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One
can imagine that if play were absent from our lives, the world in which we
live would be a much smaller, narrower universe. The unknown has been
discovered, the familiar expanded, the indescribable expressed, as the
result of countless hours spent playing, experimenting, or doing things
with no particular consequence other than it seemed fun at the time. It
has led to profound concepts, breathtaking accomplishments, and as this
exhibition purports, great works of art. Though
play has often led to notable creative works, it was not until the
Surrealist and Dada artists introduced play, chance, and experimentation as
art that the value of play was recognized. Avoiding pretensions of
seriousness, the eight artists gathered for the exhibition PLAY
offer
us, at first glance, playful gestures, silly observations, and/or
inconsequential and bizarre experimentations. They invite us to be amazed,
humored, and satisfied before we need to ask “what is it about?” And
yet with further consideration, their works reveal a variety of complex
investigations into social and personal concerns, elements of chance, and
careful observations. Play, as utilized and/or examined by the artists in
this exhibit emerges specifically from the type of activity that comes
from childhood - games, toys, competition, role-playing, etc. All adults
themselves, these artists affirm the premise that through a re-visitation
of playful exploration, by taking the seemingly circuitous route, new
realms as well as forgotten ones can be discovered.
For
the British photographer and curator Sian Bonnell the mundane
setting of one’s daily surroundings is a source of great inspiration.
Through her alterations of domestic landscapes in her series Everyday
Dada, Bonnell creates renewed wonderment by introducing actions that
suggest the possibility of a housewife gone mad, or a child’s play gone
curiously array, and which inspire us to consider the aesthetic potential
of your average lunch meat sandwich. Artist Doug
Holden’s art-actions hold a similar allegiance to Dada (which called
for the celebration of life through art, often through the act of turning
notions of art upon its head). Employing randomness and playful behavior
in his artwork, as seen through the kickball toss that is the central
action of his two-channel video piece Ball,
Holden both creates and disrupts the visual occurrence of a ball passing
between the two video monitors, not unlike the child who both builds a
sandcastle only to find utter satisfaction in owning its destruction.
The
wife/husband team, Mary Magsamen & Stephan Hillerbrand,
have engaged
in a type of competitive play within their collaborative works, which
began following years of individual art making. Often through the guise of
childish behaviors and games, together they create pieces that depict
themselves continuously competing to one up or excise the other. In air
hunger, a photography and video installation, they create an
ethereal womb-like environment where between the snap of bubbles, and the
exhalations and inhalations, we learn what is at stake in their activity
is nothing less then life itself.
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Children
playing often find themselves to be a source of attention for
photographers as well as doting parents. In capturing the acts of pure
enjoyment and thrill, the photographer creates the opportunity to
celebrate, reclaim, or in some cases call into question the play of our
youth. Since 1999 Alessandra Sanguinetti has
returned to her family in Argentina to work collaboratively with two young
female cousins for the series The
Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their
Dreams. Together they visually recreate their dreams and echo the
vital role “playing” serves - to explore what cannot always be
expressed verbally, and pay homage to the unbridled possibilities that
fill the young women’s minds before the impositions of social and
cultural orders alter their innocent freedom. Considering the
impact and the influence the objects we play with holds in molding the
persons we become, William Laven offers
a straight-on examination of the toy models of war planes marketed for
children’s play. His work reflects on how the tools of war are presented
as familiar and comfortable. In producing each piece at a scale of 1/72 to
its real life counterpart, Laven creates a mid ground between the toy and
the actual warplane in which their influence can be explored.
For
many of us, as the years between youth and adulthood grow, an air of
supposed maturity or sophistication seems to dictate our behavior,
preventing potential slurps of spaghetti, spontaneous races down crowded
sidewalks, and so on. In Meredith Allen’s
sugary rich landscape images from the Melting
Ice Pop series, she reveals the doorways that play can open. Allen
allows the subject of her photograph to go beyond the brink, and holds
against the desire to capture perfection, and instead records the moment
at which things seem to come apart. The result of which is an excitement
of the senses - of sight, smell, touch and even taste – and the
resurrection memory unattainable by a linear approach.
While
much of the
play in this exhibition has been performed by the artists themselves in or
prior to the creation of the work, multi-media artist Olivia
Robinson’s
interactive work is dependent on our active engagement, inviting us to
play by shaking, cranking, and clicking her work! In
bringing us into an intimate sphere through contact with the familiar
objects that she has “hacked” electronically and/or manually (the Magic-8
ball, a music box, and the stereoscopic View
Master), Robinson reveals bits and pieces of the personal – her
body, her loves, and her travels as recorded over the past few weeks prior
to this exhibition.
Whether
relating to the exhibition’s theme as a point of departure or
exploration, the artists featured remind us of the immeasurable value and
the enormous potential for discovery that resides in "play”.
-Ariel
Shanberg, 2005 |
