Notes on…Mia
Westerlund Roosen and Kim Jones
Mia Westerlund Roosen:
"Namesake," new sculptures & drawings
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
560 Broadway, Ste. 308
New York, NY 10012
phone: 212-941-0012
February 12 to April 3
Kim Jones: "escape
from flatland,"
177 North 9th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.599.2144
13 february–15
march, 2004
By
DEVEN GOLDEN
Mia Westerlund Roosen
Magdalena 2003
concrete, 56 x 37 x 32 inches
Courtesy Lennon, Weinberg, New York
COVER March 19, 2004: Clio 2003
concrete, 36-1/2 x 38 x 36 inches
Height precedes
width precedes depth - that's the standard format for describing the
size of an artwork. I thought about this simple formula while viewing
exhibitions by two outstanding artists that opened this month - Mia
Westerlund Roosen at Lennon Weinberg and Kim Jones at Pierogi.
Westerlund Roosen
makes ambitious works that, regardless of scale or material, remain
adamantly personal. No mean trick, since her sculptures and installations
can be very large indeed. By way of example, her last solo exhibition
at Lennon Weinberg in 2001 had a concrete piece titled "Fagin"
for which the dimensions listed are 108 x 168 x 39-1/2 inches. Her last
exhibition at Santa Monica's Shoshona Wayne Gallery featured "Madam
Mao," an installation largely comprised of trucked in dirt measuring
approximately 36 feet by 20 feet by 8 feet high weighing roughly 2 tons.
As compared to these earlier shows, her current exhibition at Lennon
Weinberg presents five sculptures of far more modest proportions. Titled
after famous women - Althea, Cleo, Magdalena, Victoria, and Iris - and
all made with poured concrete, the largest of the group, Iris, measures
a mere 39-1/2 x 80 x 70 inches, while the smallest, Cleo, is 36-1/2
x 38 x 36 inches, positively petite as Westerlund-Roosen's go. Still,
even the smallest of works exudes a distinct monumentality.
Monumentality, though
often associated loosely with bigness, is actually an aspect of presence.
While this concept might be difficult to pin-down in art, in popular
culture it can often be obvious: the film Lawrence of Arabia is monumental;
the Matrix trilogy is just, well, long. Westerlund-Roosen's works are,
nearly without exception, monumental. One can often get a hint of this
in the reproductions - even in small photographs without reference points,
the sculptures read large and exude mass. In other words, they appear
to project their scale.
But what does that
mean, to project their scale? Just look at a piece like "Victoria,"
(2003): Its human, if rather stout, proportions are readily apparent.
And visually, its skin certainly does display a tactile pale gray seductiveness,
even to the point of belying its sand molded concrete origins. The idea
of projecting scale, of weighing presence, so to speak, would seem to
rest on a non-quantifiable aspect. Yet perhaps there is a simple observation
that, although extremely subjective, might be agreed upon as measurable
nonetheless.
Look at two people
as they stand talking. Note that they are about three feet apart which,
one would probably agree, seems normal. Any closer and we would say
that they are in each others space. It is understood that when it comes
to personal space, we do not end at the physical dimensions, but occupy
an area approximately eighteen inches to two foot all around us. In
other words, while our body may measure six by two by one foot, we actually
represent - to ourselves and others - a projected scale measuring eight
by six by five foot. (To those who doubt that our projected space extends
above our heads as well, I invite you to spend an extended period in
a room with seven foot high ceilings.) Different cultures may view personal
space as a little smaller or larger, but would any deny its existence?
Inanimate object
do not, as a rule, have projected scale. We do not perceive tables or
chairs to be larger than their quantifiable dimensions. Not even the
automobile, the embodiment of the American Dream, projects scale beyond
its bumpers. Yet, just as undeniably, Westerlund-Roosen's five sculptures
in this Lennon Weinberg exhibition do. What's more, they are not unique
in possessing this quality amongst the artist's body of works, nor even,
for that matter among the works of other exceptionally gifted artists.
