Jaimie Warren, Mundane Meets Beautiful
Jaimie Warren’s intimate, ironic, ultimately confessional show, Don’t Try Not to Be Me, Just Be Yourself, at the Telephone Booth on Troost, consists of two large-scale triptychs (each image about 40″ x 30″), shot and presented in Warren’s characteristic mundane/beautiful style. An additional wall covered with smaller diptyches (images approximately 11″ x 14″) feels unfinished, as if added in the “more is more” pre-opening rush; look forward to the edit in a later show.
The first trio is a) caramel-colored dogs, eyes full of cataracts or just reflecting the camera’s flash; b) blurry photo of a boy-man/man-boy, blurred face, lips red like he’s been drinking too much Kool-Aide; and c) shadowy sky after dusk, crossed with telephone and cable wires, shadows of rooftops. There is an ache in the series that refuses to be self-pitying. There is potential for viewer-generated haiku:
Dogs–sad, blank, panting
Boy–grows into something unfamiliar
Night–lovely and dark; obscuring and abstracting.
Or
Dog, dog–those dogs look the same.
Boyish man with fuzzy moustache
Sky, dusk, rooftops. Reminds us of Mary Poppins.
Life is awful and weird.
Warren’s arrangements are not random. Though they are not shot in a specific sequence, they are placed and replaced until something resonates. Two tawny dogs with curly, soft fur and milky eyes plus pretty, blurry man-child in red sweatshirt plus the sky, of course, equals–it is not science; it is photo-magic.
But it is important that you not cut off the interpretation at the chance fit of one image to another. There is something passing between the images. They are actively doing something that generates a stimulus. The two main things that seem to be happening are:
1. an unconscious revealing of the innermost self
coupled with
2. an ironic dismissal of the innermost self.
In the past, I have been infuriated by artists’ tendency to dismiss their crybaby selves. Now, however, it seems part of the practice. Anymore, photographic art has a two-part interpretive realm. The first is the image itself–the information contained within the four corners of the picture. The second is either a) an intellectual meta-analysis of the work (for example, the artist writes an analysis of the work using a vehicle like psychoanalysis, philosophy, art history or metaphysics to reveal the art’s subtext) OR b) the work can be so apparent, so straight-forward, without any secret locked away for posthumous revelation, that the art’s subtext is the giddy, “ha ha; it ain’t so bad,” punch line that Warren has adopted.
How does Warren distance herself from what is revealed in her photos? She refers to herself as Judy Blume on the flyer for her show. Do you remember Judy Blume? Much loved author of Freckle Juice, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and the devastating Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Judy Blume is the embarrassingly accurate, if not slightly saccharine, voice for Caucasian pubescence. Warren is giving us big love by taking this alias; she is saying, “I will be the protective eye for adolescent misfits stumbling into adulthood.” The promised XXX Emotional Event at the closing of the show will be a rite of passage–tenderness giving way to transgression.
At her opening, Warren played songs from the KUDL play list, including Neil Diamond’s Love on the Rocks, which she recommends listening to while looking at the second triptych that is sequenced as follows: a) Vivid close-up of a bouquet of plastic flowers; b) Sweat-drenched rocker girl, head thrown back, pasty neck mid-pant, she appears to be kneeling, floored by her own passion, hair clinging to her sweaty chest; c) Two mutt cats lying down, little paws wrapped around each other like scared babes in the dark woods of life.
This triptych is wrenching enough without, “First, they say they want you, how they really need you. Suddenly you find you’re out there, walking in a storm . . . Nothing you can do or say, you’ve got to leave, just get away. We all know the song.” The absurdity of Neil Diamond’s regret, coupled with his public persona–big head of tightly curled hair, satin shirt open at the neck, revealing a patch of fuzz over his heart light. We are in a scornful, ironic time. I’m Okay; You’re Okay failed us. “Just be yourself,” is a meaningless command. Psychology is marketing’s secret code. It is not possible anymore to break down without mocking your own breakdown.
And this is not a bad thing. Provided that you do indeed allow yourself those ten seconds to listen to Love on the Rocks, look at the glassy-eyed cats, admire the desperately rocked-out brunette; there is plenty to break your own heart over. But Warren will remind you that there is no use in perpetuating the ache.
