Art Moves Into The Closet

Art Moves Into the Closet

by Carol Novak

An unusual convergence of art occurred at the U-M School of Art on December 6. For that night only, two installations utilizing electronic media - Tree of Life by Jamy Sheridan and John Dunn, and Black Box by Cynthia Greig - framed a retrospective exhibition of ceramics at the Slusser Gallery by retiring Professor of Art John Stephenson. The event unintentionally illuminated a gap that is in part generational. But since video art and light shows invaded the art world more than a generation ago, the gap exposed here is more fundamental: techno-media shows vs. fired clay; ephemeral vs. durable; even progressive vs. conservative.

This gap was emphasized by the positioning of the exhibits. The Slusser Gallery, traditionally reserved at this time for a show of graduate students' works in progress, was given over to Stephenson's unique, end-of-career retrospective. Because of the lack of facility, as well as the fact that U-M graduate photo students are not provided with studio space, Greig and fellow student Lisa Olson decided to create their own exhibition space under the stairs opposite the Slusser Gallery. They built a small white room which changed its configuration through several collaborative and independent installations. At the same time, research fellow and computer artist Jamy Sheridan had decided that the only option for presenting his collaboration with electronic composer John Dunn was to commandeer the pedestal storage room next to the Slusser. It was the only available room with the ceiling height necessary for hanging a video projector to project onto the floor.

The illuminating convergence took place at the time of the last showing of Tree of Life, just as Cynthia Greig completed her installation, Black Box. For an hour or so, it was magic. Behind a black curtain, the claustrophobic darkness of Black Box provided an intense ten minutes of difficult viewing and listening. The viewer peered through two windows into a shallow space that held a video screen showing two men, perhaps at the beach, and a dim red light barely illuminated a photograph and objects planted below in a floor of sand. Voices in Spanish and English added an enigmatic audio dimension.

From there one had to cross over into the vast expanses of the brightly lit Slusser Gallery. Stephenson's glazed ceramic sculptures, described by one reviewer as "muscular," instead seemed curiously inert. Huge spiral shapes sprawled ponderously on the floor. Thick glazed slabs pulled at the walls where they hung. On pedestals, brass rods pinned the elements of smaller works as if to stifle any possible notion of movement.

In the most distant corner of the Slusser one carefully entered the disorienting, light-splayed darkness of the Tree of Life installation. Computer-driven, Persian-carpet-derived patterns of light marched, stalled, overlapped, and sometimes flew across an undulating carpet of sand in seeming choreography with Dunn's electronic music. Toward the end of the hour-long performance, all color faded to grey and motion ceased. At the center of the "carpet" a target appeared - like the cross hairs in a rifle scope - before the pattern dissolved. At the end of such an enchanting work it was disturbing to be reminded of the realities of the present day Persian desert.

With the use of both natural and artificial (including electronic) materials, and foreign and American references, the two multimedia installations spoke to contemporary American life in ways that fired clay could not, except by contrast. The ceramic sculptures seemed foremost to represent the outdated institutions which, in a rapidly changing world, are no longer capable of meeting our needs. Instead they sprawl enormous, unmoving and unhelpful before us as we seek space for contemporary solutions - even in closets. ■