If people project
scale, and most inanimate objects do not, but successful sculptures
do, then it should follow that the reason that those sculptures do is
because they contain some aspect of human attributes, as intangible
as they may be. Which, of course, makes sense - art at its most essential
and deep level must be some aspect of the human condition made physical.
One could even take this a step further and posit that if an argument
can be made that projected scale is an essential criteria for sculpture,
then the stronger the artwork, the more powerful the viewer's impression
of projected scale.
No doubt there are
other important criteria in appreciating a sculpture's impact and qualities.
But there are few as viscerally satisfying as experiencing monumental
sculptures - even ones as modestly proportioned as the five in Westerlund
Roosen's current solo exhibition.
Kim Jones untitled
war drawing (triptych) 1993-2004
(installation view and work in progress)
graphite on paper, 38 x 75 inches
Courtesy Pierogi 2000, New York
Kim Jones' dimensional
transgressions are, it would seem, more immediately obvious and tangible
than projected scale. For his current solo exhibition at Pierogi, he
has again presented one of his work-in-progress war drawings/installations.
Entitled "escape from flatland," the piece contains at its
center one of Jones' untitled drawings depicting the artist's imaginary
war of the dots and x's. The drawing, "Untitled War Drawing (triptych),"
(1993-2003), 38 x 75 inches, was finished when the artist affixed it
to the wall, but the rest of the drawing, the part extending out from
the paper's edges, across the walls, around the corners, and over the
ceiling, is in constant transformation throughout the length of the
exhibition.
Jones was given
off-hours access to the gallery, and came in regularly to add to the
drawing. Near the end of the show, the artist stages a huge battle,
one in which a line of predefined length represents cannon fire, and
explosions are manifest as, literally, erasures. Joe Amrhein, Pierogi's
director, hasn't decided yet if he's going to paint over the wall part
of the drawing when it's over or, more provocatively, seal the drawing
under a thin layer of sheetrock.
Clearly Jones work resists easy classification when we think of scale,
even if most archivists in this case understandably opt for "dimensions
variable" in the measurement line. And into this mix one must add
yet another piece of history: Jones was what was called a "Tunnel
Rat" in Viet Nam, meaning that he went underground into long, dark,
narrow, booby-trapped tunnels searching for Viet Cong. While the nature
of the his war drawings would naturally assume an overhead orientation
on the part of the viewer, if one were to take a more literal view and
see the drawings from the side as they are truly presented how easily
they might remind one of those clear plastic ant farms or…those
Viet Cong tunnels.
Which raises a more
interesting question concerning Jones, for it is not "where is
the edge of his work?" but rather "what time frame contains
these works?" The date on the untitled drawing covers 10 years,
a fairly unusual length of time to engage a single drawing. The artist's
drawings in the second gallery are even more striking in this regard.
Having been originally started in 1975, just a few years after Jones
returned from duty in Vietnam, they were all recently reworked, as the
date on "playboy calendar (may)," (1975-2003), attests.
Kim Jones play
boy calendar (may) 1975-2003
color photograph, acrylic, ink, 16-3/4 x 13-3/4 inches
Artists have their
own ways of working, but coming back to a series of drawings from twenty-eight
years ago and re-engaging them in, apparently, the same spirit as when
they were first created is striking. It is also worth noting that all
of the Playboy Calendars pages that form the starting point for these
drawings date from 1969, which pre-dates Jones' tour of duty in Vietnam.
So we have a body of drawings whose source material is from 1969, which
were first worked up in 1975, and were eventually finished in 2003 -
that is, if we can have real confidence that the artist won't pick them
up at a later date and have at them once again. Given Jones' methods,
this is a possibility can never be ruled out.
Dating an artwork
is not the same thing as measuring its dimensions, but it is a way we
mark distance. That is, setting the date of completion on an artwork
pegs the object in time to a place which then immediately recedes from
us as we move into the future. Through his art, Jones would seem to
be making the case that under certain circumstances this measurement
might not remain fixed. Instead, a specific moment might expand like
a bubble, fusing past and future into a single everlasting present.
