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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
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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-
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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
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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-