Jan Tichy's Matrix 164 show at the
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT is about the denial of information. (There's also an aspect of just plain denial, but more on that later)... Tichy controls his environment, treats information as a rare commodity, and challenges his viewers by displaying his work in dimly lit galleries. The lack of light creates an immediate atmosphere of frustration for the viewer, which (for me, at least), gives way to curiosity about why the artist chose to display the objects in his show in a way that made them difficult to see. He's providing us with what feels like only partial information and heightening the experience of being in the gallery. He's giving us a problem to figure out.
First, a description of the show: (Please note that the galleries of this show are deliberately dimly lit, so my photos of the exhibit are somewhat dark.)
When you enter the first gallery you are confronted by 5 marble portrait busts on pedestals with their backs to you, facing the wall.
Also in the gallery are two baroque paintings on opposite walls, a modernist chair, a projection of what looks like scaffolding or skylights on one wall, and another clever projection of a Baroque-style parlor in a corner of the room. As I mentioned, the room is dimly lit.
Another, nearly pitch-black gallery contains a small cityscape sculpture made of white paper tubes, displayed atop a TV monitor lying flat on the floor. See the image at the beginning of this review. The scale of this piece makes the viewer feel Godzilla-size in relation to the model city.
The third gallery displays two wall-size black and white videos whose contrast slowly adjusts in and out so that the images go from being discernible to being completely burnt out. One image is of a wasteland, the other of the ocean. In the middle of the gallery, dividing up the space, are several white strings stretched from floor to ceiling. On one wall is a small, close-up picture of a moth clinging to a mirror, and on the wall facing the entrance to the gallery are 5 identical, dark, imposing images of an Egyptian falcon sculpture, the god Horus.
In the first gallery, the marble busts facing the wall gave me a sense that the busts were clearly on display for someone else. The gallery visitor was excluded from the relationship between the busts and their viewers. But did that exclusion give the viewer more information, or less? Was the viewer just physically behind the busts or behind them metaphorically in the sense of being part of a power structure behind them? The paucity of information, visual and otherwise, in the gallery made me think that no one was getting the full picture. I felt whoever could see the front of those busts was unaware of me in the background. It made me feel as if I was in the control room of a TV show, putting these busts on display but unable to see who was viewing them.
I naturally gravitated toward the paintings on the walls and tried to see them, analyze them, and pick out their details. However, in the darkened galley, that seemed to be a futile effort and also seemed to be missing the point; we as viewers weren't meant to look at these as normal paintings. They were there, displaying some kind of vague Baroque splendor for their owner and patron and we had to settle for that.
The projected image of the Baroque-style parlor in the corner of the gallery, along with the sleek modernist chair also on display seem to provide some insight into who Jan Tichy imagines to be in control of the commodity (aka: the information) in this gallery. I got the sense that the person in control is the one who turned the portrait busts toward the wall and for whose benefit the Baroque paintings on the wall are hung. As viewers of this exhibition we are let into this person's world for a moment. In this case Jan Tichy chose that person to be
Chick Austin, the legendary curator of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 - 1944. The projected image of the parlor is from Austin's house on Scarborough Street in Hartford, the projected image of skylights on the wall are from the wing of the museum he built during his tenure there, the paintings are two of his acquisitions, and the modernist chair came from his office. Mr. Austin was an innovative, impressive, and charismatic personality and Jan Tichy mines his curatorial career for inspiration in this room.
I said earlier that Matrix 164 was about the denial of information, but a part of this show was about just plain denial..
