Surface Tension
Anthony Pontius, The Great Rescue, oil on panel, 24" x 24", 2007
In exploring how artists relate to the history from which they derive, many decide to rearrange historical signs, present historical narratives under a new lens or create non-linear, subjective domains based on socially established ones. Using various surface treatments, simulation, and tools of deception, these artists are bridging the gap between the broader identity they are within (which often times deals with an art historical context) and their more personal, specific one.
Depth - illusionistically, physically and intellectually - has been used as a tool of deception in works for a long time. Illusionistic depth in the picture frame has been used to simulate sight ever since the Renaissance. In modern, postmodern and contemporary works, a lack of depth (flatness) has come to be used to provide new perspectives on established historical narratives via gestural abstraction, appropriation as well as an obscuration through screens: The emergence of gestural abstraction shifted the focus of painting from simulating a scene with pictorial depth to direct expression of an emotion through documentation of an action upon a surface. Appropriation uses flat, already sealed surfaces occluding the ultimate penetration (whether conceptually or physically) of a certain essentiality in the image, while simultaneously allowing for a reinterpretation of its established meaning. Obscuration through screens reflects our highly mediated society in which a cohesive reality is increasingly harder to visualize or even conceptualize, and replaced by hyper-real and pluralistic, simulated realities. Every day truth is more dissimulated through technology (literally, screens) and globalization.
Economically, this described obscuration could be argued to be a symptom of our late capitalist society which, by a certain reading, is increasingly alienated. The current extremity of capitalism is of course directly related to society's obsession with new technologies. And I suppose I can't provide a contemporary read on flatness without acknowledging Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat. Flatness in contemporary works may be symptomatic of both the prevalence of screens in this capitalist society, as well as of the flattening of global competition. Works that utilizes collaboration, diversity and lateral expansion can easily be seen as tied to Friedman's observation that these techniques are the new methods for success as well as the opporunities expanded upon in this globalized world.
In David Joselitz's Notes on Surface: Toward a Genealogy of Flatness, Joselitz discusses one take on how flatness has functioned differently in postmodern and modern works. Joselitz points out that Frederic Jameson's flatness is "characterized by pastiche and simulation" while Clement Greenberg's flat surface, that results from abstract marks on a ground, is literal and the the only type of expression that the artist can "vouch for with complete certainty." In this way, the difference between these two types of flatness is deception and honesty.
Anthony Pontius makes use of both gestural marks upon a surface and pictorial depth to create a new mythological domain. While he begins with a ground that borrows imagery from the sublime American landscape, he interjects into the scene and atop this ground characters which often times don't make sense in terms of scale or location in time or space. A screen seems to be obscuring the scene, though this is actually a result of Pontius' working in and out of the piece, more sculpturally than illusionistically. This screen ages the image and makes these created domains resemble processes of memory and of the alteration of history throughout time.
Gestural marks, scribbles and scratches are applied to Pontius' surface. A crudeness of adolescent frustration referenced by the scribbles and a violence by the scratches results from this final surface treatment. Such frustration could be attributed to the "anxiety...towards human involvement with its identity" that Pontius describes in his artist statement. This is an interesting emotion that Pontius describes because it suggests that his physical inscription is a way of dealing with the highly abstract, intangible past reality that we, as humans, base our identities and experienced realities on.
Pontius is explicitly showcasing liberation and imprisonment in his newly created mythological domains. The myth is imprisoned by the ground of the traditional landscape just as the personal identity is imprisoned within a linear history. Pontius liberates the personal identity through the physical surface marks as well as through the subjective rearrangement of elements that enter the serene landscape. The satirical aspect of the work is that the expansive landscape that originally represented ultimate freedom and an unrestrained capacity here serves to fasten Pontius' subjective domain to an established context.
Kim Keever, Summer: blue, yellow and grey, C-print, 51" x 68", ed. of 3, 2004
The screen, and obscuration that results from these abstractions by Pontius relates to the photography of Kim Keever. Keever's photographs also appear as scenes behind a screen. And as well, these scenes simulate expansive, sublime American landscape paintings. The photographs are painterly abstractions of the actual spaces that these American paintings portray. Upon closer inspection they are quintessential simulacra.
Keever brings these historically significant landscapes, representing the manifest destiny philosophy of Hudson River School paintings, home by simulating their physical space in his own fish tank, in his own apartment. Using kitsch fish tank and terrarium novelties, and dyes he recreates the fabulous sites of these landscapes. The screen that appears in the photograph, suggesting obscuration and age, is in actuality the dirty glass of the tank. This fabricated domain uses the more contemporary and effective tool of deception - photography - to create a scene that portrays the grand spectacle of these moving landscapes but by the most local, small, modest and personal of means.
Gregory McLellan, Dematerialize 04, oil on panel
Returning to Greenbergian discussions of the painted surface, the oil on panel pieces of Greg McLellan bring forth the historical functions of abstract painting of (Joselitz's) "arbitrary symbolic form" and "universal exchangeability". If these paintings were entirely about gestural marks, coextensive of the body and of the interiority, then they'd exist as "simple correlative[s]", or personal symbols isolated from social significance. However, their relation to graffiti and extremely layered quality provides them with a depth - physical, intellectual and psychological.
The formally attractive physical depth allows viewers to be absorbed into the intricacies created. The recycled board and graffiti-esque colors and movements reference urban renewal as well as the excessiveness of our consumer culture. The many visible layers upon this old board incite contemplation of histories, nostalgia and the symbolic act of obsessively covering, hiding and dissimulating surfaces.
The amalgamation of these interacting depths is a domain deceptive in its appearance as a piece of a wall, in its physical depth (the paintings are extremely flat and smooth), and its existence as a documentation of an event incidental, organically occurring and diverse. This surface reflects a personal event and span of time. The compositions of the work demonstrate an imprisonment within the rectangle, and the movement of the marks demonstrate a "disciplinary beat of repetition" (a phrase which Joselitz uses to describe the rigidity of Pollock's work). But liberation is acheived in its ironic and deceptive qualities.
Anthony Pontius and Kim Keever will be both be included in December exhibition "Chasing Tales" which opens the 15th.
Cited:
Friedman, Thomas L. "The World is Flat." New York, NY: Picador, 2005.
Joselitz, David. "Notes on Surface: Toward a Genealogy of Flatness of Flatness." Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
