WHAT THE VOID CAN HOLD
WHAT THE VOID CAN HOLD
The Shining| Stanley Kubrick | 1980
Plan Voisin, Paris | Le Corbusier | 1925
WHAT THE VOID CAN HOLD _ NOVEMBER 03 - DECEMBER 21, 2013 _ MARXHAUSEN GALLERY OF ART CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY _ CURATED BY ALEX PRIEST
CONTENTS
Director Statement JAMES BOCKELMAN
Into the Void ALEX PRIEST
Plates Ephemerality and Images JOHN KERNER
Exhibition Appendix Acknowledgements Selected Reading Film Series Notes
Director Statement
JAMES BOCKELMAN
The mission of the Marxhausen Gallery of Art is to promote visual and cultural opportunities by presenting a diverse and ambitious gallery program. Under this directive, the gallery encourages the campus and surrounding community to appreciate and understand the role of art and artists through the display of Concordia’s permanent collection. Numbering over three hundred works on paper, this collection is comprised of serigraphs, etchings, lithographs and other original prints by nationally and internationally recognized artists. In short, this small but highly selective print collection highlights the variety of conversations held on a national and international level over the past century. As the collection continues to expand, so does the need to revisit the holdings from new perspectives. This year, the Marxhausen Gallery of Art initiates a new program that invites artists, art professionals and art historians to curate an exhibition drawn from the permanent collection. This program connects emerging, as well as, established curators with Concordia’s vibrant collection of modern and contemporary art. Curators are encouraged to develop new research avenues and to re–present the collection within a new context. Inviting curators to work with the collection expands the scope of the Marxhausen Gallery by forging new relationships with arts professionals from various institutions who share the common value for making art an integral aspect of any community. We are grateful for the unique perspectives that Mr. Alex Priest brings to his exhibition titled, What the Void Can Hold. Relying on a variety of texts, both art historical and fictional, Mr. Priest explores how the void can be considered paradoxically — that is, the void can be frightening due to its lack of determined space (the space is empty) or the void could be exciting because of its limitless potential to be filled (THE SPACE IS INCREDIBLY FULL). Here, the exhibition juxtaposes images together from various styles and decades, sometimes revealing formal relationships, while at other times, seeking to highlight areas of shared meaning. _ James Bockelman is Professor of Art at Concordia University and Director of the Marxhausen Gallery of Art.
Into the Void ALEX PRIEST
All representations of anxiety or horror in the face of the void, these phantom shapes are, as occasion demands, sometimes named architecture, sometimes urban spaces; and their proliferation and mutation has been the object of representation in the arts for more than a century. Anthony Vidler Warped Space
Art has always been basically about agony, desperation and hopelessness. Gerhard Richter
As a projection of self, space is a container of disturbing objects, ideas and forms, harboring our phobias and neuroses. Since the experiments of modernism, we have been set in a spatial matrix in flux. Space has been warped by architecture and urban planning, amplifying the anxieties and phobias of the contemporary subject to an extreme degree. What the Void Can Hold seeks to exploit the anxiety inherent in the gallery space, and
through seemingly disparate juxtapositions, re-present the collection under the guise of spatial anxiety. SPATIAL WARPING Spatial fears result when we perceive our bodies in space. What we see, or do not see, perpetuates these spatial phobias. Anthony Vidler says, “Space is a function of the impression of bodily movement on the mind,� suggesting that the mind is a major component in
space-making. Spatial phobias can be traced to the distorted spatial conditions of modern life, exemplified in a post-Bilbao sense of spatial ordering. These digital environments create a non-reality which reverberates through the neurotic psychologies of the viewer. “Anxiety is always and absolutely personal,” says Daniel Smith in an editorial for the New York Times about what he calls “the age of anxiety.” However, in our increasingly disconnected urban existence, the complex and everevolving collective relationship to space results in anxious visions and “landscapes of fear.”1 With space and architecture working as a mirror for anxiety, there is a shifting relationship between spatial conditions and identity, where space can be manipulated into new orders and mysterious constructions. “This horrific void full of endless possibilities”2 agitates and destabilizes the complacency of passive experience.
