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culpture in an bandoned Field
John Kelsey
Some sculptures seem to want a pedestal othes obscene grafti MIChel LeiS
Erection Set Sculpture is from the Latin sculpere to scratch, to carve wheeas from status position comes statuere, to set up, and statue Like the bronzes that occupy ou parks nd plazas these woks come wth the names of famous men, and stand up like homoerections in space, sometimes on pedestals Statues also call for grafti and these have been hit with at least a sort of make-up Rachel Harison does not cast or cave but, in several senses set up her woks erect, o course, but also establish, plan, and maybe even trick them into situatons where they will be caught or blamed How else can we explain their excessive costumes and colors or the way they distact us from their erectness with drinks, pictures, Syrofoam apples and other unexpected offerings? So many shameless tactics to both grab and diver our atention from a sculptural condition these works do not seem exacty comfortable with or maybe from the feeling of being in the wrong room These are the most psychological sculptures we've ever met, so it seems fing to cal them complexes, rathe than combines" And a paintob can be like a blush or a ash a sort of betrayal or else like the ink of a retreating octopus With status and stature come Woods, Alexander, Goe and company although some of these ae famously unstable pillas AI Gore got the most votes lost anyway and ended up with an Oscar instead the strange sign that Tiger Woods really did belong in the white world of gof was to be suited in a green PG blazer when Hurcane Katrina hit in 2005 New Orleans resident Fats Domino was proclamed dead his big house spraypainted RIP Fats You wil be mssed") then a day or two later was announced back among the iving the merchant and navigator Amerigo Vespucci discovered America befoe Coumbus, but ths claim has been disputed, and although Ameica took his name we never celebate Vespucci Day etc What these sculptues tell us about status is that it's an historica, uridical and retinal setup 120
that's only possible if something else is also positioned as spec tator, citizen or nobody And the men she chooses, the statues she eects in so many ways travesty their own veticality, remind ing us of the hollowness hidden at the center of eve bronze These are cmplexed erectons On a recent trip to Corsica, Harrison photographed the an cient menhirs, or vaguely man-shaped stones that stand around the isand with no other job today but to have their pictures taken by tourists ts a funny coincidence that the men in menhir is actualy Middle Breton for stone" (menhir means long stone) And, that ong before Harisons visit Alberto Giacometi (with Michel Leiris) gazed upon the same long, mysterious men" If their inuence can be seen in the Swiss sculptor's pinshaped gures Leiris on the other hand would go on to write obsessive autobiographical accounts lining sexual impotence and colo nialist adventurism in Manhd and L frique fantme). There is something so inescapaby idiotic about these standing stones and we are not sure if this has more to do with their timeless ver ticality with the fact that they never stop keeping it up o if it's rather more about the fact of ooking at them now through the viewnder o a msy point-and-shoot and getting nothing back but more instant moments o this mute eternity Stones can be read and these must have meant something once, but whatever they signifed then was probably as idiotic as what we read in them today man-made erections in an empty landscape du rocks If Harrison borows anything om the menhirs in her recent sculptures, it's not ther mystery but ther comedy P'i y remember muscle magazines"
nothing to do with building muscles Joe raard
Thee is no other way to take these new scuptures but as stand-ins and imposters Standing in for men they perform their statuesque act in drag and vertcality as a sor o camp routine.
