Kritikē

Critique. By Danica Sheean.

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Two Urns

125 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena CA 91702

By Anne Marie Karlsen

   On the busy corner of Raymond Avenue and Holly St in Pasadena, California, there is a brick building that, like so many others on the same drag, hosts a retail shop with tastefully curated goods displayed prominently through oversized, first-floor windows. The arrangement is so much like its neighbors, that the building is easily dismissed by drivers hurrying by or the commuters awaiting the bus across the street. But to the pedestrian passersby, the east wall of 124 N Raymond Avenue is impossible to ignore because framing the store and towering fifteen feet over the street, almost twice the height of the giant windowpanes, are two elaborate glass and stone mosaics by Anne Marie Karlsen titled Two Urns (2009).

     If you review Karlsen's body of work, you will notice large gaps between her solo and group exhibitions. One might be tempted to presume this is a sign of an inactive artist, but quite the opposite is true. Karlsen's rich career is highlighted by her production of over 27 public works and consultation on numerous others. Her parallel career as a college art professor focuses on the importance of the outdoor accessible, hardy, and tactile venue for fine art. These elements are clearly at play in Two Urns, which contain – perhaps even calls for – the opportunity to engage tactilely and without reserve. The elements that make up the mosaic alternate between smooth & rough, round & rectangular, lustrous & flat. The individual tiles even interact with the natural aspects of the day, reflecting light differently at different times and throwing off different temperatures according to the kind of stone. The work is arguably enjoyable by those with and without sight; and so it goes for all walks of person, from an ignorant youth running her fingers along a random wall to a studied adult appreciating the neighborhood flourishes.

   The mosaics converse on many levels with their setting, including engaging the architecture next door. Embedded in the overall form of the pieces are shapes and design that are familiar to the Raymond Theater. White glass tiles are distinctly contrasted against rich orange and green hues and in their unique form, which imitate the flourishes of actual urns in the Raymond Theater design. Blue in the mosaics, though more subdued by the green than the bright white could ever be, is also used exclusively for star motifs to further juxtapose the greater masses of warm and and cool areas, which are filled only with squares and marble orbs. The great gilded panels are joined in and through masonry sharing with the common-place red brick structure they are mounted within. In these ways, the preexisting architectural design is perpetuated on the city block but modernized and offering a contemporary answer.

  Unlike the variety of fragile media within the walls of a contemporary art gallery, Karlen's mosaics retain their bright colors, texture, and relevance despite being fully exposed to the elements and populace. Karlen's Two Urns simultaneously elevate a commonplace craft and bring down to earth the values esteemed in fine art. The intent of her work, as a service to the community, could only be achieved through successful craftsmanship and meaningful subject matter; she accomplishes this by being visually reverential to the locale and physically, indiscriminately engaged with its citizens.

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The Treachery of Sanctuary

Park City, Utah – January 22 - February 1 (Sundance 2016)

By Chris Milk

The Treachery of Sanctuary (2015) is a modern art piece that was featured as part of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival’s 10th anniversary of the "New Frontiers” exhibition. Since its inception, the pop up exhibition space has been dedicated to New Media art forms that exploit and push the limits and purposes of the latest technology. "New Frontiers" historically, focused on creating alternative, immersive narrative experiences that both showcase new audio-visual mediums and also aspire to exploit them for sublime ends. It is at this annual exhibition that the Oculus Rift, among other new tech, could be demo’d by the public. But the cutting-edge nature of the materials can encroach upon the artist’s intent, due simply to the average artist having limited technical knowledge and an inability to wield these digital mediums. But over the years, motion graphics and virtual reality has gained ground in consumer accessibility and user-friendlyness; even the average secondary school student is exposed to Photoshop and InDesign in computer class. It seems that enough time has passed that a new tribe of digital generation artists are mastering their tools and using them to add their voice to the burgeoning sect of transmedia art.

One of these artists is Chris Milk, along with his team of graphic artists, video game designers, software engineers, and architects. The work is hosted in it’s own 500+ square foot tent reaching over 20 feet high in order to house the three enormous canvases the make up Milk's digital tryptic. Upon entering the giant, dark tent, the viewer is ushered to stand before the first canvas with a partner. The canvases are the source of illumination in the blackened room, which has a floor that is mostly covered in a shallow, very still pool that acts as a mirror to the canvases. It is very like walking into a sanctuary, with its sacred baptismal waters and monochromatic stained-glassed “windows” stretching heavenward. As the worshippers approach the fount before the first canvas, their shadows appear in life-size scale beneath a swirling cloud of black birds. Without the a light source in this surreal and nonsensical environment, the viewer naturally tests her shadow, like Peter Pan, to see if it will obey her motions and truly belongs to her. In a surprising flurry, she and her partner’s figures begin to disintegrate into ascending birds, bursting upward to join the rest their community in the sky. In matter of moments, the shadows are completely gone having joined the community of circling birds above.