to political agendas. Architectural space can be understood through the specific political forces through which it was built. This space is a sensor for social estrangement and is perceived in a state of collective distraction leading to disorientation and impulses of fear. Disquiet, unease, estrangement and distance now form our cultural identity. Spatial phobias, such as agoraphobia and claustrophobia, articulate the relationship between spatiality and psychology. Blaise Pascal, a major thinker on “the void” in 1870, was crippled by both agoraphobia and claustrophobia.4 These diseases were seen as a symptom of modern life, caused by the spatial conditions of the city and the dread of space.
“Trauma, memory and conflict are embedded in urbanization and architecture,” becoming the “pathology of this era,”3 according to Eyal Weizman. Architecture becomes the embodiment of our acted-out anxieties and phobias, giving physical and aesthetic shape
With the onset of the modernist avant-garde in the 1920’s, spaces were designed to “cleanse all mental disturbances.”5 Le Corbusier, a poster child for this movement, saw architecture as a blueprint for social reform. This dogmatic urban utopia, as seen in Plan Voisin, used architecture as an instrument to cure every ailment of the city. He opened the city to rid it of anxiety. The idea of space and the image of modernism have since been linked. “Space,” said Phillip Johnson, “has been
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1 Vidler, 02
4 Vidler, 24
2 Vidler, 14
5 Vidler, 51
3 Weizman, 06
the litmus test of true architecture.” Nonetheless, the modern period’s clinical experiments with space induced rather than eliminated anxiety. Modernism de-familiarized the familiar agitating space with its brutal strategies and tabula rasa methodologies. FILMSCAPING The modern cinematic process complicates our relationship with space through its unique spacemaking tools. These semi-artificial constructions produce spatial ambiguities and have the rulebreaking potential to warp both space and time. The hyperspace of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is infused with a phenomenology only present in film.6 The film constructs its own reality, bending the Euclidian geometry offered in architecture. While The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari conveniently fits within the construct of the avant-garde in architecture and art, The Shining provides a truly warped and psychologically disturbing space. Stanley Kubrik’s characters actually feel the mental and physical effects of the claustrophobia and agoraphobia in synchronicity with the warped geography of the Overlook Hotel. Jack, Wendy and Danny all fall victim to this anxious architecture. Nearly everything in the hotel
is warped in the dramatic space of the film. The family is assaulted by space and thrown into hysteria. In 1989, Jean Francois Lyotard imagined the kind of spatial unease later found in the Overlook Hotel, as “Scapeland”—a displacement, estrangement and shifting of location and judgment from the stable conventions of inside and outside, to a realm where a kind of systematic madness reigns supreme.7 The piecemeal spatial complexities of contemporary metropolitan life vary constantly according to the perceptions, introspections and projections of the habitants. Seemingly banal spaces are transformed into traitorous, aggressive and freighting voids. Modernism did not eliminate those phobias, but rather enhanced them by producing a labyrinth of ambiguous spaces.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari | Robert Wiene | 1921
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Saved by the Bell | S02 E09: Jessie’s Song | 1990
“I’M SO EXCITED; I’M SO SCARED.” Jessie Spano’s anxiety brought her to one of her many neurotic peaks in season 2, episode 9 of Saved by the Bell. Until then, her gratingly pedantic character was on the fast track of scholastic success. This came to a screeching halt when a geometry midterm, a Pointer Sister’s music video, and a character-redefining caffeine-pill addiction collided. Anxious about getting into Stanford, and shocked by a C grade on a quiz, Jessie starts taking Keep Alert pills in order to stay up late and study for her Geometry
midterm. Adding to the pressure, her friends Lisa and Kelly “need her” to join their singing group for a big performance. Faced with the choice between studying and rehearsing, she makes the complex decision to do both, doubling down on her caffeine pill intake. The next day she takes the test, and then rushes off to another rehearsal and video shoot. This music video presents a corollary to The Shining through its decisive costume and set alterations along with its seemingly unaware supporting actors. Space, time and emotions are reconfigured to dramatic beats.
