The Show, Part One: Con­trolled Chaos

Did you know I have a Dark Past?  Noth­ing to do with cook­ing, or social work, or bell-ringing?

Yes, it’s a lit­tle-known fact in my cur­rent life that I am the hold­er of a dusty, near­ly-defunct PhD in art his­to­ry, with a whole career as a pro­fes­sor and then gallery own­er, the mem­o­ries of which I tied up neat­ly with a pret­ty rib­bon and put on a shelf, when we moved to Lon­don in 2006.

Then, last year I was approached by an old friend, actu­al­ly a for­mer stu­dent and friend of over 25 years, to curate a show in Low­er Man­hat­tan.  It was but the work of a moment to take that PhD off the shelf, untie the rib­bon, and feel all the excite­ment of “the chase” again.  My par­tic­u­lar love, as far as cura­tion goes, is the group show.  While it’s of course very excit­ing to see one artist’s work show­cased, espe­cial­ly a ret­ro­spec­tive, it always feels a lit­tle obvi­ous to me.

What I love pas­sion­ate­ly is the process of reach­ing out ten­ta­cles in the art world to peo­ple who cre­ate work that speaks a sim­i­lar visu­al lan­guage, whose work plays off one anoth­er with a poet­ic, inspir­ing strength.  When I closed my gallery in 2005, my head was still full of count­less group shows, artists whose cre­ations would look across wide spaces at each oth­er and give an enor­mous amount of pleasure.

So when Kath­leen Kuc­ka, tal­ent­ed artist and cura­tor, asked me to put togeth­er a pro­pos­al, it was as if a win­dow shade had opened up, the years fall­en away, and the fun of com­ing up with a con­cept and fill­ing it with the right artists and pieces was launched.  Just about a year lat­er, with lots of headaches, hun­dreds of late-night transat­lantic emails, a mad­cap Decem­ber show­er of stu­dio vis­its, devel­op­ing friend­ships with new artists and revis­it­ing dear, pre­cious artists from my past, the show happened.

I packed my bags in Lon­don, hopped on a plane, and turned up in New York on the Thurs­day night before the Tues­day, May 31, open­ing.  Words can­not describe the ensu­ing five days, but I’m going to give it my best, in four sep­a­rate blog posts.  This one will tell the sto­ry of the process of turn­ing the chaot­ic, cav­ernous space filled with box­es, bub­ble wrap, pack­ing tape, emp­ty cof­fee cups, con­flict and high anx­i­ety into a beau­ti­ful exhibition.

I arrived on a misty, rain-filled evening to my down­town hotel, not real­ly know­ing what I was look­ing out at from my window.

After falling poleaxed into a sound, jet­lagged sleep, I awoke to the real view.

Part of this sto­ry is, of course, the over­whelm­ing nar­ra­tive of tri­umph — of build­ings where there were smok­ing pits of tragedy, of office work­ers going about their human busi­ness in an atmos­phere built chiefly of tacky tourism and upturned for­eign faces, utter­ly unaware of the world that exist­ed in this place for us in the days and months fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.  This was­n’t just an exhi­bi­tion, for me.  This was com­ing home, to a new ver­sion of a place that still con­tained sear­ing mem­o­ries, but now over­laid with a cheer­ful, patri­ot­ic, brave veneer.

I would nev­er have believed, dur­ing the dark days of 2001, that we would have sur­vived as a city, much less rebuilt what had been destroyed, and have had the where­with­al, near­ly 16 years lat­er, to give our­selves over to mount­ing a beau­ti­ful exhi­bi­tion.  It gives me chills just to write those words, to be honest.

But it’s not all pathos!  It’s also a clas­sic New York deli, with the shout­ing coun­ter­man serv­ing end­less con­struc­tion workers.

And let’s be hon­est: it’s also two eggs on a roll with crispy bacon and cheese.  There is no bet­ter food on earth!

Final­ly, in a fury of impa­tience, I emailed Kath­leen quite ear­ly and received her reply: “I’m here, come on over!”  And to the gallery, heart pounding.

What a thrill to see the invi­ta­tion writ large, the beau­ti­ful invi­ta­tion that Briony Hart­ley, the bril­liant design­er of our cook­book had put togeth­er, so many months before.

I stepped inside, into an atmos­phere of pal­pa­ble chaos!

At times, the space looked like noth­ing so much as a lad­der store, as you can see.  The sculp­tures at the very front are the com­plex and beau­ti­ful fab­ric sculp­tures of Court­ney Puck­ett.

How excit­ing to see the work that we had cho­sen months before, some­times in per­son, some­times by jpegs, and some work that was com­ing into being right before our eyes.  This is Chris­tine Sci­ul­li — installing a very chal­leng­ing pack­ing-tape piece all about light reflection.

She made me laugh when she post­ed a shot of her work­ing process on Face­book, “hash­tag­is­nt­go­ing­to­beyel­low.”  Sigh of relief.  The fin­ished instal­la­tion was sim­ply stun­ning, but impos­si­ble to photograph.

Anoth­er piece equal­ly elu­sive to the cam­era is the pol­ished graphite paper draw­ing by Kel­ly Driscoll.  A com­plex pat­tern of pierc­ings, it sways in the mov­ing air with flash­es of brilliance.

It was won­der­ful to revis­it Oliv­er Jones’ instal­la­tion which we had met (along with the delight­ful Oliv­er him­self) in Decem­ber.  An ambigu­ous audio record­ing speaks sub­tly in the background.

There are the incom­pa­ra­ble Bren­na Beirne’s waxed vel­lum “con­fes­sions,” climb­ing the wall in their hon­ey­comb shapes.

