Research Paper II

Maria Jones

Academic Advisor Sunanda Sanyal

1 October 2012

A Perspective on Two Exhibits

Perception will always be one person’s reality.  A great deal of contemporary art attempts to tackle this enigma. It is important, as a growing artist today, to experience art and perception through other artists and exhibits.  Art is affected by the space it consumes, and speaks to the viewer in varied ways, either allowing open interpretation or setting a background for the viewer to springboard their perception. Two exhibitions one in the Boston ICA Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite and the other in the Henry Art Museums, Gary Hill: Glossodelic Attractors are good examples of how an exhibit can enhance a viewer’s perception.

The Boston ICA exhibit, Josiah McElheny Some Pictures of the Infinite, walks the viewer through the progressing works of the artist culminating with his most recent installation The Center Is Everywhere and his prefaced piece Island Universe. [1] Starting with McElheny’s earliest works the exhibit demonstrated the artists continued study of time.   As the viewer is drawn through the artist’s noticeable progressive experimentation with science and the universe the exhibit provides concise descriptions to assist the viewers perception of each piece. The gallery space, a blinding white backdrop with a neutral grey floor, lends to the artists efforts to portray the cosmos and infinite space and time.  The work is mostly blown glass, mirrors, and industrial material; all materials the artist feels can stand the test of time. [2]  McElheny’s work draws from extensive study and interests in art history, politics, and cosmology (Lee). The exhibit begins with works of mirrored glass landscapes such as, Czech Modernism Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely juxtaposed with earlier studies of Venetian glass studies of cosmology, and leads the viewer into a darkened room containing McElheny’s progressive piece into video and installation, Screens For Viewing Abstractions exiting again into the pristine white walled neutral floor atmosphere experienced in the beginning.  The exhibit concludes with McEhleny’s, Island Universe, an interactive installation of blown glass lights and industrial metal rods.  As the viewer navigates the chandelier universes, reflections of the spectator can be seen in the globes providing the viewer a starting point for understanding each piece and the universe (Burnett 3).

Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery exhibit Gary Hill: Glossodelic Attractors was a comparatively different show.  Gary Hill is a renowned video and sound installation artist.  His work investigates the relationship between language, bodily perception, and the electronic image in a philosophical, poetic, and sometimes scientific manner. [3]   To compliment the artists work the space envelopes the viewer in dark grey walls and carpet, almost blanketing and enveloping its audience into the body/language perception Hill’s work investigates.  The exhibit descends the viewer deep into the gallery to emerge on a darkened space.  There is a brief profoundly confusing description displayed alongside the exhibit title, [4] after which all writing is absent.  This allows the viewer to be drawn into the experience of Gary Hills work with no real progression, but a strong suggestion of further intellectual investigation.  The exhibit begins with works that require the viewer to stand, consume, and be overwhelmed by unusual linguistic audio and video tracks like Hill’s most recent piece Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment (2011), and progresses into interactive pieces anchored at the end with Hill’s master work Withershins (1995) (“Gary Hill”).[5]  Withershins requires the viewer to participate in a large maze made of aluminum tubing to be fully immersed in the work thereby making the viewer an integral piece in the art.  Upon entering the maze the viewer walks on pressure sensitive switch-mats that trigger the audio tracks, which overlap and occasionally match up.  A drawn map of the maze compliments the piece, with sticky notes denoting the switch-mats and the correlating language.  Requiring the viewer to ascend a long stairway back into a lighted brightly colored mezzanine concludes the exhibit. 

Experiencing these exhibits provided me with insight into each artist’s process.  Both experiences were samplings of the artist’s life works.  The McElheny exhibit demonstrated a logical progression chronologic in nature, which is much in tune with the artist’s scientific and cosmic conceptions.   Gary Hills work, on the other hand, was anchored at the beginning with a piece requiring nothing of the spectator and at the end with a piece demanding full participation.  These anchors provided the springboard into the eclectic works in between.  Each museum took painstaking interest in how the space and flow of the installation affected the viewer’s perception of the artist’s work.  The ICA’s exhibit felt expansive and minimized the viewer in spatial relation, but at the same time guided the viewer, almost as a teacher, through the recurring themes in each of Josiah McElheny’s pieces.  In contrast, the Henry exhibition engulfed and embraced the viewer providing comfort without direction through the complex maze of Gary Hill’s continued experimentation.  Both exhibits provided a welcoming atmosphere in complexly differing manners, and concluded by making the viewer part of the art.  Upon exiting each exhibit I felt more in tune with the artists’ perception because I became part of the art.  Their reality became my reality.  

In conclusion, these exhibitions have provided insight into very complex conceptual processes of two very different artists.  The common drive behind their works questions reality based on their own perceptions.  As a process oriented individual, the works of Josiah McElheny remind me to continually grow and develop my processes through experimentation and study.  On the other hand, the works of Gary Hill has influenced my continuous search into human perception.  He is able to grow in considerable measures without having to completely alter course artistically, and this is something I would like to strive towards.

Works Cited

Burnett, James H. III.  “Josiah McElheny’s Expanding Universe”.  The Boston Globe.  16 June

2012.  1-3.  Web.  20 Sep. 2012.

“Gary Hill: Glossodellic Attractors”.  Henry Art Gallery. n.p.  n.d.  Web.  20 Sep. 2012.

Lee, Barbara, and Helen Molesworth.  “Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite”.  The

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.  22 Jun. 2012.  Web.  18 Sep. 2012.

Quasha, George. “Electronic Linguistics”.  Ediciones Pollgrafa (2009).  4-21.  Web.  15 Sep.

2012.

Upchurch, Michael.  “A Stroll With Sound/Video Artist Gary Hill Through His New Show”. 

The Seattle Times.  6 May 2012.  Web. 20 Sep. 2012.

Weinberg, David H.  “From the Big Bang to Island Universe: Anatomy of a Collaboration”. 

Narrative. 19. 2 (2011):  258-272.  Web. 

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[1] Island Universe was inspired by the old Lobmeyr chandeliers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Burnett 2).

[2]The artist stated in an article in the Boston Globe, “Of all the common materials available to artists, glass may be the most malleable, the easiest to change, the most constant, at the molecular level constantly moving, and perhaps most important, the most durable. There are paintings and works of art made with canvas and wood that are just a couple hundred years old and faded or in poor condition due to aging. And there are works of glass that are 500 years old or 3,500 years old that are still intact and as powerful and beautiful as in their beginning.”(Burnett 2).

[3] Gary Hill began his artistic career as a metal sculptor.  His later experimentation of language and image through video instillation led to his discovery of a principle of “electronic linguistics”.  His work paved the way for new explorations in consciousness, thinking and electronic composition (Quasha, 3).

[4] glossodelic attractors suggests a range of meanings from the etymologies “glosso-“ (fr. Greek “language, tongue”) and “-delic” (fr. Greek “make manifest, visible”) and resonates with “glossolalia” and “psychedelic.” “Attractors,” in addition to the mathematical meaning of “a set towards which a dynamical system evolves over time (e.g., strange attractor),” connects with the “-tropic” part of “psychotropic”—attractors that orient the mind, turn the mind in a new direction. The title indicates that the selected works perform singular initiations into dynamical/lingual events. As psychotropic languaging vehicles these works reorient the mind by altering our conception of what language is. They attract possible language realities—or, rather, lingualities.”
- George Quasha, in dialogue with Gary Hill and Charles Stein (Henry 1)

[5] Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment is a video experiment of Hill creating an LSD molecule while reciting a speech with each sentence backwards.  Further explanation of this and other works can be found at the artists personal site: garyhill.com.