Jessie, as with Jack, mentally unravels frame-by-frame falling into the void. After the shoot, we sense something dramatic is about to unfold. The night of the performance, strung out from Keep Alert pills, she collapses on her bed, where her friend Zach finds her. She awakes, flustered and sputtering, “What am I going to wear? I have to wash my hair.” Zach tells her that there is not any time, and she bites back, “There’s no time. There’s never any time!” It takes on an existential weight. When she reaches for her Keep Alert pills, Zach is stunned and tries to comfort her. Unable to calm down, she starts singing, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited. I’m so…scared.” Credits roll. Anxiety is the key to her entire existence. This poignant moment contributes to a shifting sense of her complex phobias and psychological identity as the series develops. The fusion of her literal Euclidian nightmare (the Geometry midterm), along with her space-warping music video with Lisa and Kelly, begins to illustrate the inseparable connection between warped space and her psychological condition. We are taken on a ride through her void that is nail-bitingly traitorous.
The relationship between her claustrophobic identity and space are linked through her non-stop anxiety. MY SURNAME IS ATTA The frustrated and diabolical life of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, as depicted in Jarett Kobek’s novel ATTA, manifests itself in a horrifically orchestrated moment. An anxious existence that was warped by sexual frustration, spatial anxiety, and religion, Atta’s banal life took him from being an oppressed boy in Cairo, to being at the forefront of an anti-American crusade. His too-serious-to-function mentality begins with his oppressive family structure in Cairo. Although a “delicate child,”8 he is able to make psychological connections others are not. This leads him to architecture school in Cairo, and ultimately and importantly, to Hamburg for post-graduate research. To Atta, Western architecture and modernist urban planning models are symbolic of imperialism and the rape of the landscape. While in Hamburg he sees poor slums razed to make room for “modern rectilinear decadence.”9 This solidifies what he sees as his role of exposing modernist assaults to urban planning. A chance study in _ 8 Kobek, 93 9 Kobek, 40
Aleppo, one of the oldest occupied cities, reveals millennium-old buildings crumbling to “filth”10 in favor of modernist towers. Witnessing Aleppo succumb to modernism perpetuates his agoraphobic tendencies and spatial anxiety. His disdain for America and Western urban planning is cemented by a trip to Walt Disney World. The myths of American urban design reach their peak at Magic Kingdom’s Main Street USA. Everything is organized according to the strict master plan of Walt Disney, where Disney is functioning more like Le Corbusier than a cartoonist. It seems to Atta that
only he recognizes this as a freezeframe from 1920s America, where “the street ends in a crash.”11 As Atta gets closer to the now infamous date, his attitude sickens. He feels as if he is a “being whose purpose is to sour joy.”12 He has no friends. He cannot stand the forced cohort he must work with according to the plans of Al-Qaida. His personal superiority is obvious, and is only reinforced by juxtaposition to his nemesis, Ziad Jarrah. According to Atta, Jarrah is a waste of life. Jarrah sees Atta as a brother in Islam, and remarks on their equality. Atta rants, “imagine we are equals, though one is righteous
Mohammed Atta, right | Portland Police Department | September 11, 2001 _
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11 Kobek, 99 12 Kobek, 108 13 Kobek, 124
