The Tears of Things

If I Had Curated The Arizona Biennial '03

by Catherine King

Jerome and I drove down to the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) to see the Arizona Biennial '03 on Sunday morning, June 1, the exhibition's third day. We toured the show twice, and we were willing to go around a third time, if the show had warranted it.

This exhibition, which was guest-curated by Toby Kamps, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, was about as exuberant as the diminutive, color-of-the-moment (Hex#CCCC99) catalog that accompanied it, and as soggy with self-satisfaction. Oozing through the show, seeping from the catalog text, is a smarmy, blind complacency; artist after artist who fails to notice, much less acknowledge, that we should be so privileged as to be living in probably the most dangerous, thrilling, crucial moment of potential in the History of Time.

And so many of the people involved with the show, from museum directors to curators and far too many of the artists themselves, are assuming that, as usual, no one is going to hold them accountable for their words. The catalog actually contains a lot of mendacity. Yes! I'm not saying some people are lying, but they are definitely trying to hornswoggle us about what outstanding artistic accomplishments are being achieved.

In the interest of clarity, I'd like to get some better definitions, honest answers and straight talk from some directors, curators and artists. Fuzzy writing and fast talking do not obscure the fact that, taken as a whole, the Arizona Biennial '03 presents an unchallenging and uncurious look at the visual arts in this state.

We are told on page one, in the Foreword by Laurie J. Rufe, TMA's Executive Director, that Mr. Kamps's "eye for excellence and innovation is certainly evident in the works selected." Having seen the show, I'm going to challenge that statement a little. Ms. Rufe may feel Mr. Kamps has an eye for excellence and innovation, but it is not "certainly evident in the works selected."

Julie Sasse, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at TMA, informs us in the catalog's Introduction that the works from which Mr. Kamps selected indicate, among other things, "artistic breakthroughs and the pure celebration of creative expression." I saw the show, and I sure didn't see any work that was nearly that exciting. So I am going to challenge that one as well.

Nothing Mr. Kamps selected there had the momentum of a "breakthrough," and the tone of the show was pretty quiet for any "celebration of creative expression."

Mr. Kamps says in his Guest Curator's Statement that his criteria for selection were:

technical skill;
a powerful idea;
and inspiration and originality.

Again, having been there, it didn't seem that Mr. Kamps required even those 62 artworks to meet his own standards.

Personally, I feel that if an artist has a powerful idea, it's pretty much the same thing as being inspired. And then, if an artist is being moved by a powerful idea, they will devote the best of their technical skills to its realization. So that criterion as well should follow from the original powerful idea.

And since I am basically accepting inspiration and technical skill when I agree to Mr. Kamps's criterion of powerful ideation, I am sure he would agree to a more considered revision of his fourth criterion, originality:

Let us say that Authenticity is Originality with Integrity. So now we agree on A Powerful Idea and Authenticity.

There: that was easy, wasn't it?

Further, wouldn't every red-blooded art-lover agree with me that Mr. Kamps forgot to include Passion as an indispensible criterion? He must have had just a momentary lapse in his "supreme good taste" [Ms. Sasse's words again] because passionless art should surely never be selected over art that is full of human blood, sweat and tears -- should it?

Therefore, we have agreed that One: a Powerful Idea; Two: Authenticity; and Three: Passion are Biennial-Worthy Criteria. Okay, then, having accepted a common set of critical criteria with Mr. Kamps, let's pretend that I got a shot at being Guest Curator of the Exhibition!

If I had curated this Biennial, I would most certainly not have included the biggest piece in the show, Sue Chenoweth's Presence. This morbidly obese embarrassment is what visitors to the show have to see as soon as they round the first corner. Presence dominates an entire wall like that big, fat woman in front of you in line with her endless surface and her overwhelming volume.

There it is, Ms. Chenoweth's . . . thing, a gigantic sloppy doodle made of macaroni and wikki-stix, taking up way more than her fair share of space. The wall is unfinshed -- hardly begun, really -- with Ms. Chenoweth's vague pencilled notes and wispy indicators of work that was never done, just like the slob who is too lazy to groom herself before going out in public. Just because she has no pride in her appearance, must she inflict it upon the rest of us?

