Magical Thinking at Postmasters
This week I saw two thought-provoking exhibitions at Postmasters Gallery: Steve Mumford’s lush watercolor paintings of Guantanamo and Monica Cook’s oogy new sculptures. If you haven’t seen the shows, go now - they close today, Nov 23.
Mumford’s show, entitled Snow Leopard, references Peter Matthiessen’s classic travelogue of the same title. Mumford was commissioned by Harper’s magazine to create watercolor sketches to accompany a story on the military trial of suspected terrorist Nashiri, accused of leading the attack on the USS Cole. However, the promises of being able to sketch detainees evaporated when Mumford arrived — the prisoners became his snow leopard.
The paintings reveal various buildings - some occupied, some in disuse - set against the bright, tropical Cuban landscape. The paintings show the vast size of the base, as well as its function as a classified military site — several of his paintings contain direct references to what he wasn’t permitted to paint. This reminder of absence underscores the faceless detainees’ plight, and our military’s tight control over information.
In the back room, Monica Cook’s installation Milk Fruit is a pageant of fantastical floats set against a stark white background. Chickens, frogs, and goats tow their precious cargo - a monkey on one carriage and a life-size, gutted cow lying on large bed. (The birds are particularly delightful and reminded me of a studio visit with Cook last spring where I met her somewhat peckish chicken. She had found it in a box abandoned on the side of the street and had nursed it back to health.)
Each figure is made of discarded parts - fabric, quills, hair curlers, sequins, bits of fur, plastic fruit - which also adds to their pathos. As she so beautifully accomplished in her first show at Postmasters in 2012, Cook’s work pulls the viewer in with strange combination of revulsion and tenderness — or perhaps more accurately, revulsion that gives way to tenderness, vulnerability, sacrifice, love, and death.
As Sarah Lippek eloquently wrote in the show’s description, “In the fantastical landscape of Milk Fruit, all living beings exist to nurture. The beings that inhabit this place are giving of themselves… Cook created this world as a tribute to the wounded, the newborn and the dying, the scarred and disfigured.”
Magda Sawon, one of the directors/owners of Postmasters, mentioned that she wanted to open their new location with two exhibitions where the hand was present in the work. She didn’t, however, intend for Cook’s and Mumford’s shows to necessarily relate to one another, but we both agreed there is an accidental conversation between these two, very strong bodies of work.
For me, each is a kind of magical thinking. Cook creates a fantasy world where the currency - embodied in the broken, flayed animals - is unconditional love. While Mumford’s striking depictions of Guantanamo and absence convey a darker side of magical thinking — if a detainee cries in the barracks, but no one is there to record it, is it torture?
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