Moved: Moving or Immobile? – By Christina Vassallo

We’ve all been guilty at one time or another of letting our minds wander and making rapid associations when viewing art, often at the expense of experiencing the art. Admit it: sometimes we don’t even see the art at all.

Moved: Moving or Immobile?

By Christina Vassallo

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve all been guilty at one time or another of letting our minds wander and making rapid associations when viewing art, often at the expense of experiencing the art. Admit it: sometimes we don’t even see the art at all. The sculptures in Moved, at Hunter College Art Galleries from February 19 through April 17, 2004, demand our attention. We must stop and look, walk slowly around and through the sculptures, sit on them, and listen to them (and even strike a 500 pound gong, as this author had the privilege of doing). This exhibition of sculptures from 1960 to the present examines how we experience space and form. Curated by Stephen Davis with the assistance of Lon Lutz, Moved features the work of ten artists whose sculptures require the active participation of the viewer. The exhibition shows the changing relationship between the object and the viewing subject by recreating the lineage of the interactive sculptural experience.

Three small Lygia Clark sculptures—part of a group collectively called Bichos (1960)—are among the earliest works displayed. These geometric instruments are constructed of hinged metal plates that can be manipulated by the viewer to take on various shapes. Clark’s sculptures are beautiful organisms that react to the viewer’s handling while maintaining their own laws and limitations of movement. The artist intended the configuration of these sculptures to be modified by the viewer. However, such use by the public is not possible due to archival concerns—a dilemma that underscores the purpose and theme of the exhibition and much interactive art. Curators and artists must choose between artistic intentions and archival matters. Mark di Suvero’s sturdier and more functional sculpture, Tire Chair (1968), allows for heighted interaction and thus differently underlines the idea of collapsing the space between fetishized art object and passive.

Many pieces in the show also question the sanctity of galleries and museums. In a very literal interpretation of the limits of the gallery space, Barry Le Va’s Velocity Piece #1: Impact Run, Energy Drain is reconstructed for the exhibit to show how 60s artists challenged the containment of the idealized art-viewing space. In 1969, Barry Le Va first attempted to liberate himself from the hallowed white walls of the University Museum in Columbus, Ohio and then at the La Jolla Musuem of Art in California by running back and forth between opposite walls fifty-five feet apart and crashing into them. This process was performed without viewers and the recording of the sound of his movements was played back for the audience. At the Hunter Galleries, a room is set up with dimensions similar to that of the initial performance and the tape is played, with the sound of Le Va’s activity echoing throughout the room. The most powerful work in the exhibition, Velocity Piece #1 is a radical impulse showing Le Va’s disdain for the traditional art object. It has a tremendous physiological impact on the viewer as his or her head ping pongs back and forth across the room along with the sound of Le Va’s battered body running into walls.

Other sculptures in Moved explore the evolution of time and space by means of the viewer’s passage through them. Robert Morris’s Passageway (1961), a curved hallway which narrows until it becomes impenetrable encloses the viewer within an exitless space. The only option is retreat. Mowery Baden’s Vancouver Room (1973), a room divided into a bare gallery and a seperate diamond-shaped room built at a five degree tilt also requires the viewer to move through it to activate the space and experience the artwork. These two installations enter into an instructive discussion with the current global climate as they are recontextualized in 2004. The claustrophobia-inducing nature of Passageway drudges up feelings of fear and anxiety while Vancouver Room results in disorientation as the viewer/participant negotiates a space that is unexpectedly and only slightly abnormal.

Like Morris’s Passageway, Michael Brewster’s sound sculpture, Two Things in a Field (2004), creates the viewer’s expectations and eventually replaces them with a feeling of apprehension and alarm. The sound waves create a physical experience as an acoustic grumbling permeates the empty semi-dark room for six minutes. There is nothing to focus on except the dimness of the blue lights and the progressively irritating hum of the feedback. Synesthesia overcomes the lack of visual experience and once the sound stops, the viewer is stranded in its absence and the memory of the experience. During the seemingly interminable six minutes the sound waves become comforting in their familiarity. Once the experience is over, the viewer feels lost and is left to contemplate the instability of the world around. We walk away from Moved with an increased awareness of exactly how much we affect our world and how much our world affects us.

Is Moved, and for that matter much of the conceptual and experiemental art of the 1960s, still relevant today? While answers like yes and no oversimply the process of art making, the works on display here sever to remind the viewer that she is an active agent involved in a never-ending dialogue between herself and the world surrounding us.