Sometimes our understanding of even the most basic physical object can be subverted as it later becomes apparent that what we see is not the truth of what we once knew. It is in this shifty nether-space of understanding that Mike Womack’s work really finds its fertile ground. The latest of his work is now on view through October 15, 2011 at ZieherSmith. His current exhibition, Spectres, Phantoms and Poltergeists, centers around a contraption which breaks projected light down into its primaries of red, green, and blue. This experience awaits the viewer in the back room of the exhibition space, sonic evidence of its movement bleeding into the viewing experience in the front room, calling the viewer to look further. |
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“The artist’s gestures are familiar and utilitarian in their transparency of intention; yet open us up to an experiential space where conventional perception is challenged.”
Mike Womack. Threshold, 2011. Bluestone from the stoop of Walt Whitman, book page from Leaves of Grass and wood, 32 x 48 in.
Mike Womack: Spectres, Phantoms, and Poltergeists
Matthew Hassell
Sometimes our understanding of even the most basic physical object can be subverted as it later becomes apparent that what we see is not the truth of what we once knew. It is in this shifty nether-space of understanding that Mike Womack’s work really finds its fertile ground. The latest of his work is now on view through October 15, 2011 at ZieherSmith.
His current exhibition, Spectres, Phantoms and Poltergeists, centers around a contraption which breaks projected light down into its primaries of red, green, and blue. This experience awaits the viewer in the back room of the exhibition space, sonic evidence of its movement bleeding into the viewing experience in the front room, calling the viewer to look further.
In the entrance space, Womack has placed works serving as an enticing lead-in to his approach of phenomenological investigation. He wastes no time in situating himself among quasi-heroic historical art figures by creating relationships between his own work and the likes of Muybridge and Walt Whitman.
In the work Threshold authenticity of appearance is questioned in the positioning of a weathered slab of bluestone next to a page from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Here the artist has circled a passage in which the author describes his own stoop, drawing the connection that this is that very same piece of stone.
Mining images from his work in the back exhibition space, the front room of the gallery also draws a confident line through visual art history. Here framed captures of Muybridge’s iconic horse motion studies are shown broken down into RGB by Womack’s investigation.
Continuing on to the main gallery space, one is finally able to encounter the meat of his work. Titled We are a Particle Stream, the heart of the exhibition is a wall-mounted kinetic sculpture created by calibrating a DVD, projector, motor, timer, fishing pole, chair, bedpost, and a string. Pedestrian as these objects may seem, when assembled and set in motion as Womack has constructed, they create a fleeting situation which shows us that what we see is often not so much physical truth as it is the best that our brains can put together given the available stimuli.
It’s pleasing here to find technology folded into itself in such a way that it sharpens our attention to the nuances available at the limits of our senses, rather than covering them over by diverting attention elsewhere or occupying our cognition.
The artist’s gestures are familiar and utilitarian in their transparency of intention; yet open us up to an experiential space where conventional perception is challenged. Using his cunning aptitude with assembling physical materials to show us something we may never have otherwise realized about the way we view the world around us, Mike Womack is an aesthetic John Henry; repositioning our view of the perception machine one hammer strike at a time—minus of course the tragic ending.
*** 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.