and the other a sex maniac rank with Western corruption.”13 As he concludes his attack on the “twin abominations”14 of architect Minoru Yamasaki, he imagines the towers as the ultimate triumph of architectural sin. His assertive attitude falters as he takes control of the plane, and, out of character, he hesitates to kill the pilot when he thinks about his family. Yet he snaps out of his gentle mindset, kills the pilot, and takes control of the plane, putting into action thirty-three years of spatial anxiety. According to Kobek, it is important to view Atta’s attitudes as the manifestation of an inverted pyramid of anxiety, where Atta’s sexual anxiety is the impetus for all his other manifested anxiety. In 1918, Aby Warburg suggested that war is less a confidence in infinite progress than an elaborate defense against phobias.15 Atta’s psychological disdain reinforces his paranoia. Fear is the common denominator in his personal equation of spatial paranoia, yet his curious relationship to architecture and, in particular, modern urban planning, resituates a motive for the attacks. This raises, rather than answers, many questions regarding an aftermath that perpetuates so many American anxieties regarding space (the Middle East) and identity (politics). _ 14 Kobek, 151 15 Vidler, 48
REPOSITORY OF MEANING The radical spatial experiments of Lucio Fontana and Peter Milton aggressively manipulate space in an immediate awareness of 17th century Baroque spatial representation, yet testify to the urgency of the void in post-World War I ideology. The source of meaning found in the two confronts the contemporary realities of the existential void as well as describe a world on the brink of self-destruction. Both prints, Fontana (1968) and Milton (1971) were made in a time of unrest—a time still under the grip of modernism. At first, their approaches to the void seem as disparate as Jessie Spano and Muhammad Atta. However, they articulate a confrontation that in unison describes an equivalent methodology and ideology that leaves both in direct necessity of eachother. The humanistic void between known and unknown leaves space for anxiety to seep in. Taking the time to register their corollary potential in the anxietyinducing gallery is both horrific and exponentially stimulating. CONCLUSION The two seemingly incongruent examples, Spano and Atta, begin to illustrate the dramatic effects of manifested anxiety — the first, stuck in the matrix of high school and self-fulfilling prophecies, and
the second, nauseated by modern planning models. Yet, seen in comparison, their phobias can be traced back to modern life. Forced into a warped environment and obliged to adjust to the conditions within the void, these contemporary subjects bear witness to their spatial realities. Their perplexing comparison in warped space erodes boundaries, while escaping time and form to affirm the monumentality of what the void can hold.
_ Alex Priest is a curator, spatial thinker and designer holding a degree in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University. His current research includes: Dutch design, post-photographic photography and spatial anxiety. He works as the exhibition assistant at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska.
PLATES
KAREL APPEL JOSEF ALBERS JOHN BALDESSARI THOMAS HART BENTON CHARLES BURCHFIELD PAUL CEZANNE JOHN STUART CURRY STUART DAVIS RICHARD DIEBENKORN LUCIO FONTANA JOE GOODE ADOLPH GOTTLIEB WILLIAM GROPPER DAVID HOCKNEY ELLSWORTH KELLY
JACOB LANDAU ROY LICHTENSTEIN RICHARD LONG MICHAEL MAZUR PETER MILTON LOUISE NEVELSON PHILIP PEARLSTEIN MARTIN PURYEAR ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG DAVID SALLE RICHARD SERRA ANTONI TÀPIES TERRY WINTERS GRANT WOOD
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1 LOUISE NEVELSON Sky Shadow Lead intaglio relief 1973 2 RICHARD LONG 60 Minute Walk Lithography and Screen Print 1990
Traversing through their urban and rural surroundings, Richard Long and Louise Nevelson use arbitrary circumstances and materials to build sculptures as environments. The artifacts of their epic walks, both formal and conceptual, become the art object. Collected materials, verbage and ideas were reorganized on grand scales creating immersive, yet balanced, formalized terrains. These two and three-dimensional works bring the direct experiences of the artist into the gallery setting.
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3 GRANT WOOD Janurary Lithograph 1938 4 JOSEF ALBERS White Line Series #VIII Lithograph 1966
Josef Albers and Grand Wood’s corollary approach to composition, space and abstraction pose an interesting juxtaposition. Specifically, these lithographs articulate a disciplined perspectival space made with strategic lines and forms. Similarly, the traumatic world events of The Great Depression for Wood, and WWII for Albers, undoubtedly altered their methodology and internal dialogues about art and the depiction/ deception of space.
