If You Build It

The University of Texas and I haven’t always been the best of friends. But things change, and with the The Department of Art and Art History opening The Visual Arts Center i feel our relationship improving. The former site of The Jack S. Blanton Museum has been utterly transformed by architects Lake | Flato. Vaulted concrete ceilings have been exposed and natural light reintroduced into what was once an inaccessible, closeted, and stuffy space. Gone are two spiral staircases and returned is a stunning courtyard which for reasons unknown, was hidden from view and access. The gallery spaces are top notch. Clean. Professional. Invigorating. With tall ceilings, wood and concrete floors, mezzanines, good lighting, and a highly navigable gallery layout one can only imagine, until the official opening in September, how well this space will complement the work shown in it. Having spent a considerable amount of time in that building during the pursuit of my MFA, i can safely say that this renovation transforms, and maybe even saves, the entire building. It’s a new anchor for the department, with studio spaces, meeting rooms, offices, and lounges, that together with the galleries will be a new hive of activity.

I would venture to say that The VAC is a game changer, not only for UT and its students, but for Austin as a whole. Savvy director Jade Walker has set in place a great vision for inclusive programming that not only brings fantastic exhibitions to the space, but is integrally tied in with the education of students. Galleries devoted to student exhibitions selected by proposal, teaching galleries for professors to hang the work of visiting artists, and windows that look out on campus while acting as screens for rear projection provide engaging educational opportunities for those enrolled and the community at large. Hm, maybe i need a second MFA…

Seen positively in the context of Arthouse’s renovations, and sadly, with AMOA’s inability to ever get a new building off the ground, The VAC represents good things for Austin. It might just take up the mantle of another serious and smart Austin institution that i am always belly-aching for. There is a spirit of openness and collaboration within its walls that will hopefully spread to our cities other major players. This might be wishful thinking; that the leaders of these other spaces might be able to temporarily forgo their petty turf wars and work together rather than against one another, but The VAC is the first place in awhile that gives one the sense that this is even a possibility. For that alone Austin should not only be excited about whats to come, but grateful that its been put into motion.

Leslie Mutchler: Cabinets & Cosmos

The following essay was written to accompany Leslie Mutchler’s upcoming exhibition Green Space/Outer Space at The Courtyard Gallery at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on the UT campus. The exhibition runs from February 4 – March 7, 2010.

“Could we classify the luxuriant growth of objects as we do a flora or fauna, complete with tropical and glacial species, sudden mutations, and varieties threatened by extinction? Our urban civilization is witness to an ever-accelerating procession of generations of products, appliances, and gadgets by comparison with which mankind appears to be a remarkably stable species.”1

Modernist architecture and design followed the austere path of standardization. Reduction and simplicity promised to make our lives better through speed and efficiency, albeit with a large dosage of homogenization on the side. But Modernism’s quest for cleanliness of form and space seemed to forget one thing. Human nature and its tendency to follow all but the straight paths, and our desire to decorate, ornament, and fill our lives with an inordinate amount of stuff.

This stuff takes many forms: furniture, family photographs, books, records, knick-knacks, gadgets – you name it and people have it. It comes to us via catalogs, the Internet, thrift stores and hand-me downs and proceeds to fill our living spaces to the gills, transforming them into modern day cabinets of wonder. Few of us could live in the functionalist sobriety of a Modernist home. Could you part with your stuff? Call it an effect of capitalist consumerism or a deeper, psychological part of our nature, but we as a species like a lot of stuff in our lives.

Leslie Mutchler’s digital collages take images of our stuff – the standardized Ikea and Pottery Barn bookcases and cabinets, or the green swatches of color from their catalog pages – and builds things out of them. Choosing a single piece of furniture, a shelving unit for example, Mutchler scans and manipulates it within the computer to build complex architectural forms and landscapes. They are skeletons built from the accumulation of the duplicated object, their exteriors transparent, their structural bones cast from the very functional things one would normally find within them. In Outer Space/ Green Space (Space Station) a replicated bookshelf becomes the International Space Station, or the proposed space habitat the Stanford Torus, floating in a matte black sea, at once formal experiment and tongue in cheek comment on our accumulating natures and that of commodity culture. In Mutchler’s outer space images it is as though all storage units have finally been filled and we are faced with jettisoning our stuff into the cosmos. In our Utopian future we will be reunited with our things, which are left untainted by the vacuum of space.

In contrast, the green space images take earthly locations–Versailles, Chicago City Hall, and the California Academy of Sciences–and remove any trace of architectural presence. These structures become the negative spaces and swatches of green pulled from the pages of catalogs define the landscape, gardens, or in the case of Chicago City Hall, its green roof. Mutchler’s sparse images suggest that our current fascination with being “green” risks becoming another trend, a strategy for selling commodities, and simply a style; much to the detriment of the environment.

This notion of a reduction to mere style, of Modernist architecture or Ikea furniture, and environmental stewardship, bind these two groups of images together. Stylization saps things of their power and meaning, reducing ideas to surfaces and commodities that only need to endlessly replicated and plugged into the consumer system. Mutchler’s work navigates quietly in the seam between our psychological need for these objects and the sheer ridiculousness of peering over the precipice into a sea of mass-produced commodities and having to ask ourselves which one we like best. But her work is not a condemnation of this system, or of the objects contained within it. It is a simple and poetic act of reuse that allows us to see the pervasive nature of our stuff and for better or worse, our unwavering love of it.

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1 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 1996): 1.

Images Courtesy of Leslie Mutchler. Left To Right: Outer Space/ Green Space (Chicago City Hall). 2009. Digital print on Somerset paper. 30 ” x 40”. Outer Space/ Green Space (Space Station). 2009. Digital print on Somerset paper. 40 ” x 40”. (Constructed from a shelving unit from the Pottery Barn furniture collection). Outer Space/ Green Space (Versailles). 2009. Digital print on Somerset paper. 30 ” x 40”.

