#ingridmayrhofer

Sean Kenney, Nature Connects at Hendrie Park, The Royal Botanical Gardens. May 20 - August 20, 2017. Burlington, Ontario.

By Ingrid Mayrhofer

Sean Kenney, Life-size Rototiller. Part of the exhibition Nature Connects at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington. Photo courtesy of Ingrid Mayrhofer.

Much criticism of this year’s Documenta 14 (Learning from Athens) and the Venice Biennale is directed at curators’ and artists’ failures to deliver on their stated social engagement goals. “At a time of global disorder,” chief curator of the Venice Biennale, Christine Macel, writes, “the role, the voice and the responsibility of the artist are more crucial than ever before within the framework of contemporary debates.” [1]

The environmental debate is definitely one where I see both the need for and the potential of art to voice concern. So, when the Royal Botanical Gardens organizes an exhibit called Nature Connects, and promises it to be an “inspiring exhibit that teaches people of all ages the importance of connecting with nature [2],” I would expect imagery that broadens my understanding of the issues. Instead, the RBG presents 14 installations by New York-based Sean Kenney, who describes himself as a “full-time LEGO artist.” The introductory blurb on Kenney’s website leads straight to the point, “commission a LEGO sculpture for your event, magazine, TV show, home, or office.” The globe as we know it is in serious trouble – climate change being one of the signs and plastic one of the causes. More than 8 million tons of it is dumped in the oceans every year. Fish, birds and marine mammals are threatened because of plastic, which permeates our food chain. Yet, the RBG wants us to connect with nature through “over (sic) 300,000 pieces [3]” of plastic. “Building with LEGO bricks,” they claim, “is about balance and connections, much like the biodiversity of Royal Botanical Gardens.” [4]

Until last week, I did not know that there was such a discipline as LEGO art. With the exception of Toronto-based Enow Nimako [5] (who builds magical creatures as part of his Afro-Futuristic practice and uses LEGO to engage youth in exploring their identity) my Google search for LEGO art resulted exclusively in plastic brick likenesses of other people’s artwork. Equally futile, an attempt at gathering primary source input from my Facebook “friends” drew a rather venomous exchange between critics and defenders of the RBG (and its price of admission), instead of artistic discourse. A neighbour thought the exhibit worthy because it motivated school visits; another suggested that the LEGO exhibit was proof that the RBG was not an elitist institution (I shall return to this thought). During my site visit, I met up with the “target audience,” a modestly dressed young couple whose little boy may have been motivation or excuse for the expense [6]. The reluctant little one was coaxed into posing with each piece and finally refused when they got to the rendering of an eagle. Dad gently picked him up to better stage the photograph, and son responded by closing his eyes at the camera.

The comment “Royal Disney Gardens” posted by Annerie VanGemerden, one of two Facebook and artist friends who responded to my question, “should I laugh or cry,” [7] resonates with my own gut reading of the RBG exhibit as a discipline of “Imagineering” rather than visual art. A 1995 exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disneyland Theme Parks, provides an interesting, albeit critical, precedent for Nature Connects. In his essay about this project, John Grande suggests that, “Fakery is designed to give one a sense of reassurance, of being protected from reality.” [8] I consulted Grande’s book Intertwining, because he had curated what was in my opinion the best of all the art exhibits at the RBG, in 2008. Remnants from that notoriously under-promoted event, including the artwork Shelter by Arthur de Mowbray are still present on site, but the signage fails to credit the curator. Rather, it encourages us to “text ROYAL to donate $10.” Reality, it seems, is that the RBG needs more money.

Educational signage for the LEGO sculptures offers meta-likenesses in that the support for the text is made of plywood simulations of oversized LEGO blocks, some of them much larger than the pieces they interpret. As an artist, surely, I would want my work to outperform the interpretive armature. “Please do not touch or climb the sculptures,” each sign asks. In other words, connect with the plastic nature from a distance. Trying to make up my mind as to which was the worst of the pieces, I fluctuated between Birds vs. Squirrels at Feeder with a mini picket fence and real plastic bird feeder, and Giant White Triumphator Lily with a strange plywood frame. Then, I saw Kneeling Gardener and selected it as my pick for worst-of-show. My standards for a human likeness to challenge my anthropocentric limitations are simply too high. However, I could accept the Life-size Rototiller, which, as an inanimate object, references human intervention with nature (such as the garden).

More sinister than escapism via LEGO built simulations is an ideological resonance with the need of authoritarian regimes, not only for “safe” but explicitly saccharine narratives such as Vladimirskii’s 1949 painting Roses for Stalin or Hitler’s own drawings of flowers and his dog – a favourite subject of George W. Bush as well. Another association with the longing of dictators for art that calls up a glorious past rather than an achievable vision of a better future, is found in both Disneyland and Nature Connects in that they dish out complacency to “ordinary people.” “The people recognize themselves in their commodities,” Marcuse observed in One-Dimensional Man. [9] Assuming other-than-human self-awareness exists, would the animals and plants represented in Nature Connects recognize their likeness? Nostalgia and happy childhoods play big in the RBG marketing spin. While many artists deconstruct or reinterpret popular culture commodities from their childhood, especially ones that would have been labeled Kitsch in their time, the claim that this exhibition teaches, “the importance of connecting with nature,” [10] refutes any magic that the LEGO memories may hold for my inner child. Rather than educating, the plastic replicas play into consumerist ignorance and dominant culture’s inability to live in harmony with nature. The RBG marketing-addled curatorial department identified the lowest common denominator for its paying audience as middle class commodification of culture and nature. Does that mean that anyone who didn’t have LEGO as a child (because of their social, cultural or geographic location) is not a target and may not identify with the royal gardens? The role of the artist in this garden is to serve the complacent middle class ideal and to challenge neither the viewer, nor the petroleum industry. Building plastic likeness for the sake of likeness in plastic, he denies any space for interpretation, transformation or imagination.

Perhaps placed in a context of post-industrial wastelands, the “imagineered” replicas of what no longer exists on site would bear some meaning. Would the labour-intensive LEGO art production be suitable for a statue of “The Donald” or of Kim Jong-il in order to draw attention to exploitation and forced labour? I think not, and I have no doubt that LEGO art at the RBG is not going to “save our children from nature-deficit disorder” as discussed in the book by Richard Louv. [11] Rather, the plastic displays reinforce the need for rethinking an elitist post-colonial institution that either disdains its audience or simply does not understand the creative potential of the place. It is not likely to reach any youth who might want to hang there and stay woke (as my son would say). On a plus note (or not?), the fact that the plastic likeness may be all that remains after the next great extinction shall no longer confuse archaeologists.

Notes:

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/arts/design/a-venice-biennale-about-art-with-the-politics-muted.html

[2] RBG exhibition handout, double-sided sheet, 8 ½” x 11 “, one fold

[3] ibid

[4] ibid

[5] http://www.cbc.ca/2017/with-lego-i-explore-identity-and-build-my-own-vision-of-the-canadian-future-1.4117067

[6]  I like the gardens, and I do have a membership, but the cost of admission is not going to bring in people who work two jobs at minimum wage.

[7]  Artist & Gardener Gene Threndyle suggested I do both

[8]  John Grande, Intertwining, Black Rose Books, 1998

[9]  Beacon Press, 1964

[10] RBG exhibition handout, double-sided sheet, 8 ½” x 11 “, one fold

[11]  Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods – Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Algonquin Books, 2005