Review: "Catch as Catch Can" at the Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (February 13-March 30, 2013)
Francis Picabia, "Catch as Catch Can," 1913
To me, closely observing and analyzing various artworks as art itself has experienced dramatic transformations during transitional time periods is much more than picking apart seemingly acute, insignificant details in works of art or mindlessly memorizing titles, dates, and figures... to me, art history revolves around the opportunity and ability to delve into different cultures and lifestyles and learn about the circulating human thoughts and feelings of the time. Learning and analyzing painting, sculpture, literature, music, dance, etc, provides a looking glass through which we can compare and contrast how changes to the human condition have influenced thought and expression throughout our time here on earth- a “Period Eye”, in the words of Baxandall. For example, looking at Jan Steen’s The Drawing Lesson reveals the creeping immersion of art in middle class society, while Picasso’s Guernica shows the tremendous emotional grief of the Spanish Civil War. To experience various human expressions of our own period, I went on a journey to Locks Gallery to observe modern-day responses to a contemporary piece titled Catch as Catch Can by Picabia from 1913 at an exhibition with the same name. In response to the original lively cubist piece, the artists of “Catch as Catch Can” performed and created rattling works of art that mirrored the movement of Picabia’s works with new mediums that had varying effects on a viewer’s experience.
My excursion began with quick, exhaustive pedaling down Chestnut Street to catch the exhibit opening at Locks Gallery in Washington Square. Heavily breathing and concerned with my tardiness, I hastily locked up my bike and ran past the leftover crumbs from the reception up to the second floor and walked in on a live performance in the gallery space. The female artist Viola Yesiltac stood in front of the crowd, reading from a script a hypnotizing dialogue about an aggressive man questioning an elevator doorman about a mysterious photograph. Her careful manner of purposefully droning out her storyline paired with haunting, echoing sounds emanating from her iPhone into in the gallery space suspended everything in time, holding the audience members up on their tippy toes yearning to learn more about the man’s persistent search for the mysterious photograph. At her feet a curious, small stack of sheets of paper with a printed image caught my attention when I first walked in, and upon finishing her act, she reached for the stack, went into the surrounding crowd, and handed the curious papers to selective members of the audience. With no explanation, the performance finished and I was left with a strange wanting for more, a yearning for an explanation for the disturbingly haunting story that left me befuddled.
So, I made my way back down the stairs to look at the works in the first floor space I had quickly passed when I first entered the gallery. Immediately I was drawn to a compelling array of moving shapes and colors pressed up on the lone back wall of the room. It was Picabia's Catch as Catch Can (1913), and automatically I understood the inspiration for the entire exhibition: a collection of geometric and organic curving forms of fleshy warm pinks, earthy browns, and subtle grays danced in a vivacious composition that I could not look away from. I thought the piece as Cubist in my head, and while Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 came to mind, comparisons could not be made between the different expressions of movement in Picabia's painting despite similarities in style to Duchamp’s. Picabia’s oil painting was full of life and energy- one could literally envision the vague forms dancing around the canvas- while Duchamp’s piece illustrates a more linear movement diagonally across the canvas. Across the room I noticed a painting that similarly exercised a theme regarding movement, but with a much different mood.
Jutta Koether, "I Know There's Nothing Else to Do," 1994.
Jutta Koether’s I Know There’s Nothing Else To Do (1994) captivated me with unclear forms layered on top of each other to create a confusing, uneasy jumble of chaos. Although the colors are warm and light, ghostly faces and hands appear throughout the busy composition, filling the space with uneasy anxiety. As I looked up and down the massive canvas, even more of these haunting faces emerged from the array of shapes and lines, and the same idea of movement in Catch as Catch Can manifested itself in a more worrying, overwhelming manner in Koether’s piece. I continued around the exhibition, curious to see other works of art. The final piece I focused on during my time in the gallery was a disorienting, but intriguing mixture of mediums by Michaela Eichwald.
Michaela Eichwald, "Gerichtstraße," 2011-12
The piece was entitled Gerichtstraße (2011-12), which translated means “court street”. Obviously when I viewed the piece I had no idea it meant “court street”, but even if I had known German when I visited I would have never guessed that, either. The work was composed of an interesting mixture of acrylic, oil, and lacquer and it interested me for strange Expressionistic similarities to a powerful Rothko piece. The most intriguing quality of the art was its calm and chaotic duality; even though the upper half was filled with a busy jumble of violent strokes and clouds of dark colors, the composition achieved a calming symmetry with the static hazel colored forms on the more peaceful bottom half of the canvas. Similar to Picadia and Koether, Eichwald thrusted a sense of movement upon the viewer that uniquely lingered between uneasy and peaceful in her piece.
The works of art by Koether and Eichwald, and live performance by Yesiltac, though different in their manifestations, are similar in the way they demanded attention and a sense of physical prominence in front of the audience. The artists provided different responses to Picabia’s Catch as Catch Can with a varying use of mediums and inclusion of new technology that reflect our progressing time period, as well as ambivalent reactions to our changing society. To conclude, I believe exercises in opening oneself to new experiences with art, like my trip to Locks Gallery, help us to not only absorb the aesthetic beauty of a work of art, but try to understand the human thought and emotion behind the piece.