Presence looks as though a tiny gaggle of weary, cranky kindergarteners with Attention Deficit Disorder got off-task after working on a group macaroni mosaic. Perhaps Chenoweth has the attention span of a kindergartener. Clearly the artist bit off more macaroni than she could chew.

But what was her intent with this bloated yet value-subtracted Presence? Why, nothing at all, according to her. She had no plans whatsoever. "The wall pieces are created just days before the opening without prior planning," she says. No ideas here, much less A Powerful One.

I predict Ms. Chenoweth never tries to pull this stunt again, because she has been caught conceptually naked -- and it just ain't pretty. August 17th must seem a very distant date to her -- and to all who have to look at this thing, unfortunately.

Presence . . . I can't call it a work, because the artist obviously lost interest and felt unable to complete her own work. But she did not hesitate to inflict it on the citizens of Arizona, did she? How could this be instructive, Mr. Kamps? Well, maybe it's not enough just to investigate "presentness." Maybe a piece needs the power of an idea to sustain it. Mr. Kamps, here you failed by your own criterion.

Nor is Ms. Chenoweth fooling me with her claims of unaccountability and languageless language. It's just all about nothing, isn't it? "Wordless thing," "ineffable," "space between" -- you have nothing to say, Ms. Chenoweth. Mr. Kamps, I can't help thinking about the authentic work by inspired artists (at least some of the 299 not selected) that you must have rejected so that you could give a great, big wall of space to Sue Chenoweth, so that she in turn can indecently expose what she should be embarrassed to reveal. [Full disclosure: we submitted none of our own art for this Biennial.]

By contrast, another artist, Olivier Mossett, tries to hide his skinny flatness by speaking out from behind a wall of inanity: "I like abstract painting. What I'm interested in is how you put paint on a canvas. I'm interested in its flatness, its surface and its limits." I repeat, Where's the Powerful Idea, Mr. Kamps? How about Passion, then? This guy has about as much animation as a Tylenol tablet. But because his safari through Yellow Paint Land was so significant, he must share its results with us three times.

I am saying that these nameless pieces do not justify the space they take on the wall. Try looking at Untitled (2003), three six-foot yellow unframed circular canvases hung in a close triangular pattern. Let's see, did I leave anything out? No, that's all there is to them: three, big, yellow, and circular. Okay, so there you are standing before Untitled (2003), and do you not hear that tiny voice inside you saying, "This is some put-on kinda deal?" Now you know this piece lacks our third criteria: Authenticity.

It won second place.

If I had curated The Arizona Biennial '03, what other piece might I not have included? How about Susan Bricker with her My Drain? This mixed-media on paper piece features the word suck spelled out in a painted ribbon; a tub drain; and a bar of soap, all floating on a vaguely scumbled background.

She tells us she is documenting (!) "vivid, authentic yet dream-like moments that fall between the cracks of real time." This is double-talk for "I have no ideas." Come on, it's just water down the drain. This is not heavy stuff, Mr. Kamps. Ms. Bricker says her works "market themselves, (therefore) as pretty and desirable, but upon closer examination speak more closely to common embarrassments that underscore contemporary culture: fear, longing, loneliness, and the combined pleasure and repulsion of material objects."

Wow. She thinks all that -- everything but the kitchen sink -- is shown in My Drain. (Hey -- why don't you throw the sink in too as long as you've got the drain?) All I see is a bunch of hype. Whereas Ms. Chenoweth hopes to get off the hook with her wordlessness, Ms. Bricker must be thinking I don't know fear, longing or loneliness when I see them. Next!

Alison Dunn. "What I am most interested in is the metaphorical potential of the medium, where illusion and substance, intellect and sensation coalesce into a poetic narrative. Having neither beginning nor end, these narratives trace the circular dialog between mind and body..." Don't bullshit me. Next!

Trudonna. "I am always seeking the point in the visual experience where the human experience is engaged -- the place that activates the work beyond even what I know it to be -- presence." [Even beyond what she -- She, Trudonna! -- knows it to be! Presence!] There's that word again. Next!