The viewer enters the second panel and, for a moment, the hovering birds continue in their flocking pattern; but this time, they detect presence as foreign and dive at the viewers' shadows, picking them a part bit by bit, accelerating the pace and flying away with them until there is nothing left. The silhouettes have been completely consumed and the partners are compelled to confirm their continued physical existence, despite Hitchcock-ian nightmare that the second panel betrayed them to.

The final canvas is experienced solo. This separation of the duo adds to the anxiety introduced in the previous canvas. In the same fashion as before, a flock of birds hangs over the shadow of the viewer. Reasonably hesitant to invite the avians to a feast, it takes a little more time before the viewer decides to extend her arms, unsure of what kind of attention it will call. Upon cautiously swinging limbs, the viewer is suddenly endowed with massive feathered wings that, when extended upward, nearly reach the ceiling. The waft of the wings is an overpowering and exhilarating sound in the room and the viewer is compelled to create a rhythm, accelerating until their body, fully transformed into an angelic figure, ascends to the heavens above.

The secret to the exhibit is an unexpected technology: Kinect video cameras that are usually used for the Microsoft Xbox gaming console. In the dark tent, the bright white panels provide a high contrast backdrop for participants' contours to be detected by the camera and then projected on to the panel. This gives the illusion that a shadow is being cast, but, because there is no light source, the viewer can feel more like they are interacting with a mirror or perhaps an even more mysterious and soul-like version of themselves. While some viewers even checked above their head to see if any real-life seagulls were swirling above there was one, unfortunate tell-tale sign of the digital magic in the pixelation the silhouette (which sometimes looked unlike a silhouette at all or was lost momentarily by the motion-sensing Kinect). But these criticisms, while often commented on by the digital generation passing through the tent, were always hushed by the time the participants reached their breathtaking angelic form in the end.

The story told in the three simple panels can be overlaid on any number of ancient or modern myths, from Peter Pan to the Christ story to the Odyssey, all with their essential plots points more or less summarized in a call, a betrayal, and victory or tragedy. Milk’s artist statement clearly outlines the variety of monomythic themes he wishes to express in the tryptic including the narrative of birth to death and, as in the title of the peace, faith to treachery. Using modern human tools and a deceitfully simple black and white presentation, Milk continues the ancient tradition of pictorial storying telling and appropriates our current technology, and even our contemporary penchant for interaction and play, onto artful, soul-searching quest. Despite having never experienced an installation like Treachery, the viewer is bound to be familiar with the tropes he exemplifies, and therefore able to appreciate without confusion or obscurity the magnificence and scale of the exhibit. By distilling the most common faith experiences into three clear narrative events, a universal language of positive, negative, and transcendence can be garnered by a broad array of participants from any creed or nation.

The overall effect of the camera, projection, and dark, crowd-controlled environment is magnificent and overwhelming. The viewer is quite successfully enveloped into the work’s narrative and meta narrative, even in spite of the digital seams that sometimes show. For this reason, two hour lines form in the snow outside the tent, all for the a chance to spend five or six minutes moving from communion to tragedy and finally ascension. In some ways, the pixilated edges of one’s silhouette are a nice reminder that there are no ravenous pigeons waiting to descend on we human intruders and there is further comfort in the neutralizing effect that makes almost all projected figures look similar, with only height and hair length to differentiate. Milk’s Treachery of Sanctuary is, in fact, a sanctuary in form and in practice: to participate in Treachery is also to participate in humanity.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

To the foreigner, Americans can seem a bit schizophrenic. We love love arguing with one another – we fight about our politics, our tastes, and our right – we barely recognize entertainment as such if it is without conflict. The public the discourse, the better. But at the same time, we cannot stomach confrontation, especially when it creeps into our personal lives. Our language, these foreigners often point out, is wrought with conflict-avoidance verbs and adjectives. We encounter “challenges” rather than “obstacles” or are “having difficulty,” but surely are not “failing,” and answer  "I'm busy that day" instead of “never will I ever go on a date with you.” We are not the only culture that does this, but we are particularly  willing to let it confuse us and obscure realities so that we might falsely maintain our famous optimism.

The Scottish director, Lynne Ramsay, capitalizes on this fatal American feature in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin, an adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel of the same name. The story revolves around Eva, a mother who has hung up her well-worn globe-trotting boots to raise a son she is not sure she wants, but with a husband whom she adores and who, in turn, adores she and her son. Eva was a wealthy wife and mother, but the events that bring her to squalor and the hatred she bears from her neighbors unfold throughout the near-2-hr movie. The tragedy that befalls her is ultimately the result of her eldest son’s murderous streak through his high school. The signs of his antisocial tendencies are apparent from his birth: crying incessantly and exclusively in his mother’s arms, refusing potty training until almost the age of seven, and even masturbating without regard in front of her. But the reality of her son's disconcerting behavior is obscured by her husband's cheery outlook.