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5 TERRY WINTERS Systems Diagram Etching, soft ground etching and sugar lift aquatint 1996
6 RICHARD DIEBENKORN Untitled Lithograph 1991
The diagrammatic works of Richard Diebenkorn and Terry Winters map the variations and formalism present in their processes. The similar environments pull a myriad of influences such as phenomenology, time, spatiality and physicality into orchestrated marks. While both works seem abstract, each pulls from a pragmatic reference. Diebenkorn shows the variations of a coat on a hanger, and Winters the layered information of the digital age. Diebenkorn and Winters track time and transcribe events, reassembling disjointed information into new patterns.
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7 JOE GOODE Untitled. Tissue Tear Series Double layered 3-colored lithograph 1975 8 DAVID SALLE Until Photographs Could be taken from Earth Satellite Aquatint 1981 9 ELLSWORTH KELLY Bleu Clair Avec Orange Color Lithograph 1964
Zooming in/out and looking through the active micro to macro views of Joe Goode, Ellsworth Kelly and David Salle make in-between geometry visible. These apertures take an unassuming appreciation for a physical reality seduced by a lyrical sense of minimalistic gestures. Combining the multi-imagery of space and figuration, these three works mimic the cinematic devices of spatial description.
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10 JOHN BALDESSARI Plant and Lamp (B+Y; Y+B) Lithograph 1998 11 WILLIAM GROPPER Winter Lithograph circa 1935-1945
The juxtaposing icons of John Baldessari and William Gropper’s lithographs conjure a narrative with exponential reads. At times radical, yet disparate, these works connect the objects seen with ideas unseen. Gropper’s lifelong disdain towards capitalism, and Baldessari’s interest in rearranging contexts display the power of visual language and formal motifs to persuade the nonvisual in a work of art.
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12 JACOB LANDAU The Holocaust Suite Lithograph 1968
13 ROY LICHTENSTEIN Bull Head III Five color lithograph, screen print, linocut 1973
Extracting the only two prints from a series held in the Marxhausen Gallery of Art collection, the prints of Roy Lichtenstein and Jacob Landau present unpleasant similarities. Lichtenstein’s progression to abstraction in the Bull Series has a tongue and cheek effect, and the somber Holocaust Suite shows a social and moral consciousness. However, seen in tandem, their formal motifs have a nullifying effect on the other. The abstract Bull looks horrific next to the emotionless soldier and piled bodies; and the Holocaust imagery appears almost playful next to the brightly colored line work of Lichtenstein’s Bull. It is this disturbing shift of reads that ruptures perceived knowns.
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14 PETER MILTON Illustration for the Jolly Corner Intaglio 1971 15 LUCIO FONTANA Concetto Spaziale, A Etching in black, relief on black 1968
As the impetus for this exhibition, the two prints of Lucio Fontana and Peter Milton speculate an aggressive approach to describing space as a consistently distorted environment. Synthesizing themes of architecture, cinema, and history, each artist exploits the flatness of the paper and forces dimensionality and reflection. The unmistakable moods of these works echo a persistent use of visual strategies to undermine the very space in which they are working on.
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16 MARTIN PURYEAR Three Holes Spitbite, aquatint, etching with Gampi 2002 17 RICHARD SERRA Hreppholar V Etching 1991 18 MICHAEL MAZUR Memory and Distance Woodcut, etching, aquatint, with chine colle 1992
Set in a dialogue, these large prints speak towards material and landscape memory while challenging the perception of the identity, cultural and history. Residing in the threshold of abstraction and pragmatism Michael Mazur, Martin Puyear and Richard Serra investigate minimalist tropes and the reservoir of memory. Site specificity in materiality or naturalistic symbolism creates works that are rich in intellectual references and stark physicality, pushing viewers into a hypnotic self-guided narration.
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19 PHILLIP PEARLSTEIN Mummy Cave Ruins at Canyon de Chelly Color line etching and aquatint with roulette work 1980 20 CHARLES BURCHFIELD September Glade Watercolor 1951 – 56 21 ADOLPH GOTTLIEB Green Foreground Screenprint 1972
The collective unconsciousness of landscape saturates the works of Phillip Pearlstein, Adolph Gottlieb and Charles Burchfield. Through transcendental, yet precisely abstracted forms, each landscape depicts the incongruities in the perception of landscape. Each expresses an expansiveness agoraphobic aspect without recourse to nostalgia. The clinical clarity developed in each print allows simple forms to overwhelm the viewer, while consolidating the suggestive power of expansive fields. The brutalness of Gottlieb’s forms shed new light on Pearlstein and Burchfield’s actual landscapes and vice versa with complicated results.