. A word about Chick Austin: At the risk of being permanently barred from the Wadsworth Atheneum, I think the Wadsworth, as an institution, is in denial that the Austin era is over. While Mr. Austin was clearly a genius, an advocate for the museum and Hartford, and a visionary who was clearly ahead of his time, let us take a step back and remember that that time ended in 1944. Eugene Gaddis, a curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum, wrote an excellent biography of Chick Austin called "Magician of the Modern". (You should buy it.) Austin is revered at the Wadsworth. When an artist, like Jan Tichy, arrives to do some work for the Matrix series looking for some local context, I think his curatorial caretakers may be all too eager to lead him to Mr. Austin as an example of what Hartford is about. (I know this is not always the case, as when Matrix 160 artist Kim Schoenstadt roamed all over Hartford looking for inspiration and imagery for her show.) What I'm trying to say is that, while Chick Austin was a towering figure, it may be time to move on. Chick Austin's visionary tomorrows, as ahead of their time as they were, are now our yesterdays. As an institution, it may be time for the Wadsworth Atheneum to leave Chick Austin in the past and seek out more relevant, contemporary, and challenging sources of inspiration for the future. I can't imagine institutions in New York holding a torch for so long for a curator who retired in 1944... It is entirely possible I am wrong-headed in this criticism. If you think so, please let me know in the comments below. Moving on...
The strongest piece in the show is Installation No. 6 (Tubes). This piece is illuminated by white light from the TV screen on which it is displayed and sits alone in a nearly pitch-black gallery. The contrast between the back-lit sculpture and dark gallery created a sense of disorientation and displacement. As my eyes adjusted I realized that other viewers were standing behind me and next to me, further adding to the uncomfortable sense of disorientation. I realized I was being observed while my eyes were adjusting to the light of the gallery. This realization seemed to inform the sculpture, which is about surveillance. The theme of surveillance fits in with the shows overall theme of the denial of information. The sometimes crawling, sometimes frenzied static of the TV screen that supported the cityscape seemed to give the viewers, standing at a distance, privileged information about the imaginary inhabitants of the city below. The scale of the piece added to the sensation that the viewer was hovering over the city, observing. The darkened cityscape sculpture reminded me of distopic scenes from Blade Runner. Again, the sense that the viewer was engaging in an act of surveillance of whatever information emanated from the city, even though it seemed limited to fairly banal digital blips and static, seemed to do a nice job suggesting that this information was worth observing. Indeed, I felt this piece suggested that information is the currency of our time.
You can watch a video I took of the sculpture at the link below. It starts out somewhat dark, so fast forward to the 35 second mark to see when the animation on the screen gets brighter:
http://youtu.be/yOrwJwbFfYo
The third room of the show seems to be about confronting borders, which goes along with the show's themes of control and information-as-commodity. The strings that are stretched from floor to ceiling around the gallery serve to deny access to parts of the room. Viewers are somewhat uncomfortably kept to the edges of the gallery. The projected images on the wall reminded me of the wasteland that runs along the Mexican border in San Diego. Interestingly enough, the image depicts the desert in Israel, and the text presented with the show states that this piece "suggests the borders of Israel itself, with the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Judaea Desert to the east." Although it was not intended by Mr. Tichy, to me this also strongly evokes where the Mexican/US border meets the Pacific Ocean.
Evoking another kind of border, perhaps the border to the afterlife, are the images of the Egyptian god Horus. (Sorry for the dark image).
The picture of the moth clinging to the mirror, face to face with it's own reflection, enforces the idea of a border between one life and another.
This show speaks about the control of information. The logical question then is, who does the controlling? Jan Tichy puts forth former Wadsworth curator Chick Austin as the man who holds the strings. Although we never see an image of Austin himself, we see objects he brought to the museum, a room in his house, and an image of part of the museum he commissioned to be built. This unseen curator, combined with the images of Egyptian gods and ideas of borders dividing worlds (or even dimensions) in the next room, create an element of spirituality in the show. The unseen curator becomes a Grand Unseen Curator or Arbiter who presents or withholds information, determines whether you will be allowed across borders, and watches over you like a Big Brother. This may be a little bit of conceptual riffing on my part, but that's the conclusion I draw from this show. You may draw other, different conclusions, and I think that's the point. Perhaps more than other contemporary artists, Tichy's work invites many different interpretations. See the show, and let me know what you think.
.jpg)