ey are not only set-ups but place hoders because to have status or mean something is rst of all to be positioned and plant ed like a post or pole When a Harrison inscribes itself in space ad in discourse it is with a transvestite sort of intelligence, or like Johnny Depp in hs pirate role a sort of chameleon in earings at was it that Jacques acan said about the phallus and veils, ow it always hides in skirs? Claude Lvi-Strauss might be a so o key to this sculptural mens warehouse splitting itsef be fore our eyes nto a binary male/female set-up It is both an ee etay structure and a gateway, positioned such that the viewer passes between its two poles cock and hen The mounted game birds usher us into a game of either/or so that we iteraly traverse this hallwaysized gap that both separates and founds a sexal relation, whch, according to Lacan does not exist To mount a game bird is also to stuff and sew it and it's funy how the unmanly arts and crafts, in the end, are what prove te unters skill and courage in the feld To take a trophy ready ade and place it on a post is in a way to re-prove this thing, t also to fuf the post Claude Lvi-Strauss is a conversation not oly between mae and female but between columns and feath ers, ad the fact that the columns are in turn suppoted by a US ostal Service box and a Sharp inket fax box reminds us that ats gong on between the birds and the sculpture's two haves s no less efcient and confused than what happens between people when we say we communicate As nearly obsoete forms of communication, the postal system and the fax also say some tig about what communicaton itsef outmodes n the name of eliinating distances, and whether the space between these to tes is more open than cosed at this pont is a good question Like the colorized statues that surround him the cock is paited because in the animal kingdom the ferce order of virility" aways comes with make-up like our poiticians today AI Goe comes not only accessoried with a thermostat but dapped i te bright, sunny pinks and greens of a Monet lil y pond The iconvenient truth about this sculpture is that its hard, vertical ass is also a skin a sensitive Impressionist surface smeared ove an inner emptiness, nothing but a quickdry surface effect lexander the reat' paint job mimics the red and blue graphics
of a readymade waste paper basket Jeff Gordon, the racecar driver, is represented on this hollow can by a slick headshot re calng an earlier Harrison reference: Buckethead the guitarist who replaced Slash in Guns n Roses is a sort of humansculpture who appeas on stage with a take-out fied chicken bucket cov ering his head) As racecars and their drivers are branded with corporate logos Dupont, Pepsi, Nextel), so has the conqueror Alexander been decorated with a festve harlequin skin, as well as a gold-starred cape and spooky make-up rom some bygone decade he child-sized mannequin that tops him off is a sexless creature and, mimicking the pose of eorge Washington Crssing the Delaware, makes over and doubles something heroic and statuesque in other Harrison-esque tems he mannequins head is tted with a plastic Abe Lincoln mask, acing backwards Janus like, and in the end there is no end to this work, no right way to face it It is an irreconcilable doubled, bi- or trans-sculptural com plex perched on a clean whte plinth two sizes too small for the mass it pretends to support More diabolical styling tips: Fats Domino dressed in vintage Louise Nevelson with a readymade can of Slim Fast for a hat; Fassbinder carried on a wave of foam packing peanuts wearing purple Spandex cycling shorts two pars of glasses and a backwards Dick Cheney mask Pasquale Paoli bunded head to toe in a moving blanket People dressed lke this woud be bashed in some states There is a point beyond which sculptural properties of material, form and structure disperse into more hystercal outbeaks of style and vernacua reference and this is the very point around which the best Harsons tend to both blossom and congeal Between disguise and sculpture is a world where people like Jack Smith and Leigh Bowery come aive This is the theate that Michael ied once accused Minimasm of except here it becomes a shamelessy and intensely sculptual force as do shopping reading magaines, wigs and other moden reaities And if Harrisons sculpture is so caught up in this chaos of signs and surface effects its precisely because its so seious about space: in a time when space and image lose thei distinc tion and the od, ideal distance between viewer and object is a ways already lled up and occupied by a thousand communica121
tions sculpture too fnds ways of making itself multi-sufaced and schzo-temporal In order to re-occupy ou contemporary no-space it rades in its tmeless pose fo a teporay one or for a manic series of appearances. � c
I remember n wood-working class making a magazine rack. J Bnd
