Rena Leinberger: Zero Panorama by Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art

Forward and Interview with Rena Leinberger

by Marc Mitchell

The Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art (BFSDoArt) is delighted to present Rena Leinberger: Zero Panorama. Though Zero Panorama focuses on a selection of objects created over the past three years and introduces new works produced specifically for Georgia Southern University, the exhibition intends to provide a survey of the ideas that have steadily influenced Leinberger’s studio practice. Working primarily with web-based images, Leinberger constructs artworks that utilize subtle shifts in material as a vehicle for exploring notions of landscape, artifice, and spectacle. While discussing the possibilities of this project, the idea of creating a publication that challenged the traditional model of an exhibition catalogue became extremely interesting. Given that much of Leinberger’s artwork exploits commercially produced supplies, having a publication that acts as an informative pamphlet – instead of the documentation of the artwork or exhibition –seemed to align perfectly. As a result, the design of this pamphlet is intentionally focused on source material instead of the objects displayed within the exhibition. The intent for the images, along with the interview, is to allow the viewer to obtain insight to the artist’s process while still negotiating their own resolutions. This project has benefited greatly from the tireless support and intelligences of numerous people, both on and off campus. We first want to thank the artist, Rena Leinberger, for all of her contributions throughout the process. During the planning and implementation of the exhibition, she has consistently remained a beacon of collegiality.

The Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art is indebted to numerous people and institutions that assisted us in finalizing details for the this pamphlet: Philip Tan at James Cohan Gallery, New York / Shanghai; The Estate of Robert Smithson; and Andrea Mihalovic-Lee at the Visual Artists and Galleries Association (VAGA), New York. We are also grateful to Edward Rushton, associate professor of art/graphic design, for his contributions in designing the exhibition postcard, poster, and catalogue. He was not only an affable collaborator, but was also committed to ensuring that this exhibition would be a useful teaching resource for the Georgia Southern University community. Our sincere appreciation goes to the BFSDoArt gallery staff for their diligence in compiling all aspects of this exhibition: James Anthony Faris, D’antre Harris, Lois Harvey, and Andrew Pate. Each staff member played an essential role in the management and execution of this exhibition. Without their patience and dedication, this exhibition and publication would not be possible. As always, members of the Georgia Southern community provided collegial support and assistance. We would like to thank Curtis Ricker and Andrea Bennett in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Science (CLASS) Dean’s Office; Geoffrey Carson and the Office of Legal Affairs; and Hans Mortensen and the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art for their assistance and patience throughout the production of the exhibition catalogue. Marc Mitchell Curator Gallery Director and Assistant Professor

MM: You were educated in the Midwest (BFA from Anderson University in Indiana and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), but have lived in the Northeast for quite some time. How did both of these environments affect your work? RL: Wow, this question really jumps into the thick of many sticky issues. I usually tend to operate from a state of deliberately intellectualized distance regarding my work and its relationship to place. Ideas like Robert Smithson’s notions of non-site, Augé on nonplace, etc. But, as your question indicates, an artist’s aesthetic predilections are usually not entirely self-selected. I grew up in a rural town on the shore of Lake Michigan. It is an incredibly beautiful place with wide open expanses of land and sky and water, the sort of openness that leave the mind roaming to an infinite elsewhere. It is also a place of sparseness and resilient communities, with straightbacked church pews, long grey monochrome winters and rows and rows of jars of homecanned goods lining pantries and basement shelves. Parts of this ethos and aesthetic became imbedded in me. For many years, I have been traveling and living between New York City and upstate New York. During my studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I was working on site-specific pieces and was interested in architecture, but mostly as an interior space. New York is such a contested space with collision of politics; the city is constantly erasing itself and being rebuilt. To me, places and architectures became as much about their physical manifestations as their idealized or imaged forms. Experiencing the city and surrounding landscape in this way informs much of my more recent work. MM: A considerable amount of your work consists of various materials, often commercial products that are used to ref-

not about virtuosity. It is crucial that the work retains its physical immediacy while casting an eye at the referent—in this instance stock photography and ruin. MM: Is it important to consider your objects as “representations” of something? It seems to me that your work often functions as a search to connect ideas that are simultaneously correlated and disparate. How do your installations and photography/videos act as catalysts to study and understand? RL: They are representations. They are also things.

erence other substances. Could you talk a little bit about the role that materials play in your studio practice? RL: The materiality, or physicality of the work, for me is always insistent. That insistence may be quiet and unassuming, and depend on careful observation so the work itself is not overlooked. Which has happened quite frequently; that viewers are in a room with my work and remain unaware of its presence. Or are startled to realize they are standing on it. Such as Finish, in which I covered worn wood floorboards with wood-grain printed contact paper. The fake looks “better” than the real. So, often the real vs. the artificial is questioned, and the notions of craft or authenticity, perfection or value are things I tug at. In Looking for scraps, scraps of something beautiful, from a distance one might understand it as a rubble pile of broken rocks or cement. However, with this and with all my works, the artifice is always revealed. A few corners of the elements are unpainted and it is easy to see the material is painted polystyrene. My work is very controlled, but it is

