Review | Somewhere in the Sequence
Review | Somewhere in the Sequence
Real Art Ways
realartways.org
Through January 5, 2020
“To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one’s own place, that is the first duty of a revolutionary.”
Alyssa Freitas, Info Bubble. Image courtesy of the artist’s website.
Against an azure screen in Alyssa Freitas’ video Info Bubble, a bright red mass—ostensibly, the hair on an abstracted body—clutches a cell phone. Sporadic rings of a bell correspond with a cascade of text, a mix of garbled thoughts such as “this information that has turned into a lullaby of segregation” and “I find myself reading into what is said.” Keywords point to contemporary issues as if plucked from the headlines, but the text fails to coalesce into coherence. Instead, the video simulates the experience of logging onto Facebook or scrolling through Twitter where a borage of half-baked thoughts are lurking.
Freitas’ video, the first piece a viewer encounters in Somewhere in the Sequence, encapsulates the group show’s recurring themes of disillusionment and discordance. Taken as a whole, the works in this exhibition reiterate the most relevant question of this moment in time: How do we advance amidst the mounting anxieties and challenges that our planet and peoples face? Clear answers can not be found anywhere—in this show or within the broader culture—yet individual approaches emerge as possible, albeit temporary, coping mechanisms.
Curator David Borawski borrowed a quote by Leon Trotsky for the title of this selection of video, installation, photography, and sculptural works. The excerpt appears in the foreword of Trotsky’s book, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography, penned by the author in 1930 in Turkey, where he was sent on exile from the Soviet Union. Long before globalization was acknowledged as the status quo, Trotsky had accurately predicated the interdependency of different nation-states. This theory, among his other revolutionary ideas, was interpreted as a threat to Stalin’s power. For Borawski, this quote also underscores the value of “finding one’s place, especially in the current state of affairs.”
Installation view, Somewhere in the Sequence. Curated by David Borawski. Photo by Peter Brown, 2019. Courtesy Real Art Ways.
The central gallery of this exhibition houses works by two artists: Matt Neckers and Debbie Hesse. Entering the room, Neckers’ Self-Guided Missile, a sculpture fabricated from sheet metal in the style of a 1950s cartoon rocket, confronts a series of colorful wall-mounted installations by Hesse. Cut into organic shapes reminiscent of oceanic life, transparent layers of plexiglass cast soft shadows behind them. These ghostly facsimiles are often more beautiful than the physical forms Hesse uses to conjure them.
The dialogue between the works of these two artists sets up a familiar binary between humankind and the environment: Neckers’ rocket is poised to attack Hesse’s shape-shifting organisms. The missile wants to be airborne, while Hesse’s creatures seem to have evolved from the sea. The relationship between these two objects hints at our ecological destruction. As humans become more mobile, opting to travel by airplane with greater frequency, the world’s carbon emissions have skyrocketed. As a consequence, our oceans have become more acidified and the fragile ecosystems of the coral reef species become emperiled. In the same fashion, Hesse’s delicate, aquatic lifeforms appear destined to be destroyed by Neckers’ rocket.
Installation view, Katie Bullock: Meanwhile, My Life Was Under a Cloud, installation view, 2019. Curated by David Borawski. Photo by Aly Leone, 2019. Courtesy Real Art Ways.
Down the corridor, Katie Bullock’s installation, Meanwhile, My Life was Under a Cloud, explores similar themes of climate anxiety from the personal perspective of the artist. Bullock details the daily weather conditions using graphite on small pieces of vellum, which are arranged on several threads strung between two corners of the hallway. These records are quiet and sensitive at first brush, but Bullock’s persistence, which comes across in the quantity and thoroughness of her observations, buttresses the time-sensitive nature of this type of introspection. Pay attention to the alluring and foreign changes brewing in our atmosphere now, she warns.
Fafnir Adamites presents yet another type of artist documentation in their fabric work, A Record of Obscured Meanings. The title alerts a viewer to the impenetrable essence of Adamites’ woven fibers. Black fibers are interrupted by thin spurts of white in this tall, vertical work and the white lines almost functioning as an inverted form of a redacted document, whose meaning is lost on a viewer. Materiality and repetition emerge as an intimate means to endure and potentially, alleviate the distress of the artist.
Installation view, Somewhere in the Sequence. Curated by David Borawski. Photo by Peter Brown, 2019. Courtesy Real Art Ways.
Equally personal in tone, Monique Atherton’s photographs document aspects of her daily life. The people in her photographs are those she encountered while going about her daily routines. Some are former neighbors in West Haven, Connecticut along First Avenue (from the eponymous series). Others she met while Atherton was an artist in residence at the Wassaic Project in upstate New York. Together, these images offer viewers an honest glimpse into Atherton’s life. Her portrayal of these individuals is not idealized in any way. By contrast, the solitary figures in Atherton’s photographs often communicate feelings of loneliness or isolation.
Concluding the show are two works by Soo Sunny Park. Both are made from common construction materials—concrete, steel, wood, and aluminum—and each utilizes light as a sculptural element, a common thread in Park’s practice as an artist. Diffraction contains an aluminum scrim, wall-mounted, and inset from its black, metal frame. In Transitive Testing Ground, a polyhedral drywall form, pricked by an irregular pattern of circular holes, rests on two steel sawhorses. Below, the intriguing shapes of the work’s shadows overlap and ground the piece to the floor. Within the context of the show, this structure functions as a model for temporary housing in an unknown environment.
Collectively, the artists included in Somewhere in the Sequence embrace a documentary approach by capturing or reflecting the—sometimes turbulent—patterns of the present. The work in this show does not elaborate on the contours of contemporary issues or propose new solutions. Rather, the task of determining our place within the sequence is left with the viewers. For this group of artists—and their viewers alike—the process of finding one’s place offers perhaps a tiny pause from the noise.