Warm Up & Cool Down

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me the following comment in regards to last weeks post that i think raises some good issues.

“Austin- “providing time, easy living, an ability to support start up projects, exhibitions, and collaborations”?
I can’t help but think this an old mantra. Am I wrong? I ask because in my short time here, I think Austin seems pretty expensive for an “incubator.” Depending on where you live, you’re paying Brooklyn prices for a Baltimore-sized city. Rent costs do seem like the not-so invisible elephant in the room to me. Maybe the cost is a whole separate issue, but it is one that could ultimately limit Austin’s creative possibilities.”

Do we call Austin a good incubator because we are trying to remain positive and don’t want to face the fact that Austin is expensive and has some serious growing up to do? Or, is Austin truly a fantastic incubator city? My previous city of residence, and subsequent frame of reference, is “the mistake on the lake“. Cleveland has a stellar museum, universities, an art school, a few galleries, but in general there is not much happening in terms of visual art. Opportunity and audience is slim. However, its dirt cheap to live there, actually its less than dirt cheap, but in addition to low rent its apparent you need some other things for a city to be a true incubator. A balance between cost and creative opportunity has to be struck. I could live in the Nevada desert for nothing but not many opportunities will be coming my way, which is unfortunate because i happen to love the Nevada desert and would move there in a second if i knew how to lure some art world luminaries there on occasion.

So, incubators essentially need a plentiful supply of affordable living and studio space, some semblance of a community, an audience, opportunities to exhibit, receive feedback and grants, have studio visits with the moments art world hot shots, and a few local institutions to spice things up and remind us of the larger conversation. Proximity to a larger art center strikes me as both a blessing and a curse. Too close and people get siphoned off to the bigger places, but that immediate access can also be tremendously beneficial, especially when the regional blues set in. Too close and you might also develop a crusading insecurity complex, from afar, D.C. seems to be in possession of one of those…but what about Baltimore or Philadelphia? These cities seem affordable and still close in proximity to New York. Thinking about this balance between cost and creative opportunity, what about St. Louis, Omaha, or Kansas City? Where would Austin come in using this rudimentary system? Aside from a serious dearth of plentiful and affordable space we seem to have at least a smattering of many of these other things, yet if i had to assign a Texas city status as a true incubator Houston would take the prize…what gives Austin?

Move Em’ Out

The most common line of advice i hear given to artists in Austin is that they need to get out of dodge. I myself dispense with it on a semi-regular basis, and would probably do so more often if i had actually taken those sage-like words more seriously myself, thereby not feeling like a complete hypocrite. The argument is that there are bigger and better opportunities to be found elsewhere, along with more diverse audiences, collectors, and things to see. Its a good argument. Take a single trip to LA, NYC, Berlin, hell, even Houston, and you’ll quickly discover the energy, opportunity, and conversation that occurs around the arts in those places is staggering. This doesn’t mean sleepy Austin is a bad place, but if you’re concerned with moving your artistic career forward, Austin’s glass ceiling for the visual arts is pretty low. This also doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t value our regional communities and work hard to support them in any way we can, but, using regionalism as an excuse for provincial attitudes doesn’t help anyone either.

So what’s the alternative to riding on out of here? Dressing up and trying to play New York in Austin? No, though it is slightly entertaining to watch, this generally makes one look pretentious, insecure, and spatially unconscious. Do we embrace our regionalism with unquestioning arms? No, you end up looking like the clone of those playing New York only booted and spurred. All of this ultimately comes down to what you want for yourself as a person in the arts. The notion of  trying to create spaces for conversation, moving things forward, making better work, being critical, and working hard to be engaged with the larger conversation is applicable regardless of your place on the map. Use Austin for what its best at; providing time, easy living, an ability to support start up projects, exhibitions, and collaborations. Then, eventually, if its right for you, you’ll have to leave. Austin, like other small regional art communities, is an incubator for bigger things. Good. This may change one day and the city may be able to provide more opportunities and support to its visual artists past a certain point in their careers, but until then, start saving for that bus ticket.

Motor Mouth

Austin’s historical memory always strikes me as slightly anemic. We often fail to see the existing precedents, historical and contemporary, for projects within our own city limits. It’s not that this knowledge needs to be used to prevent these projects from coming to fruition, but instead can be a way to learn and enter into the larger conversation. Being relevant and informed is half the battle. Russell’s comments on “The Future List” got me thinking about historical memory, collaboration and the spaces that highlight this idea as part of their missions. Places that act as a site for production, exhibition, and conversation between individuals and disciplines strike me as increasingly important. Physically present conversation with other human beings may be overly romanticized, but in the face of our tech-saturated, anti-intellectual world, i can’t help but to think those dialogues are becoming more and more vital. In order to beef up our historical memory, amongst other things, how do we start these kinds of discussions? Where do we host them? How do we frame them? Who can lead them? How do we make them inclusive? Three great examples of possible resources, models, and strategies:*

• http://a.aaaarg.org/: “is a conversation platform – at different times it performs as a school, or a reading group, or a journal.”

• http://www.16beavergroup.org/: “16Beaver is the address of a space initiated/run by artists to create and maintain an ongoing platform for the presentation, production, and discussion of a variety of artistic/cultural/economic/political projects. It is the point of many departures/arrivals.”

• http://basekamp.com/: “Basekamp is a non-commercial organization of people researching and co-developing interdisciplinary, self-organized art projects with other individuals and groups in various authorship-blurring configurations for the past decade.”

*(Much credit to guru Noah Simblist for turning me on to these spaces and resources over the past few years.)