MM: That is a very abstract notion, but also one that has found solid footing within the canon of art in the 20th and 21st centuries. While an artwork can be seen as a picture or symbol of something, it can also be viewed as an object within itself (not a depiction of something). How does your artwork address the role of “image?” Do you work from sketches or source materials? RL: Oof. I had a feeling you wouldn’t let that one go so easily! I think my work addresses a few very particular roles of “image.” One can be found in my works reconstructing images sourced from stock photos. Stock photos function as semiotic markers: “this is sky, this is pile, this is stack.” I locate them by linguistic search terms, and the language actually often precedes or dictates the content of many of the photographs. Meaning, I often get the feeling the images wouldn’t exist without the photographer shooting with a particular search term in mind. A single search term unearths oddly consistent photographs devoid of any sense of place. The pile could be anywhere. So, the void of the internet is their only place. Generally, the search terms I’ve used remain consistent with my interests in urbanization, sprawl and ruin, and have yielded images void of narrative and

void of empathetic detail. To borrow from Roland Barthes, there is no punctum—the thing that pierces you— and I think we are conditioned to look for that in an image. These images are disconcerting to me because they are not only devoid of place, but they are incapable of provoking empathy. There is no humanizing detail that pierces, gets under your skin and tugs at you somewhere. I find the absence of humanity to be profoundly unmooring. They all have a file number, but really: Where do I file an image like that? The other role of image that interests me is the way an image (itself) has the potential to mediate our understanding of reality. I think this is a concept that we are generally familiar, if not comfortable with, such as the “internet selfie,” which is an example of images shaping identity. Or, so many images of Niagara Falls have been circulated that it is probably impossible to visit it for the first time without an aggregate “image” of the place mediating the actual experience. It is perhaps more subtle when idealized places begin to dictate the built and the spectacle: spectacular architectures are constructed for the cinematic or photographic experience rather than for the daily lives of those who must contend with them. Images also mediate our understanding when the image proliferates to the extent that the exposure becomes iconic. MM: Those are both very astute notions regarding the role of the “image.” Can you break down how these ideas shape some of the new work? Perhaps the Zero Panorama series? RL: The Zero Panorama series most definitely explores these ideas, and also duplication and re-creation. Images of historical explosions such as Nagasaki or the Challenger are iconic images, instantly recognizable, and yet due to their very familiarity, the spectacular quality of the image is often the imprint rather than the actual horror and tragedy also associated with these events. While I was searching on Google for “famous historical explosions” (or something like that) I encoun-

Images of the artwork on display can be found at the BFSDoArt Gallery Flickr page (http:// w w w.f l i c k r. c o m / p h o t o s / b f s d o a r t / c o l l e ctions/72157623233616093/) and the artist’s website (www.renaleinberger.com)

CENTER FOR ART & THEATRE Georgia Southern University 233 Pittman Drive, Statesboro, Georgia Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art (912) GSU -Arts • Georgia Southern.edu/CAT PO Box 8032 Statesboro Georgia, 30460

