SPACES (FALL 2023)

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941-2010)

Untitled, 1965

Howardena Pindell, Untitled, (mixed-media assemblage, acrylic paint, canvas, grommets, and stuffing), 1968-1970 [MCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, MI. © Howardena Pindell]

12. QCQ #3: Structural Tension

13. A Structure Within a Structure: Research (1, 2, 3)

14. A Structure Within a Structure: Materials in the World

15. A Structure Within a Structure: Final

16. QCQ #4: Concrete Blonde

17. Negative Fragments

18. Negative Fragments: 25lbs

19. Positive Fragments: Research (1, 2, 3)

11/11/2023

I lost the video demonstrating its function. But the idea was that this picture frame would be dangling unstraight. After showing some disappointment, I would ask anyone if they would like to take care of the job (since I would be too depressed to do it myself). I would direct some courageous sucker to step up and grab this rusty, uneven ladder in this narrow space between the desk and a cutting machine, and against some electric wires. Despite any hesitations from them, I would direct them to climb on the thing and straighten the frame out.

After reading Julian Rose’s article “Structural Tension” for the QCQ, I was fascinated by the idea of making something that looked unfinished or uneven while still serving its intended function (if not subverting from it). I’d also read about Bruce Nauman’s installations where they would invite audience participation, only to make the audience feel uncomfortable. So that was another thing I wanted to incorporate. But how could I do it?

Empty bookshelves and crowded desks came to mind, but I couldn’t figure out how those could make participants *truly* feel stressed. And a steel toilet just felt too difficult for my time constraints. Eventually, I settled on a ladder. How about that? A piece of furniture we have to climb on to reach certain heights. But if the material looks too stained or rusty, if any of the steps weren’t so straight, if it has holes from steel melting (which were accidental), if there are a lot of edges where the steps could come off, and if it looks too amateurish…would you trust it? 

Then I needed something to serve as the motivation to climb on it. That’s where the picture frame came in. A STEEL picture frame. It complimented the ladder very well. To top this, I would insert an unflattering portrait of myself (aptly drawn by myself in 5 minutes) looking down on the participants, further pushing their discomfort. I was told afterwards that the drawing would’ve been cooler if it was 3D and popping out of the frame. Why couldn’t I think of that?!

The dangerous and narrow space, chosen on the day of the presentation, pushed that even further. I made sure that the frame was high enough so that reaching it without the ladder would be too challenging. The playout seemed a bit simple, but after the feedback of my last project being too stuffed, this was probably necessary.

"So how could modernist structural expression be confronted other than rhetorically? When deconstruction and anti-architecture arrived in the ’80s, buildings were designed to look fragmented, unstable, incomplete—“cuts” were carefully engineered into walls, gaps introduced into floors, and columns twisted to produce an image of structure on the verge of collapse. Yet as the shock of the new wears off (it has now been more than twenty years since the epochal “Deconstructivist Architecture” show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), it is all too easy to recognize the only destruction here as Semper’s “visual” one."

This quote from Julian Rose's article "Structural Tension" pertains to how artists like Oscar Tuazon deliberately embrace an unfinished aesthetic in their installations. Pieces that only look broken and malfunctional, yet still serve their purpose. Thinking back to the first QCQ involving making viewers uncomfortable, both ideas could go hand in hand as some nerve-wracking experiences. As in, a viewer could go inside a minimalist structure that seems to be on the brink of collapsing on top of them, and yet it's still standing. That's something Tuazon has explored, and it's a very intriguing idea.

A Structure Within a Structure - Materials in the World

12. QCQ #3: Structural Tension

13. A Structure Within a Structure: Research (1, 2, 3)

14. A Structure Within a Structure: Materials in the World

15. A Structure Within a Structure: Final

16. QCQ #4: Concrete Blonde

17. Negative Fragments

18. Negative Fragments: 25lbs

19. Positive Fragments: Research (1, 2, 3)

"I would argue that House is fictional in the way that [Paul] Ricoeur defines the term, because it does not refer in a reproductive way to something that is absent, rather it represents the thing, showing something about it that was previously unknown or undiscovered."

In the article, Joanne Merwood references philosopher Paul Ricoeur's belief that "images" feature something that isn't around, while "fiction" doesn't have a productive reference. Rachel Whiteread's "House" sculpture references the insides of a house, but its intended usefulness is absent. Thus, viewers can see those insides in a different light. Casts of objects tend to focus on their bare textures (warts and all), without any of the implemented sparkles. So I think that allows us to see those objects in different ways.