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22 JOHN STUART CURRY The Plainsman Lithograph 1945 23 DAVID HOCKNEY Mother with a Parrot Etching and Aquatint 1983 24 KAREL APPEL Jules En Repose Color Lithograph 1968 25 PAUL CEZANNE Portrait of Guillaumin with the ‘Hanged man’ Etching 1873 26 ANTONI TÀPIES Quatre ruis de sang Embossed etching 1972 27 THOMAS HART BENTON The Lonesome Road Lithograph 1938
Expanding the antics of Regionalism, Karel Appel, Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Cezanne, John Stuart Curry, David Hockney and Antoni Tàpies all capture their personal locale. Appel’s work with the European regionalist CoBrA, contrasted with Benton and Curry’s depiction of Midwest regionalism articulates a commitment to capturing, mentally and physically, their indigenous surrounding. Meanwhile, Cezanne, Hockney and Tàpies synthesize their memory of people and place situating a new view on this placebased art movement. The common underlying principle of an expanded regionalism suggests a visible description of what is immediately outside the artist’s milieu.
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28 STUART DAVIS Arch II Lithograph 1929 29 ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG Horsefeathers Thirteen-V Color Lithograph, screen-print, pochoir collage, embossing 1972
Working in the ‘gap between art and life’, while using specific references, the lithographs of Stuart Davis and Robert Rauschenberg present a theatrical space of seemingly banal props. Both increasingly complex pre-Pop artists anticipated the Pop Art movement through an innovative combination of non-traditional materials, everyday objects and urbane references. At times, these highly composed still-life’s generate more questions than answers through their flattened, edited and pictorial artifice.
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Ephemerality and Images JOHN KERNER
Architecture is usually analyzed and taught as a discipline that articulates space and geometry, but the mental impact of architecture arises significantly from its image quality that integrates the various aspects and dimensions of experience into a singular, internalized and remembered entity. The material reality is fused with our mental and imaginative realm. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image
IMAGE AS MEMENTO MORI Susan Sontag makes the case in her work “On Photography” that the photograph is not just a record of appearance, but a kind of physical imprint. One cannot help but get the sense in photographs of “this was, but now isn’t,” and this is the essential characteristic of the image.
mori is linked to memory and death. It originated in Christian art as a motif in the form of skulls, prompting the viewer to consider the divine judgment of one’s soul. These early forms of memento mori were prescribed this meaning and premeditated by the artist (Fig. 01). The viewer has to be aware of the meaning of the symbol to gain knowledge from it.1
Memento mori is a Latin saying that means “remember that you will die.” Semantically memento
With the advent of photography and the daguerreotype process, _ 1 (Online Etymology Dictionary).
Fig 01 | Life, Death Time | Philippe de Champaigne | 1671
memento mori was pushed from a premeditated symbolic art form to an image depicting a scene. The daguerreotype process was the earliest form of photography, using a camera obscura, a copper plate and silver. This process involved the setting up of a wooden box that contained the copper plate and silver along with chemicals that would capture the brightly lit scene in front of it. The daguerreotype gave rise to the portrait, with one kind of portrait often taken of individuals being post-mortem portraits. During the Victorian era the middle class was not able to
afford painted portraits, but the daguerreotype democratized self-representation. Due to high mortality rates, post-mortem portraits were common. The deceased sitter would be arranged in different positions, depending on the age of the individual and the preference of the family (Fig. 02). Often children would be staged with their parents, much like a family photo. With this genre of photography we see cultural artifact, death and time col足lapse into one .2
_ 2 Nelson, 1
The idea comes to the forefront of the piece and both medium and physical dimension are deemphasized. An example of this could be Dennis Oppenheim’s Reading Position for 2nd Degree Burn. In the piece the artist exploits photography as a means of “dematerializing” the art object. An emphasis is put on the immediacy of the photograph, using the image as a transparent lens for his performance of, and experience in making, the piece.
