When Art Doesn’t Stop You in Your Tracks
Discovering Carlos Sandoval de Leon’s Untitled 2014 and Untitled 2014 - ongoing
Sometimes a work of art stops you in your tracks (I’ll talk about that next week), and other times you walk right past it. I learned this week that sometimes you need to go back and look at the one you first chose to ignore. Had I not done that, I would not have discovered New York based (Mexican born) artist, Carlos Sandoval de Leon.
At the Museum of Contemporary of Art’s (North Miami) show Third Space: Inventing the Possible, de Leon’s Untitled 2014 - ongoing, a geometric sculpture made of rafters and zip ties, seems to dominate the exhibition space. However, despite its literal size, it sits with weightless awe. It is, I presume from the brochure, intentionally “ongoing” – an unfinished work and statement. The structure’s hexagon segments catch the light and frame the smaller works hung on the walls inviting us to go take a first or repeated look.
This work was impossible to walk past unnoticed. It was his second piece, Untitled 2014, that I overlooked. Do artists leave work untitled to make us think a little harder or squash the desire for a concrete explanation? It was because of this missing title that I read line 3, “antique red cedar chest, propaganda, bullet resistant plexiglass.”
In an article for Art Papers titled, “The Mexican Revolution was Funded by Bubble Gum – On Carlos Sandoval de Leon’s Negotiations,” Gean Moreno writes: “The slabs of plexiglass are abuzz with information and codes. Their trajectory through the world has left them invisibly marked. Sandoval de Leon’s modus operandi is the opposite of the conventional use of readymade materials in art production. He selects a material because it intersects with some aspect of his personal life...He incorporates the readymade into the work, taking great care not to hide its history or the massive archive of meanings it has accrued during its travels and through the uses to which it has been put.”
So, if plexiglass, cedar, propaganda (possibly related to the two $5 Mexican peso notes) don’t immediately trigger some thinking, I invite you to look and dig a little deeper. Go see the exhibit before it ends on November 2nd. Find out what artists’ don’t stop you in your tracks. Then go back, take a second look, and wonder a little more.
Read last week's #MyArtEscape
