“Evidence of Bricks”: Curated by Kristan Kennedy

“Egypt happened. Wojnarowicz happened. Japan happened. Nicki Minaj happened. The Tea Party happened. Marina Abramovic at the MOMA happened, The BP oil spill happened. Ai WeiWei happened. Wisconsin happened. London is happening right now. “

Evidence of Bricks, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Curated by Kristan Kennedy

“Evidence of Bricks”: Curated by Kristan Kennedy

Kristan Kennedy

“Evidence of Bricks” is about the building up, but mostly the tearing down, of institutions, societies, structures, and ideas. It is also about personal revolution. The brick starts as a lump of clay and winds up as a structural wonder: they are the building blocks of society, they are the weapons we pull from the streets in protest. They are at once sculpture, tool, and radical message delivery system.

The artists of “Evidence of Bricks” could start a revolution with a painting, or a digital text poem, or a block of clay, or an inflatable elephant. The materials of an artist’s revolution are their ideas. We must be brave and look directly at what they have made. In this particular revolution, there is grey and there is color, there is action and inaction. In the grey exists quiet, cerebral work such as Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor’s silent film “Rite of Spring,” in which the tiny hands of Romanian children set fire to mounds of poplar fluff that litters the street. This combustion is a natural phenomenon and a poetic gesture, it is both dangerous and immediate. The result is a cultural commentary on the leftovers of communist reign, but also on a loss of innocence in the wake of political upheaval all over the world.

There is color in Halsey Rodman’s time-based light and painting installation, “Towards the Possibility of Existing in Three Places at Once,” in which the artist makes three paintings side-by-side, each one loud with bold hues and produced gesture-by-gesture from memory, resulting in the creation of near-identicals with no original.

There is action in Ohad Meromi’s work “Rehearsal Sculpture, Act II: Consumption,” in which he turns an old classroom into a black box theater. Meromi takes cues from the idealistic nature of the Russian Avant-Garde and Kibbutz communities. He turns a series of sculptures, a pile of cigarettes, and a loose script into a set with no prescribed outcomes, where audiences are invited to stage their own play for themselves. Meromi will also offer the space as a rehearsal studio for the choreographer Tahni Holt, who will create her own work in the space. This shared authorship with audience and other artists eradicates the notion of one sole creator and instead implicates a broader community in the “making” of art.

There is inaction in the work of Jesse Sugarmann, whose live car-toppling performances, look like one thing and wind up as another. Sugarmann creates a limp monument to spiritual and corporate leader of the Chrysler Corporation, Lido “Lee” Iacocca, when he inflates 42 air mattresses under three Chrysler mini-vans. As they rise, they look as if they will soar, but they tumble gracelessly onto the ground with a thud. His work is both a monumental sculpture and a marker of the fallacy of status symbols and industry.

Claire Fontaine maps the United States in over 100,000 matches, set-to-be burned by the curator. YOUNG HAE-CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES debuts a new piece, in which they challenge us to re-consider the phrase, “I feel your pain.” Cristina Lucas records retired and fired jobbers from Liverpool tossing rocks through factory windows. Patrick J. Rock fabricates a forty-foot inflatable, elephant bouncy castle, in honor of Oscar Wilde’s fabled delirious fits of genius. Occupation/Pre-Occupation, stages sing-ins where musicians reinterpret songs from the more than 150 different countries that currently host US military bases. Kate Gilmore casts five women to hurl over 5,000 pounds of clay at the gallery walls. This is not a numbers game; this is about mass destruction, implication, and accountability of the artist and institution.

Egypt happened. Wojnarowicz happened. Japan happened. Nicki Minaj happened. The Tea Party happened. Marina Abramovic at the MOMA happened, The BP oil spill happened. Ai WeiWei happened. Wisconsin happened. London is happening right now.

Each happening ushered in change, some radical and some unfathomable. Some effects are still not known. This series of artist statements exists to question, and to invent new possibilities. “Evidence of Bricks” hopes to make us less angry and more inclined to make something, or to make something happen. Whichever comes first.

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski.  Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.