She found the per­fect chair for vis­i­tors to sit in, as they write their con­fes­sions.  The instal­la­tion will grow through­out the show, as she col­lects new pieces.

The impos­ing paint­ing by Dus­ton Spear, fea­tured in a close-up detail on the invi­ta­tion, arrived from upstate New York.

That was a moment of high dra­ma, with Kath­leen strid­ing pur­pose­ful­ly to get a dis­tance view.

Lisa Corinne Davis con­tributes her exquis­ite map-like lan­guage with this paint­ing, as we enter what I call The Long Hallway.

Ula Ein­stein is rep­re­sent­ed by a series of three C‑prints of an instal­la­tion I was nev­er lucky enough to see, but these images of del­i­cate­ly tat­tooed bro­ken eggshells are a sub­tle won­der to behold.

Paul Gag­n­er, anoth­er new friend from our Decem­ber Brook­lyn odyssey, speaks with intel­li­gent ambi­gu­i­ty in his oil painting.

I turned the cor­ner to find myself in the vor­tex of insan­i­ty that was the instal­la­tion of David Hen­der­son’s “A Brief His­to­ry of Avi­a­tion,” the undis­put­ed hub of ener­gy around which the whole show hums, really.

It might seem odd that the cen­tral focus of the show should be a piece with­out obvi­ous text, but the sheer grandeur, dra­ma and state­ly ele­gance of the piece, so rem­i­nis­cent of the vault­ed ceil­ings of Bath and oth­er medieval abbeys, drew us all in.  Avery had described these qual­i­ties beau­ti­ful­ly in her wall text, point­ing out the ped­a­gog­i­cal func­tions of church­es whose parish­ioners were large­ly illit­er­ate: the archi­tec­ture has to ful­fill the func­tion of teach­ing, through its impos­si­ble drama.

Of course — the wall text.  That’s a bit of an unusu­al thing to find in a gallery show: about 100 words to describe each piece, each instal­la­tion.  It’s that fea­ture of the show that got Avery involved in the first place; in going through shows togeth­er at Tate Mod­ern, our Lon­don neigh­bour, she had demon­strat­ed an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to describe, to con­tex­tu­alise, to analyse, art.  Sit­ting on the sofa togeth­er over East­er, and in count­less texts and emails since, we worked togeth­er to cre­ate those texts, and the process was one of the most mem­o­rable and heart-warm­ing expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had.  How thrilling to see them, live and in per­son.  In all the con­tent, no adjec­tive is repeat­ed.  That’s not easy to do.

They’re a mir­a­cle of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, print­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly on trans­par­ent sticky paper.  To see the intro­duc­to­ry text for the whole show, in human scale, was an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence.  Thank you, Allon, for mak­ing it happen.

See­ing it hang­ing in the front win­dow was a phys­i­cal con­fir­ma­tion that the show was real­ly, real­ly real.

But back to the show.

David’s enor­mous piece was com­ple­ment­ed by a sug­ges­tive and deep paint­ing by Kate Teale (who hap­pens to be mar­ried to David).  What IS hap­pen­ing behind that win­dow?  What nar­ra­tive is being played out?

I had for­got­ten about the obses­sive, detail-ori­ent­ed, pre­ci­sion of art installers.  They are a breed apart, with their mea­sur­ing tapes, spir­it lev­els and unquench­able desire for perfection.

We could­n’t see that this paint­ing was­n’t straight, but the bril­liant installer could, and three iter­a­tions lat­er, it was perfect.

Our breaths caught in our throats when the room was final­ly clean and serene enough to unwrap Col­in Chase’s two-part wall and floor pieces and feast our eyes.

Of all the moments that brought tears to my eyes dur­ing this intense week (and there were many such moments, let me tell you), read­ing Col­in’s ode to our beloved, belea­guered coun­try at this moment was one of the most over­whelm­ing.  I had to take to my lap­top to tell him so.

Paul d’Agosti­no, painter, cura­tor, trans­la­tor extra­or­di­naire, brought his par­tic­u­lar brand of lin­guis­tic clev­er­ness to the “Chro­mat­ic Alpha­bet” that lives so hap­pi­ly along­side “Avi­a­tion.”

One of the most stun­ning views of the show is this long, long look down the room con­tain­ing David, Col­in, and a sec­ond piece by Lisa.

Of course, it was still a lad­der store, that Fri­day afternoon.

An extra sculp­ture by David appeared, slight­ly more buyable than “Avi­a­tion.”

There fol­lowed an absolute­ly icon­ic, clas­sic “Text/ure” moment when I was faced with writ­ing wall text for this entire­ly unfa­mil­iar piece.  I had Dave over my shoul­der, feed­ing me ideas, explain­ing the process, while I strug­gled to under­stand exact­ly how it had been con­struct­ed and con­ceived.  I texted Avery in intel­lec­tu­al des­per­a­tion, hop­ing she could work her mag­ic on this conun­drum.  Just as she replied with her first ideas, Dave uttered the word “torus,” and the same word appeared on my phone screen.  That’s Avery for you.  The artist whisperer.

Over the course of the fol­low­ing four days, we all pulled our weight and then some: Kath­leen and me, the paid staff and interns, the instal­la­tion assis­tants, the artists whose work was still in progress.

When­ev­er I could, I escaped into the real world, filled with old friends, restau­rants, mar­kets, shops and the old­est friend of all, New York City.  That is the sto­ry I will tell in my next post, but in the mean­time, can I inter­est any­one in a ladder?