The first thought I had when I saw Erin Ikeler's "Paint Drips Pictures" on the 7th floor lobby was that she's turned paintings into discreet objects that can so easily be dispersed in an infinite number of directions. I'm beginning with this first thought because Erin's show invites the viewer's attention span to flit from place to place and I thought it might be appropriate to begin with the first place mine alighted.
The paintings in the show are mainly spread across the larger wall of the 7th floor lobby against a ground of magazine cuttings and pictures splattered with paint. I don't see a strong path my eyes are meant to take between the paintings and that's perfectly fine; I like the extraordinary number of narratives and relationships I can build between the paintings and the elements present in the ground they're sitting on. This reading lends itself to the understanding, also, that Erin's paintings are completely autonomous objects to be shuffled and re-shuffled, split up and spread throughout the world in whatever order and direction they (or Erin) please.
In fact, if I had to pick a theme of the show it would, indeed, be the flexible and (sometimes) subversive means Erin can use to turn a viewer's attention to a painting.
Take, for example, the two potted plants and the single splattered canvas sitting in one of the windows of the 7th floor lobby: in some ways the drips running down the face of the canvas are non-specific, leading one to simply register its materials as paint and canvas and then take the piece itself as a painting of painting; a stand-in for an artistic tradition sitting innocuously next to two innocuous houseplants. How easy it is for this piece to slip into one's periphery along with these common objects, but how subversive a place for it to be as well!
Many of the paintings in the show, like this one, want to be broadly recognized as paintings about painting (most obviously the pieces which feature diagrammatic palettes which each also include references to brushstrokes as well as meditations on color theory and on figuration) but there are also some broad gestures in the direction of life outside of painting. I sometimes think of this as a question of the artist's engagement with art history set opposed to engagement with the world, but I recognize that this is a somewhat lazy reading of the dichotomy present (for which I apologize). The one thing I'm certain of is that a shift in subject-matter away from painting is a welcome one in that it stops the show's themes from being completely homogenous. My favorite thing about the show was not the themes and subjects of each individual canvas, but the demonstrations and illustrations of how many ways paintings can seep into one's perception.
The most interesting example of these was only on view in the lobby on the show's opening night, but you can see it for yourself from the comfort of your own home: Erin created a one-minute video of one of her paintings (present at the show hanging above her show cards and visitor book) and uploaded it to youtube. Though there are some unidentifiable slapping sounds in the background and the image shakes indicating that it is video from a handheld camera, this is, otherwise, not a narrative video. You look at the painting, see it and keep watching to 'see what happens,' but nothing does. Perhaps you are disappointed or annoyed that nothing happened or perhaps you are disappointed and annoyed because you weren't done looking yet and your gaze has been interrupted. You're just going to have to play it again. Either way, Erin's piece finds a way to make you look longer than six seconds and she finds a place for her painting that you wouldn't ordinarily expect to look at paintings in.
No comments:
Post a Comment