We are introduced to the world of Eva in the opening scene, when a youthful version of herself emerges from a sea of bodies and crimson that envelops the streets of Spain during the festival, La Tomatina. Her face is euphoric, but she seems to be unaware of the unrestrained commotion of the crowd, which is winding the viewer up for a new, more ominous signal for the appearance of red in the film. As the Eva’s future and present unfold, the hue reminds us simultaneously of the perfect moment Eva found herself in in Spain, and the unforgivable sins she will eternally live with. Alone, now, and she is worse than a pariah and hated by her community, some of whom even feel obliged to deliver physical blows to her on public streets or throw red paint on her home and car. The context for Eva’s plight is delivered almost completely without verbal explination. The absence of exposition is deliberate – Americans hate confrontation and love optimism, and Ramsay is keenly aware of this.

In We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ramsay returns to her preferred themes revolving around familial influence, particularly, as it affects the development of children. Kevin’s devious nature is clear in the scowl that he permanently directs toward his mother from infancy (dropping it to feign affection for his father). But Eva’s preference for travel to family life prompts the viewer to wonder if neglect, however mild, or maternal anxiety fostered the evil in Kevin. Ramsay is careful not villianize or victimize Eva; but in the absence of any support or self-worth, it is easy to feel with her. Kevin is undeniably wicked and abusive; though without motivation, we also sympathize Eva’s husband who wishes the best for his son and feels no animosity. In this way, Ramsay, keeps the viewer off -balancing, requiring them to check their own biases when passing judgement on any of the characters.

The film does not end in a tidy fashion in anyway. Eva’s makes a final visit to her son in juvenile hall, a week before he is to turn 18 and be moved to “the big school.” For the first time she expresses something other than anxiety and obligation and speaks to him without wavering “I just want to know one thing: why did you do it?” He trembles for the first time in the movie when he answers, “I used to think I knew...” Eva stands to leave, throwing her arms the nearly-adult Kevin, perhaps making affirming her support into the future by way of the inseparable blood they share; or maybe as as the finale and closure to her maternal obligations to him.

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THE BEDS OF PROCRUSTES

Pasadena Museum of California Art, Nov 15, 2015 - Apr 3, 2016

By Robert Cremean

For hundreds of years in western history, the  common person's primary exposure to fine and high art came through visits to religious spaces, specifically the cathedrals and parishes of the Catholic Church. To this day we can make our own pilgrimages to the same sites and encounter stone, marble, and wooden statues of saints, Biblical events, all within the ornate walls of confessions booths and lighted prayer cubbies. Many of us make this journey to pray, and perhaps Robert Cremean does, too, but also to wrest a with his spiritual discord, to battle the juxtopsitions of free will and duty, and to search out and expose codified oppressions.

Cremean’s works is dedicated to examining the causes of conformity, which he is convinced are at the root of genocide, war, economic oppression, gender discrimination, among a slew of other plights to mankind. Through the appropriation of myth and Christology and their aesthetic expression in sacred spaces, Cremean dares to challenge the status quo and demands that humanity, at the very least, confronts its the byproducts.

In “Procrustes In Situ” ("Beds of Procrustes) the viewer is presented with images of the human figure expressed in both familiar, ancient methods – relief, sculpture, sketch-like diagrams– as well as inventive, contemporary mixed mediums that crumble away in porcelain, strew writing in colored pencil across the graphite cross-sections, and leave bolts exposed in dowels and the fibers curling up rough burlap rope. One can naturally begins their viewership at the outer edges of the crescent display of the seven sculptures and examines each one in turn, not unlike walking through the stations of the cross in an Catholic sanctuary.  But, unlike in the vastness of a church hall, Cremean's works stand only two meters tall, yet each are as jam-packed with reference and symbolism as any elaborately adorned cathedral.

The placement of the individual pieces usher the walker through two the sides of the hegemonic cycles Cremean sees the western world fluctuating between: war and enlightenment. On the far left, one begins with The Father, represented atop in the sculpture of a waxy head unable to fully dawn a perfect porcelain skin, as well as on the canvas (literally attached) in the form of a naked, seated male wearing a helmet and chastising a disembodied male figure as it undergoes stretching to fit Procrustes first bed. The pattern of symbols repeats on both sides of the semi-circle, but with inverted changes: the helmet is replaced by a bowler hat (as well as what could be interpreted as a shin-guard by a garter belt) the tortured male and masculine figures are replaced by feminine and female bodies. In the first half, female agency is completely ignored, in the second half it is commanded to submit. In the center, the hat and the helmet meet and criticize the opposites merits, claiming superior ability to command the fate of the human race.

Cremean damns all of humanity, both male and female, but at the fault of the overly zealous masculine traits – brute force and duty – that bring about social oppression that manifest in the strict demands of church law and social propriety. Like the majority of work in the Church and in the mythos, the “named” and speaking characters of Cremean’s “Procrustes In Situ” are male; this is a characteristic the work intends to point out: the imbalance of female voice, perspective, and narrative leaves the viewer with no imaginable end to the cycle of destruction.