 26 year-old interdisciplinary artist/curator Jerstin Crosby. The first in the series, "Bunker," took place in Jerstin’s former basement apartment in Carrboro, NC in 2004. The theme of playing off the literal and cultural definition of "underground" continued the following January with a mail art show in a storm shelter on the historic Fort Omaha site in Omaha, Nebraska. For "Bunker Than Thou", Crosby performs campfire-ish folk songs from the inside of a Coleman tent. He will pitch his tent within the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art’s newly opened 5,000 sq. ft. space, bemisUnderground.
Bunkers are supposed to protect us from the enemy, providing an underground space safe from bullets and bombs. While bunkers may save lives, they do not distinguish between threats–terrorist attacks, natural disasters or biological warfare. For this reason, "Bunker Than Thou" is timely, potentially problematic, political and frighteningly real. In our post 9/11 world where our government recommends stockpiling duct tape and bottled water, bunkers seem more and more "attractive" and are certainly sites of intense drama and post-apocalyptic survival.
Lump Lipshitz (a.k.a. Bill Thelen), curator of Raleigh, North Carolina’s Lump Gallery/Projects, will make a large wall painting of German movie star Bruno Ganz portraying Adolf Hitler from the film Der Untergang (Downfall). Lipshitz will also oversee the construction of the Teamlump homeless shelter–a different take on the notion of "bunker." This cardboard shanty that speaks to the daily experience of so many poor Americans will house bunker themed drawings and sculptures, including makeshift bedding. (www.lumpgallery.com)
New York/London based artist and Rove-curator Kenny Schachter makes photographic works about hiding from various overrated personalities and tendencies in the art world. Schachter is dedicated to bringing art into experimental spaces that transcend traditional gallery restrictions. (www.rovetv.net)
Washington D.C. artist, Dan Steinhilber, takes ordinary objects such as clothing hangers, plastic bottles, bubble wrap, plastic spoons and garbage bags to exploit light and form in his translucent sculptures. For "Bunker Than Thou" Steinhilber packs pale green foam packing peanuts in a clear plastic bag and compresses it beneath a wood crate lid. The piece questions impossible fortification, the containment of waste and the vulnerability of space. In 2003, the Hirschhorn Museum featured Steinhilber in Directions, a one-man show.
Chapel Hill artist elin o’Hara slavick responds to the bunker theme literally and politically. Slavick exhibits the drawings Dresden, Germany and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah from the series, "Protesting Cartography: Places the United States has Bombed." The drawing of Dresden may trigger the fact that countless people died of suffocation in bomb shelters and bunkers during the bombing. Slavick’s new drawings for "Bunker Than Thou" appropriates media representations of Islamic women training for combat and insurgents in Iraq.
American artist Claire Rau, working out of Venice, Italy, also uses terrorism as her subject matter for an installation of stacked sandbags with printed portraits of known terror suspects. Are the terrorists going to stop or orchestrate an attack or are they targets for a shooting practice? In case of a major catastrophic event, Chapel Hill artist Harrison Haynes plans to head for an Alamo meeting point with his close friends. It happens to be a duck-hunting cabin in the Florida Everglades. Instead of a successful reunion, Haynes uses mixed media to tell us a hypothetical story in which he makes it to the meeting place but no one else does. Perhaps a dark comedy or lonely tragedy, Haynes touches upon something we all fear.
While "Bunker Than Thou" may not take a clear position on the ongoing war on terrorism, it certainly poses many questions, raises doubts, represents different sides of the conflict and expands the definition or understanding of terrorism, safety, the underground and representation itself. Utilizing an actual underground space for the exhibition, "Bunker Than Thou" is a site-responsive show that doubles in intensity for viewers.
While terrorism and the unstable climate of global politics are the driving forces behind "Bunker Than Thou," some artists take a more introspective or personal path, using the idea of "bunker" as a metaphor. Nathaniel Lang, who makes rich, egg tempera, photorealist, icon-infused paintings of his close friends and family, will exhibit a large dismal self-portrait. Lang laboriously builds up textural layers of miniscule brush strokes that stress the importance of what is below the surface and more importantly who is below the surface. Lang is an upcoming artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center in fall 2006.
Omaha resident, Nicole Jean Hill makes exquisite large format color photographs. She captures striking and charismatic poses from an odd selection of domesticated animals and reptiles. In one earnest photograph of an aquarium in a bare, carpeted environment, a gregarious box turtle strides outward from its plastic hollowed log. Maybe the outside world, or above ground, will prove to be no better, less beautiful and as dangerous as staying put in our constructed safe havens–be they plastic logs or bunkers. Other artists include Leah Bailis, Jeff Whetstone, Michael Salter, Lany Devening, Susan Mullally, David Colagiovanni, Ray Gourley, Matt Rooney and Lydia Moyer.