One would think Arizona is just a great big nursery for Adult Babies. Can't you see the glaring lack of engagement with the world? The childish fear of approaching anything honestly and seriously? The willingness to sit in the same place and play with the same old toys that just go around and around and around?

Meanwhile, outside in the real world, Western Civilization is being threatened just as the Spirit of Exploration and the Power of the Free Mind are opening up entire universes alive with knowledge and mystery.

If I had curated the Arizona Biennial '03, I would not have selected Mary Bates Neubauer's Red Echo. This print is as full of crap as Rhoades & McCarthy's latest travesty, and is shaped in a suspiciously similar way.

As for the wireframing, someone had some powerful ideas here, alright -- the software designers, not Neubauer. She brings nothing to the computer program except technical skill. This is an exercise from computer-aided drafting school, as I recall.

I am also reminded how a few weeks ago, at the graduation ceremony for the ASU Herberger School of the Arts, the audience heard quite a bit about Neubauer's highly technical work. Sounded very impressive, of course. Jerome had already pointed me to a paragraph here or an article there referring to Neubauer's new statistical massaging.

Driving home from the graduation ceremony, I wondered about Neubauer's motivation. I felt her work, as I saw it, lacked any emotional reference to actual, as opposed to actuarial, humanity. What a cold stance for a woman, I thought. And what a passionless stance for an artist.

I remember saying to Jerome, "With all that incredible technology at her command, I just wish she'd use it to sort of point somewhere, to maybe reveal something important, like hidden truths."

"I think I understand what you mean," Jerome said, "like we, for example, might use the same technology to try to get a picture of the state of Feminism, or get a take on the prevalence of domestic violence in a given area. We would try to obtain an image of something important to humanity, something new we need to know."

I agreed. "We would try to take that incredible technolgy and use it in an exploratory, interpretive way, rather than merely recording or describing, as Neubauer seems to do. She seems unable to find a personal voice. The viewer never knows how she feels about anything."

"I know what you mean".

Writes Neubauer in the catalog:

My work retains a simple formal sensibiltiy through its singularity and self-containment.

People, don't be intimidated because she's a university teacher. When she says "singularity and self-containment" she means it's an object. And ". . . simple formal sensibility . . ." That's even fuzzier talk, school-talk, but my inner voice tells me she is trying to be fancy about saying her object floats on a plain background.

[More Ms. N:] Its origins reflect cycles of history, process, and nature . . . inspired by the pattern, symmetry and design found in nature and machinery.

She might be talking about a butt plug or a jellyfish, but nothing of the human hand and heart. She displays a weird lack of affect for a Woman.

Pattern, symmetry and design are not Powerful Ideas. They are attributes, characteristics. Keep looking deeper, professor. You are hung up on the surface.

Before moving on to a couple more local art stars, I want to emphasize to the reader that your inner voice tells you unequivocally if a piece of art contains A Powerful Idea, Passion, and Authenticity. Everyone knows when something really moves them; everybody can tell, if they are honest with themselves, when something is contrived. This makes it easy to be a curator!

So let me continue, Mr. Kamps, to apply our three critical criteria to our final dynamic duo.

This is what you see when you look at Grant Wiggins's "To Rinse Away the Tiny Particles." The package is for an imaginary product labelled Droosil in white condensed italics. Other gobbledeegook (but partly "generated by computer software," the artists writes, probably trying to impress Mary Bates Neubauer) on the package pretends to give weight and measure to this imaginary product. Why should we care?

It is very tellling, though, the way Wiggins so completely rips off Damien Hirst's pharmaceutical prints, with a matching complete lack of acknowledgement or embarrassment. Wiggins, currently studying Business, concedes in the catalog, "Marketing is often a necessary evil." He continues, with wistful righteousness, "Yet I do wish that companies would refrain from perpetuating insidious come-ons and disorienting, dehumanizing slogans." He apparently doesn't let his wishes get in the way of his packages.

