Divide and Conquer
Margaret Boozer, detail of Dichotomy of Dirt, Black stoneware, porcelain and white earthenware, 35" x 68", 2007
In the documentation, exploration or scouring of the space within which we exist, whether in search of the overlooked details, the new or the Truth, what we take possession of from such a vast expanse and how is continually significant in explaining the culture from where the acquisition occurs.
Margaret Boozer's work always involves the exploitation of the natural formations and tendencies of clay. In her most current body of work, she uses these organic, random tendencies and then compartmentalizes this form, creating discs which are all commensurate with each other in size, but unique in surface. The work is unruly and unbound in both its surface and description of source, but rigidly stylized at the edges and in its presentation as grid. The transition describes human intervention with the most essential constituent of the landscape. The act of the artist's acquisition of this piece of the land is the tale that's told through this display of organized raw material.
Amy Ross, Duck Magnolia #2, Watercolor on paper, 22" x 30"
The original purpose of botanical illustration was to help identify plants for medicinal purposes. Amy Ross's watercolors make use of the freedom of a now obsolete genre to create mutations that balance between fantasy and a closely observed realism. Again, the organizational intervention of humanity with the landscape is described. Done so delicately, these drawings narrate the plucking of elements out of their context and the rearrangement of them according to the will of the artist. The process of encapsulation, in this case, is representational rather than literal, as it occurs in Boozer's work. But this encapsulation does refer to the ornamental and to the close examination of what's become a personal object. As well, the relationship with the technical and medical foundation that these drawings retain reinforces this process of taking control and ownership of nature.
Sean Logue, 21. Ode to Sir Edmund Hillary's First Ascent, Archival digital print on 8.5" x 11" paper and in notebook
As the new space of virtuality continually expands the context in which we exist, this becomes our Sublime Landscape. Sean Logue culls his images from the internet, news sources, personal snapshots, and anywhere else that he finds an image that can be plucked from it's environment and acquired as his will and imagination dictates. The subject becomes completely possessed by Logue now about an inch in size and helplessly stored away in his notebook. The images become conquered elements of Logue's personal design, and emphasize the vast world of images and context within we live and through which we navigate everyday. Logue's work is a highly abstract example of this process of dividing and conquering our landscape.
These works draw us in by displaying objects we can imagine holding. The works rides on our desire to own and makes easy for us, as a museum does, the studying of a particular piece of our world, or our culture. They provide a way for viewers to seek/gain control over the vast and overwhelming landscape we are a part of.
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Basalt rocks and earth, 1500' x 15', 1970
While the afore mentioned artists break down and conquer the landscape, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) does the opposite in every way. In a 2005 issue of The Nation, Arthur C. Danto wrote a short critique of Smithson's artistic career and of his retrospective at the Whitney. In this article Danto proclaims Spiral Jetty "an emblem of the American Sublime." It surrenders to nature and actually manifests the unbound qualities of the entire landscape by existing as a work impossible to see wholly (in person), elusive and unable to be exhibited. Instead of creating something personal, precious and sharable, Smithson creates a monument completely unattainable. According to Danto, this work articulated the sublime in its time of creation, breaking free from the "purist" philosophy of Clement Greenberg and embracing fragmentation - both critically and in the way one can view the work in person.
If we do in fact consider Spiral Jetty to be as significant in the historicity of art as DuChamp, Warhol and Barthes than we can look at the work as breaking open ideas of full ownership, purity and Truth, which has been the trend during and since post-modernism. Smithson breaks this open in a new way. The idea of possession and full ownership is questioned by each of these artists, whether through the use of appropriation or, like in Smithson's case, through the creation of an unattainable and unaccessible work.
Accessibility is a key concept in contemporary art, as individuals of this culture become increasingly familiar with new forms of communication and increased access to information. These artists are all presenting contemplations of what they choose to take ownership of from a fully accessible world.