Fig 02 | Victorian Post-Mortem Portrait
IMAGE AS EXAGGERATED REALITY Images and photography have often been used to record events. Susan Stewart argues that the wedding has “fully moved into its contemporary status as a photographic, rather than primarily social, event.” The photograph becomes the reason for the occasion and the replacement for it. With these kinds of events, the physical dimension is greatly reduced and spatial orientation is removed.3 Reduction of the physical dimension occurs in conceptual art when the image is used not to record an appearance, but rather to document an idea. _ 3 Stewart, 122
Much like the Victorian postmortem portraits, the event is staged. The imaged reality is not a lived reality, but an exaggerated one, and the exaggeration fluctuates between the real (the sitter is deceased) and the fictitious (the sitter is in a dignified position, as if he were alive). IMAGE AS WORLD OPENING AND WORLD CLOSING Jacques Lacan asserts that, similar to the way the memento mori operates in a Christian context, the Freudian death drive compels the creative nature of human beings. Neil Leach examines the relationship between Lacan and the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of the death drive. Leach observes: “Death, therefore, anticipates and depends upon the vital force of life; the one presupposing the
other‌Death naturally heightens our awareness of life.�4 This awareness of life is what has pushed the image of memento mori to a spatial condition. The image is capturing more than just a staged scene; it is connected to us on a deeper level of living. The spatial memento mori is also a mental condition of the viewing subject. (Fig. 04) If we view images as carriers of memento mori, then they have a paradoxical relationship with the viewer and the world. On one hand, the image captures an ephemeral world—one that can never be relived. On the other hand, the image opens that world in a new form, refracted, and to a new audience, in a new medium. It is the death of the experience and the creation of a cultural document. Images like these haunt us, and compel us to engage with humanity and time.
_ 4 Leach, 110
Fig 03 | Reading Position for a 2nd Degree Burn | Dennis Oppenheim | 1970
Fig 04 | Temporal Shroud | Justin Wang + John Kerner | 2013
_ John Kerner is an architect, artist and writer. He received extensive honors and awards while pursuing his degree in Architecture from Iowa State University. He consistently works in the threshold of art and architecture investigating themes of identity, experience, place and perception. Kerner is an intern architect at OPN Architects in Des Moines, Iowa.
EXHIBITION
Appendix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am unbelievably grateful to Concordia University for the opportunity to research, develop and curate my inaugural exhibition with carte blanche within the exceptional collection of the Marxhausen Gallery of Art. I would like to thank James Bockelman for the constant back and forth visits, emails and support during the entire curatorial process. Thank you for your persistent challenge to push the ideas brought forth in the exhibition to their current conclusion. This exhibition, now over a year in development, was developed over many unique conversations. The literary suggestions of Mira Engler, Anna Gray, Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Jarett Kobek, Hesse McGraw, Heather Johnson, Karin Campbell, Micol Hebron and Daniel Naegele took me down a wormhole that I am still attempting to find my way out of. Jarrod Beck’s nine-month dialogue of constant ideas and opinions helped form the indispensible structural and conceptual underpinnings of this exhibition and catalogue. Kelly Fuglsang’s graphic aptitude to challenge me in an ongoing conversation is one that I find constantly inspiring. John Kerner’s enthusiastic acceptance of the challenge to write a supplementary essay for this exhibition is sincerely appreciated. Finally, I am tremendously grateful to Anthony Vidler’s research on Warped Space, to which this exhibition owes it title and principal research. Alex Priest
SELECTED READING Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture Anthony Vidler 2002 The MIT Press ATTA Jarett Kobek 2011 The MIT Press - Semiotext(e) Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary Anne Umland 2013 The Museum of Modern Art, New York Ghost Milk: Recent Adventures Among the Future Ruins of London on the Eve of the Olympics Iain Sinclair 2012 Faber & Faber Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation Eyal Weizman 2012 Verso
