I went to the Drawing Center on Wooster St yesterday to see Non-Declarive Drawings. Two of my friends from Iowa were in the show, Gianna Commito and Jered Sprecher, and it was a good feeling to see their work in New York.
The show was curated under the auspices of a theme that is difficult, and does not give enough credit to the viewer. The idea behind it being that some drawing/painting is Non-declarative and leaves the viewer to form their own meanings when contemplating the image, as opposed to the painting dictating what to think. Or maybe that an agenda is dictated, but its a false lead, and after your first impression your left swimming in your own thoughts wondering where your first read went. I guess I would like it better if it acknowledged that the drawings are starting points, provide clues, instead of insisting on muteness.
I think some of the work was very hard to approach and think about directly, and lead to tangents that were generated by me, by my day etc, but in other cases the work was speaking a visual language that left it in a more accessible place than the show would have you think. Some of the drawings were just quiet, and I went to school in the Mid-West, quiet is not the same as Non-Declarative, you just have to down shift your mind to think in quiet thoughts and understand them.
I did think the show was quietly provocative. In that it forced you to still your mind and search for where the work is.
Ok, enough on the curation. Back to Gianna and Jered, who both made very interesting contributions, and for me made the show very special.
Gianna made some very exciting drawings. I was looking at them, trying to think of the best way to explain them, and I started to accumulate visual analogies: dirt devils with leaves, polygon explosions in video games, shattered glass, something made by a schizophrenic architect, exploding stained glass, they made me think of California too (I have never been there...). The drawings are dynamic and situated in a shallow pictorial space, they pull you around the space in a way that was interesting perceptually because your eyes moved around, under, and over spaces/planes. I like when paintings are objects that can be meditated on, or provide a static illusion of change/flux, in other words when the can be non-specific illustrations for life, like instrumental music on the radio that you realize is synchronized with your driving. You can approach Gianna's work with either a quiet or a loud mind and enjoy it.
Jered Sprecher makes such benign looking things that they can make you nervous, and you wonder if hes pulling a joke on you. If you assert your mind forcefully you will bowl over the image, if you approach it with skepticism you will miss the lyricism, if you can approach them with a calm mind I think that is when they are best. I have a painting of his from about 4 years ago, and it is very subtle, very interesting, it references old photo albums and Renaissance portraiture with the same set of marks. Jered definitely made work for the show that fits in with the curatorial theme, because you will impose yourself on the work unless you have enough self-control to be patient and look closely. There are definite stories being told (or at least re-constructable processes), but it takes a while to understand them, its a slow read. The work itself has become simpler and sparser than I remember his work being, but there were at least three very rewarding moments of contemplation trying to retrace his thoughts/process and pick through the limited info to detect a story.