Photo Information 1 Robert Smithson, Monuments of Passaic – The Fountain Monument, New Jersey, 1967, Six photographs and one cut photostat map, Collection: Museet For Samtiskunst, Norway, © Estate of Robert Smithson / licensed by VAGA, New York, Image courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. 2 Robert Smithson, Monuments of Passaic – The Sand-Box Monument, New Jersey, 1967, Six photographs and one cut photostat map, Collection: Museet For Samtiskunst, Norway, © Estate of Robert Smithson / licensed by VAGA, New York, Image courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. 3 Robert Smithson, Monuments of Passaic – The Monument with Pontoons: The Pumping Derrick, New Jersey, 1967, Six photographs and one cut photostat map, Collection: Museet For Samtiskunst, Norway, © Estate of Robert Smithson / licensed by VAGA, New York, Image courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. 4 Construction Scrap, Chimneys in the Background / iStockphoto File #11621051. 5 Heap of Built Debris / iStockphoto File #10960007. 6 Natural Traditional Sea Salt Extraction by Evaporation / iStockphoto File #11113626. 7 Construction Garbage Site / iStockphoto File #10039774. 8 Stacked Lumber / iStockphoto File #8639858. 9 Heap of Red Brick / iStockphoto File #10582514. 10 Former Street / iStockphoto File # 4000371. 11 Salar de Uyuni Salt Piles / iStockphoto #10671354. 12 Exhaust Trail of STS-51-L (Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion, 01/28/1986), Image # 86-HC-220, Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 13 Atomic Cloud Rises Over Nagasaki, Japan. (08/09/1945), National Archive #: 535795, Photo: Office of Emergency Management / Office of War Information. Oversees Operations Branch. New York Office. News and Features Bureau (12/17/1942 – 09/15/1945). 14 Admiral William H.P. Blandy and his wife cut an Operation Crossroadsmushroom cloud cake, while Admiral Frank J. Lowry looks watches.Photo: Taken on November 7, 1946 and first published on page 18 of the Washington Post on November 8, 1946. 15 Explosion of the Marine Corps building in Beirut, Lebanon (10/23/1983)Photo ID: 2001101810128,Photo: United States Marine Corps. 16 Aerial photo of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig,© Gerald Herbert/AP. 17 Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (film set- Chicago), Photograph: © Alex Garcia / Chicago Tribune, Film: © Paramount Pictures / di Boneventure Films / Hasboro. 18 Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (film set- Chicago), Photograph: Robert G. Zuckerman / Paramount Pictures, Film: © Paramount Pictures / di Boneventure Films / Hasboro. 19 Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (film set- Chicago), Photograph: © 2010 Jason Lewis / ChicagoPhotoShop, Film: © Paramount Pictures / di Boneventure Films / Hasboro. 20 Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (film set- Chicago), Photograph: Robert G. Zuckerman / Paramount Pictures, Film: © Paramount Pictures / di Boneventure Films / Hasboro.

tered a fascinating image of two naval officers and one of the naval officer’s wife at a party celebrating Operation Crossroads, a nuclear testing in the Bikini Atoll in 1946 in which an entire indigenous population was relocated. In the photo, the three were posed cutting a cake shaped and decorated like an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud. Interestingly, after the image had been printed in The Washington Post, a preacher condemned the image and celebration as “obscene.” An international fracas ensued. I was fascinated by the idea of the seduction of the spectacle of the explosion itself, and of course also the seduction of the material of frosting. So, this series of works, similar to my reconstructions of stock photos, reconstructs the photos of explosions, but creates sculptures in frosting as a means to “recreate” the photographs. I am probably also making obscene images, but I want to consider that notion of problematic beauty and probe what kinds of images should remain culturally uncomfortable.

MM: While looking at the work you have made over the years, it is obvious that you have never shied away from utilizing a widerange of media in your sculptures and installations. In some of the most recent work it seems that you have become more interested in how photography and video could play a role in your studio practice. Can you talk 13

MM : Could you discuss the second par t of the earlier question regarding how you relate to your work as objects, and locate it within the canon? RL: I think this points at the influence of Minimalism in much of my work, at least the sculptures and installations. Frank Stella’s famous “What you see is what you see” seems appropriate as an accessible exemplification of Minimalism. In my work, what you see is what you see—an object and not a depiction—and that is one reality. That reality is often comprised of artifice, and so the implications of that artifice extend to another reality or realities: places, meanings or images beyond the thingness or the physical immediacy of the work. Visually the work is often somewhat spare, and I think that is necessary because I want to leave room for the collision of these multiple experiences. I don’t think I need to choose between experiences of the representation or the object as it is not either/or; in fact, my work probably depends on the uncomfortable flipping back and forth between these understandings. 17

about the correlation between the sculptures you create and the photographs/videos?

RL: The photos and the videos investigate the same territories: the built environment, artifice, and spectacle. My photos and videos are firmly rooted in sculptural practice, either reconstructing something and photographing it, or setting something in motion in a particular set of circumstances and documenting it. This process has provided a new “place” for me to enact the tensions in my sculptures— within the space of the photo or the video. This is usually a redoubling of the fake— a perversion of some sort of the third of fourth order simulacra— since I am taking a step of re-materialization in the manipulations of artifice. MM: I like that you mentioned “tension” within your sculptures. I often feel that there’s a sense of antagonism within both the imagery and the subject matter. Since many of your objects have source material that is generated with a specific purpose it is almost like you find a way 18

cess itself undermines an outcome. This loop can be seen as antagonistic. It’s antagonistic because art has the potential to provide a beautiful image and evoke calm, to be a direct signifier of something of cultural importance to a group of people, or many other purposes. My work doesn’t seem to do those things. Instead I’m asking questions that don’t seem to have any answers. Or, at least, I don’t know any more answers.

to explore contrasting aspects of similar ideas. Do you see it this way? RL: Absolutely, “antagonism” is a perfectly apt word to use. I think the core aspect of this “tension” lies in continually thwarted attempts to construct meaning. In the resulting studio projects I seem to set up parameters in which it is impossible to construct a conclusion or the pro19