Eyal Weizman: Forensic Architecture, Notes from Fields and Forums: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series 062 (100 Notes-100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen-100 Gedanken: Documenta (13)) Eyal Weizman 2012 Hatje Cantz Architecture and Violence Bechir Kenzari 2011 Actar The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard 1994 Beacon Press The Inhuman: Reflections on Time Jean-François Lyotard 1992 Stanford University Press Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962 Paul Schimmel 2012 Skira Rizzoli
The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture Juhani Pallasmaa 2011 Wiley Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture Leon van Schaik 2008 Wiley On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection Susan Stewart 1993 Duke University Press Books Camouflage Neil Leach 2006 The MIT Press Primacy of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1965 Northwestern University Press Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture Norman T. Newton 1971 Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
FILM SERIES The Shining Stanley Kubrick 1980 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Robert Wiene 1921 Beau Travail Claire Denis 1999 Upstream Color Shane Carruth 2013 Alice in Wonderland Walt Disney 1951 Mr. Nobody Jaco Van Dormael 2009 Love William Eubank 2011 Another Earth Mike Cahill 2011
INTO THE VOID NOTES Barnhart, Don, dir. “Jessie’s Song.” Saved by the Bell. NBC. 03 Nov. 1990. Television. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Dir. Robert Wiene. 1921. Kobek, Jarett. ATTA. N.p.: Semiotext(e), 2011. Print. The Shining. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Home Video, 1980. Smith, Daniel. “It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It?” It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It? The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. Vidler, Anthony. Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass. ;London: MIT, 2002. Print. Weizman, Eyal. Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums = Forensische Architektur : Notizen Von Feldern Und Foren. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012. Print. FRONTISPIECE The Shining Film Still. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Home Video, 1980. Le Corbusier: Plan Voisin Drawing: Stuart E. Cohen and Steven W. Hurtt. Fig. 2-6 in: TRANCIK, Roger (1986). Finding Lost Space. Theories of Urban Design. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York.
EPHEMERALITY AND IMAGES NOTES Leach, Neil. Camouflage. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. Print. Nelson, Sara C. “Death’s Consultants and the Profit Game in Washington.” Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2013. “Online Etymology Dictionary.” Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. Print.
What the Void can Hold Curated by Alex Priest November 03 – December 21, 2013 Opening reception: Sunday, November 10 | 1 – 4pm Gallery Talk: Sunday, November 10 | 2pm Thom Auditorium Editor: Daniel Scheuerman Assistant Editor: Jessica Lock Catalogue Design: Alex Priest | PRIESTSCAPE Director Statement: James Bockelman - Marxhausen Gallery of Art Essays Into the Void: Alex Priest Ephemerality and Images: John Kerner Plates: Alex Priest First printed 2013 | Omaha Typeset in Georgia + Helvetica Neue Bold Catalogue printed on the occasion of the exhibition What the Void can Hold curated by Alex Priest November 03 – December 21, 2013 at the Marxhausen Gallery of Art | Concordia University. Marxhausen Gallery of Art Concordia University 800 N Columbia Ave | Seward, NE www.cune.edu
What the Void can Hold seeks a new read, both visually and conceptually, on the permanent collection of Concordia University’s Marxhausen Gallery of Art through seemingly disparate dualities. Extracting specific works and making deliberate forced juxtapositions, the space of the gallery is warped into moments of anxiety and ease. By distorting conventionality, disturbing moments of tension arise. It is within this agitation that the anxiety and paranoia of the subjects are exploited. As the collection is dissected, works are re-contextualized, thus forming new understandings on preconceived thoughts. In this juxtaposition, there is a shift in perspective and re-arrangement of the senses. What the Void can Hold is an exercise of exploring the void as an aggressive paradigm, inspiring horror and introspection. This void is far from a vacuum of emptiness. Rather, the void is full of endless possibilities and a passage to further exploration. It poses as a means to reverberate the shifting relationship between anxiety and perceived knowns.