Lightning in my Eyes

Shut your eyes. Shut them tight.

Tighter still.

Calethia DeConto, Shakti Rising II, 2018, Cyanotype and acrylic on paper | Image courtesy of the artist

What do you see? Colors? Shapes? Craggy lightning strikes? Press the heels of your hands into your eye sockets; do those colors and shapes and lightning strikes intensify? Can you witness the whole prehistoric pattern of light right there in your own little atrium? Do these colors and shapes transport you? How do they make you feel?

I see lightning, interplanetary weather, in great, electric purples and greens and blues. So extraordinary are these colors that I can feel the ionization of the air, hear the crack of thunder, and smell the atmosphere around me. The experience is replicated in Calethia DeConto’s work, which is simultaneously supernatural and witchy, mysterious and emotionally charged. DeConto’s work lives in instantaneity, the shifts of mood from one to the next, in love with each iteration of the self. She claims that her work “whispers”, but I hear it shout. I feel the longing, the profundity of the journey on which each of our souls as human beings embark every day in DeConto’s graceful mix of photography with cyanotype and acrylic paint. Magic lives there, and with the barest of gestures, the most simplistic representation of the human form, and the sparest of palettes, Calethia DeConto captures that ever present magic with unparalleled sensitivity and conviction. Her piece, Her World, is my pick of the week.

Calethia DeConto, Holding her Ground, 2019 | Photograph and acrylic paint

Pepper Odalisque

I’m drawn to artwork that is historically referential, that subtly tips its hat to the artists and works that came before it and helped breathe it into being. This photograph by Ryan Schude, Pepper Tree, does just that. What, at first blush, appears to be a woman, reading under the shade of a California Pepper tree in her backyard, upon closer inspection reveals a deeper, more intricate message.

To me, the image recalls a painting by Jean Augusté Ingres called La Grande Odalisque, from nearly 200 years ago, 1814. This painting, considered hideously erotic and inappropriate in its day, features a naked woman with her back turned to us. She is surrounded by sumptuous textiles and lavishly adorned accessories, and she is neither ashamed of her nudity, nor particularly interested in the reason you, the viewer, have interrupted her reverie. In the 1800s, Schude’s female protagonist’s bowl of fruit, some of which has been peeled and left, carelessly, to spoil, would have been an outrageous extravagance, even more so by the fact that it is wasted. The misty, foggy atmosphere of Schude’s photograph imparts an aura of the mysterious to the image, similar to the atmosphere of Ingres’ painting, in which the odalisque has surely been smoking hookah or opium as evidenced by the pipe sitting by her left foot. That’s why Pepper Tree is my Pick of the Week.

Jean Augusté Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, Oil on canvas, 35 x 64 inches | Image courtesy of the Louvre

Once upon a time. . .

 . . I was kicked out of MoMA.

For those of you not familiar, the acronym MoMA stands for one of New York’s most revered contemporary art museums, the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA is truly one of the foremost institutions for contemporary art past, present, and future. It is home to one of the world’s most impressive permanent collections and to many, many exhibitions known for pushing boundaries, for championing artists, and for provoking thought and discussion. It’s also one of New York’s most crowded, suffocating, tourist-rife (I know, tourists make the world go ‘round, I know), blockbuster museums–in every sense of the word, does anyone remember their Tim Burton exhibition from a few years back?–in the world. As such, excursions to the museum must be carefully planned and strategized in order to maximize experience and minimize frustration. It is sometimes exhausting.

The Museum of Modern Art, 53rd street entrance | Image courtesy of MoMA

So, once upon a time I was kicked out.

Back when I was attending graduate school at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art we spent some time exploring artist intention. When an artist creates something, no matter how conceptual or polished or ambiguous, most, if not all artists, have an objective, an intention, as to how that piece is to be experienced. Some artists are very specific: “this painting is meant to evoke a feeling of awe, an experience of confusion, a sensation reminiscent of post-war America in South Dakota at 6:17pm.” Other artists prefer to leave interpretation entirely to their viewers, “there is no specific meaning attached to this piece, other than what you, a singular entity, experience of it.”

In December of 2009, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, opened his first career-long retrospective at MoMA, no small feat. A solo exhibition at MoMA is a testament to an artist’s success, firmly cementing their place within the history of art. It is a platinum record, a spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list, an olympic gold medal. Orozco’s work varies widely, from sculpture and performative work, to painting and found object assembly. His self-titled exhibition included the sculpture Mobile Matrix (2006), a real skeleton of a massive gray whale, excavated from Guerrero Negro in Baja, California, which he then covered over in thousands of concentric penciled circles. The exhibition also included manipulated currency, plane tickets, envelopes and more embellished with gold leaf and egg tempera. It included found objects representing readymade sculpture.

Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoebox, 1993, Installation view | Image courtesy of MoMA

One such readymade, Empty Shoebox (1993), is simply that. A plain, white, unadorned and unlabeled shoebox, sitting in its lid, open and on the floor. Perhaps the exhibition’s most innocuous object, the shoebox provoked more simultaneous ire and admiration than any other piece in the show. MoMA is not a free museum, it charges admission, and nothing enrages people more than the belief that they have paid for something that did not deliver, or perhaps, did not exist in the first place. Something that is unchallenging, in effect, something that is ordinary. I understand, I too have been “victim” to artwork and exhibitions that appear to me to be an utter waste; a waste of time, resources, and ultimately attention. I have walked out of shows wondering what it was I was supposed to come away with, wondering what the actual point was.

Before I had learned anything about Orozco and his work, I likely would have felt the same bewilderment and disappointment at this unremarkable object placed within a context that insists all of its objects are extraordinary. In studying Orozco, I came to understand that the object, this shoebox, was not the actual artwork. The shoebox served as a vehicle for the concept of the artwork. On view here in Orozco’s retrospective is his concept, which is to say that the shoebox is not art, in and of itself. The shoebox serves to highlight the tension between viewed and viewer. We often walk into galleries and museums expecting to see ancient artifacts encased in glass, so precious that even a breath from our pedestrian mouths might serve to destroy the piece ever after. The shoebox is exactly that ancient artifact’s opposite. In fact, in a number of lectures given and conversations had, Orozco has stated that the shoebox’s purpose is to create confusion, to be picked up and puzzled over, to be moved, to be kicked across the room, to be ignored. Its rather obvious placement in a gallery in MoMA makes it impossible to ignore–really, what the hell is that thing doing there, is this a joke?

This is all very well and good, but to get to the point, I kicked the shoebox.

As a kid I was taught the “One Finger Rule”. My parents assumed that if I touched something with one finger I could not break it. When we went to museums or other people’s homes or stores, any place a kid could cause destruction, my sister and I would be sternly informed that the “One Finger Rule” was in effect and if we disobeyed, we would suffer consequences. Needless to say, I often disobeyed. Fast forward many years later, I still disobey. I am an adult with a very serious touching-that-thing-there-in-front-of-me-that-I-should-not-touch problem. I am the reason that museums and galleries employ those implacable, immovable guards. I should point out that I am well aware of the damage that can be caused by touching–chemical reactions caused by the oils of a fingerprint, microscopic shifts in pigment caused by a deliberate breath of air, aura removed by my brazen refusal to give the artwork its space–and of course, I care. My career in the art world has also taught me how to flout the rules safely (if, indeed, such a thing can exist). I know better, but I know how to do it right.

Back to the shoebox.

Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoebox, 1993, Cardboard shoebox | Image courtesy of MoMA

I read the transcript of one of those lectures Orozco had given in which he specifically tells his viewers to physically interact with his shoebox. In effect, Orozco had given me explicit permission to kick his shoebox. Walking into the exhibition and spying the shoebox felt like coming across an old familiar friend. “Shoebox! How are you?! It’s so great to see you!” I looked around the gallery for the usual “Do not Touch” signs and found that there were none. I tapped a guard on the shoulder and asked him if I might touch the shoebox and was instructed to, “read the sign”. I told him that there were no signs and asked him again. He again informed me to read the sign, which I again told him I could find no trace of. I asked him a third time if I could please touch the shoebox–by this point, his reluctance to answer the question should really have been answer enough for me, but I was being disagreeable and I admit it–and he did not answer me at all. I took this as my cue. I stepped back. I wound up. I soundly booted the box across the room. The aforementioned security guard appeared at my side and grabbed my upper arm and yanked me away from the box. He radioed to his other security guards, whom I assume radioed their superiors, while squeezing my arm and scolding me. I was indignant. “But I know that that is how the artist wants me to interact with his piece. SIR, I know this is what I’m supposed to do.” At this point, my entire class and several curious bystanders surrounded me and the flock of guards who were all furiously and alternately yelling at me and at each other. A classmate of mine, a former lawyer, began to try to defend me and my basic human rights by shouting legalese on top of the already rapidly escalating situation.

My story has already run much longer than it should have. I got carried away. Clearly, I got carried away–I was physically removed from the gallery and then from the museum by two security guards who each held one of my arms and unceremoniously escorted me outside. And that, friends, is how I got kicked out of out MoMA for “touching” the art.

Matthew Brandt, "Lakes and Reservoirs"

Matthew Brandt is equal parts documentary and landscape photographer. What sets him apart from his ilk is his printing process, in which he soaks his large-format, C-prints in the waters of the lakes that form his subject matter. While the photographs of the subjects could easily replicated, the transient nature of the lakes, their chemical makeup, the presence of various biological life-forms, ensure that Brandt's photographs are as unique and elegant as the waters from which they draw their composition. The resultant body of work is dreamy, spectacularly flawed, and dynamic. They make me dream of summers spent on Lake Michigan, and I become nostalgic for those impossibly long days and electric nights.

Matthew Brandt, Shasta Lake CA 4, 2009

Matthew Brandt, Fall Creek Lake OR 4, 2009

Matthew Brandt, Lake Hollywood CA 3, 2008

* all images courtesy of the artist, Matthew Brandt's portfolio can be found HERE