Rarely does a curator acknowledge up front that an exhibition holds the potential to generate indifference or even dislike.
Yet that is exactly what the ever-intrepid, ever- frank Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson does in writing about “Now You See It,” the latest show the director and chief curator has organized at the Aspen Art Museum.
“The viewer may experience something and nothing, dismissal and hope, epiphany and failure,” she writes.
She’s right. The presentation, which continues through Feb. 1, is every bit as frustrating as it is fascinating.
It is fascinating in the way it explores the very nature of art, harking back to Marcel Duchamp’s infamous submission of an ordinary urinal to a 1917 art exhibition and reviving, expanding and updating the complicated issues surrounding that so- called “ready-made.”
But at the same time, it is frustrating because it deals mostly with arcane artistic theory and philosophy. It’s art about art as much as anything else, and that gives the show a kind of narcissistic, insider’s feel that can be off-putting to anyone not familiar with the intellectural terrain.
Unlike abstractionist Frank Stella’s axiom that “what you see is what you see,” this exhibition examines what you don’t see in certain kinds of art, at least what you don’t see at first. That change in perception, what Jacobson calls the “magical moment of transformation” lies at the core of “Now You See It.”
If that sounds vague, it is to a certain degree. There is a nagging sense that the intellectual scope of the exhibition exceeds its physical reach and that the ideas undergirding it keep shifting from one group of works to another, making it hard to get a firm grasp of the offering’s central tenets.
An essential theme is that unexpected, ordinary objects and materials can be converted into artworks or just declared to be artworks. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ ” ‘Untitled’ ” (Last Light)” (1993), for example, is just an everyday string of lights, a contemporary take-off on Duchamp’s urinal.
The problem is that the conceptual underpinnings of that work seem far from those of, say, Fred Sandback. While it is true that he uses nothing but yarn in “Untitled (Sculptural Study, Two-Part Leaning Construction)” (197 7/2004), he deals with notions of material- ity and space that differ significantly from those of Gonzalez-Torres or virtually any of the other artists.
Jacobson attempts to find a way to reconcile these disparate artistic methodologies, but it is not completely convincing: ” ‘Now You See It’ draws upon unconventional notions of transformation — like alchemy and magic — as a way of understanding this process as more than simply an elevation of base materials.”
Another disconnect surrounds the notion of craft, something little discussed in the catalog. Most of these artists, such as Gedi Sibony, with her deliberately slapdash assemblages combining such household materials as carpet and garbage bags, emphasize concept to the near exclusion of craft.
That leaves Robert Ryman as something of an odd man out. While it’s true that he does not try to camouflage the adhesive tape and other humble materials he incorporates into his all-white pieces, it is also true that he is a consummate painter, concerned with creating beauty in the old-fashioned sense of that word.
It also is not clear how artists such as William O’Brien fit in. In the puzzling all-black “Untitled” (2008), he has created an abstracted backdrop and a kind of stage, with figure- like ceramic sculptures grouped on it. Nothing non- art about that.
To simply say, as Jacobson does, that a lingering view is rewarded with some deeper engagement with the work does little to tie it into the other selections because that could be said about any worthwhile art.
In his catalog essay, Peter Eleey, a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, acknowledges the “theatrical dumbness,” “demonstrative poverty” and “terminal blandness” of much of this art, but he argues that these qualities are exactly what give the work its power and define much of contemporary art in general.
He cites the example of Tom Friedman’s “1,000 Hours of Staring” (1992-1997), a blank piece of paper about 32 inches square. What supposedly gives it meaning (Is that the right word?) is the notion that the artist stared at the work for 1,000 hours over five years, an assertion that might or might not be true.
He cites famed curator Kirk Varnadoe’s belief that our culture demands “pictures of nothing” because of the sense of loss and emptiness that has accompanied the march of modernity.
“But what nothing demands, of course, is that we keep on looking, and pictures of nothing, then, can’t really exist — if only because in looking, something is always seen,” Eleey writes.
Art of this kind inevitably appeals to the mind and does little to nourish the heart and soul. And even at that, Rembrandt’s famed self-portraits and their enduring insights into life, death and the passage of time arguably offer more than the intellectual high-stepping in and around these conceptual works.
All that said, “Now You See It” is an undeniably ambitious and provocative exhibition that again gives the Aspen Art Museum a voice in the topsy-turvy dialogue of international art.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Now You See It”
Art. Aspen Art Museum, 590 N. Mill St. An international exhibition of contemporary artwork dealing with notions of transformation and perception. Through Feb. 1; 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, conversation with Massimiliano Gioni, director of special exhibitions at the New Museum in New York City. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 6 p.m. Sundays. Free. 970-925-8050 or .