Marketing sure is a necessary evil. This difficult fact should have become starkly obvious to everyone on 9/11, when the World Trade Center came crashing down. Free enterprise and capitalism are problematic, but 21st Century Western Civilization, our new Pax Republica, sure beats the Endless Medievalism of the Umma, and the rancid, weary, antisemitic pacifascism of Europe.

That notorious day exploded one and a half years ago, but you would never know it from Wiggins's work. He's still goofing on packaging, as if Jeff Koons had not covered all this eighteen years ago, or Warhol forty-one. What a lightweight!

. . . I must admit that I adore wandering supermarket detergent aisles, and buying the most colorful boxes I see, regardless of their contents. I believe that an unopened box of product can be worthy of placement on a pedestal and commemorated through painting.

I wish he hadn't written that -- now when I go to the supermarket I've got this recurring image of him prancing ninny-like up and down the aisles, piling his frivilous choices onto my hard-earned ones, acting as if 9/11 was no more than a wet cleanup in the detergent aisle; easy to step around. I make choices and put my money on things that work. What's up with buying crap for the container alone? That's wasteful, like having a food-fight. Maybe you're what's wrong with America, Mr. Wiggins.

Finally, befittingly, as if he were the last word, which some think he apparently is, we must look at Oliver Hibert. [On the link, click "cover."]

Mr. Wiggins and Mr. Hibert have collaborated on a pseudo-philosophical, p.r. spin boosted with memes -- Wiggins being the marketing genius and Hibert the whiz kid. It is instructive to read how the marketing genius, in an interview in Shade #1, promotes the whiz kid.

Mr. Hibert is certainly a whiz kid, but while his fans are busy kissing his ass, they should be careful not to take him too seriously. Shame on you if you let a 20-year-old tell you that retro isn't retro. And if he convinces you that Popped Art is anything but a necrophiliac love fest with the gratefully dead Sixties, then you are the ass.

It takes more than this statement to convince me there is anything new going on here:

If people understand my paintings in the way they're given, they will really be received by others as producing new ideas -- a new viewpoint on the past.

Really? Did Mr. Wiggins, your spin tutor, tell you to say that? Because, Oliver, you are going to have to spell out what these "new ideas" are.

It should be obvious there is No Powerful Idea here. And this art is so thoroughly derivative that no sensible people could assert its Authenticity. And when career stylist Mr. Wiggins tells us in Shade that Mr. Hibert's paintings are free from "emotional baggage," we understand that Passion is something to be avoided. The whiz kid fails all three criteria.

So how about moving on, Oliver, stepping into the 21st Century? Perhaps we now have more urgent business than swallowing your "new viewpoint on the past" hook, line, and sinker. Some of us have long memories, and we have earned them.

To some of us, then, it sounds like a dishonest cliché when Ms. Sasse asserts that "based on the submissions this year, [she's] optimistic that indeed the arts in Arizona are alive and well." I may be cynical, but I bet she was prepared to say as much before she saw a single submission. I was there, and I what I saw was that many of the artists gave lip service only to the pursuit of the new.

The Arizona Biennial '03 did seem to be very much about replicating currently popular stylistic affectations and a lot of transparently naive rhetoric. Naive, or maybe they're trying to pull one over on us. Perhaps the artists learn this one from their teachers, like Chenoweth or Neubauer. This is an art exhibition, not a con job. Just because we are told in print, by Executive Director Rufe, that the Arizona Biennal '03 was "an excellent product," we do not have to buy it. We are not traipsing down a grocery aisle with Grant Wiggins, picking product willy-nilly.

The little voice inside will not be lied to. To recognize that simple wisdom should leave one more "challenged, empowered, and enlivened," (Ms. Rufe again -- like "bigger, brighter, better?") than a visit to this lackluster exhibition.

The critic, the curator, the expert authority are in you. Pretend, like I did, that you were the curator of this Biennial. Take in as much as you can then ask yourself, "Is this piece stirring my imagination and tugging at my heartstrings?" Then listen for the answer.

Posted by Jerome at June 12, 2003 11:15 PM | TrackBack