Harrison has ofen appropated commercal display systems fom againe racks and anneuins to video screens and shelves and many of her works assault the viewer's attention with the same gimmicks any 99-cent store uses to promote discounted erchandise Evething Must Go! Oftentimes the merchandise itself appears readymade in a sculptural set-up a work both displays and consists of a can of Sim Fast eploying t as both conen and material; or a stack of glossy celebiy tablods shoved under one corner of a plinth intervenes as both pop cul tua reference and as a structual eement hat literaly gets under the feet of the sculpture shiting its weight. We could easily discuss such instances as a critue of consumer society and the arketing of urban life but we can also approach them in a more direct de-subliated way: as active sculptual facts with real sculptural conseuences In a riot for example things are ransformed in the act of their spontaneous displaceent6 Auto mobes street sgns and othe objects are torn from ther normal functions as well as fo their normal meanings and suddenly literalized as obstacles or projectiles in urban space. his is how gesture conves signs back into raw materals. In a riot and a sculpture such tactical acts of re-appropriation disrup the circu lation of bodies and information within a given terrain if only or a moent. When sculpture opens itself up to other activites such as photography or window-shopping and sets itsef up as a sort of switchng staton whee cultural materials and meanings ae violently dsconnected and recombined it puts itsef into ux too. 122
These are trans-sculptural complexes peverse and sometmes manic redistributions of the sensible world. A readymade obect or image Slim Fast or Leonardo DCaprio is neve fully inte grated into a arrison it always retains a degree of material auton omy and non-belonging and is for this reason a means by whch the sculptue willuly produces an internal self-difeentiation.7 The sculpture clais Slim ast as a component but in so doing im medatey unsetles its own prope status and teritory. arrisons complexes recall Marcel Broodthaers' rst sculptura work Pense Bte (194) produced by sinking volumes of hs own poety nto a lup of wet plaster. Announcng his career shift from poet to visual artis Broodthaers' simple gesture made his books unread able by transforming them nto scuptural objects the only way to get at the poems now woud be to deolsh the artwok8 But unlike the Broodthaers a Harison allows its eadymades to be as readable as they are on the supemarket shelf and in fact this readability (and sometimes the shef too s one of the sculptures unavoidabe and dening ualities. he work not only includes the can it reroutes and prates a the comuncativity that comes built into its design. With the cylindrical form and the gloss of the packaging come the information on its surace the social and cultural connotaions of the diet beveage as well as the historical memoy and subjective associatons that accompany such pod ucts and we reaie that there is no way to identify what is specif ically sculptura in a arrson without takng all of this into ac count too These works are as heterogeneous and selfdifering as Pense-Bte with the difference that they perform this in a wide-open easy-access even exhibitionistic manner. And if they remain hermetic or opaue this is also a result of thei tactcal exroversions. Tote and tatoo In a vain attempt to keep it looking bright and festve ocal shop owners have taken to spray-painting colored polka dots on i k Klly
Pooaph of Ja Sh at ony Isand Aust oesy ara Atee a wn a
etrning to te elation eteen Harisons forms and te pant jos teyve een sjected to anoter pototype comes to mind ae & Fame 1999) Mike Kelleys spaypainted fax con ete eprodction of te Cinaton Wising Wel in os Ange es In ts ork Kelley as exploing te potenta for visal osion in te apaard tnting of a gven form or mage. Look g at pooy coloried vntage postcads o ktsc torst attrac tos sc as caves and rock formations te atist as prsing cofsed noting' space ose erotic carge e related ot to gender slippage and to te teat o te infme n te same ay tat Kelley locates possilties of cltra mixing and socal sesion in an aestetcs of formal instailty and caos e od say tat Harrison elaorates smia proposals in terms of ontemporay designanddispay ctre Becase ie com ecia design scceeds y dssolving any clear frontie eteen a prodct and its packaging eteen sstance and image arsons sclptres ld temselves arond te acking or ocpaton of sc frontes opening troesome gaps and asig te ork to stammer and dysfnction in te very places ee dsplay and commnication occr. A readymade manne in fo exampe ecomes a adically ndecidae fgre n a sclpta complex sc as . W Fassbine. t is ot fge in te traditiona sclptral sense and fgred display o medation fgred as sc And y givng it to faces male and female plaster and rer ackards and foards Harrson cases an imedate confsion eteen te space of etail and te space o sjective constrction Tis s also te opoitical space of sefelp and cosmetic sgery t satted and travestied e gede confson in tis ork comes package t te scp tes orma and aestetic ndecidaility and ere t dysfnc tios or disdentifes is pecsely at te points sjective and sclptral ee commerca design normaly prodces te ill sio of a coeent seamless experence Harrisons are divided tpied selves and anyting vetica o solid in tem s fonded o tese desjectiviing alts and nterptons of identty
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Foming a oion line end er vetical forest of colmns and ges is Vage f he Beagle Harrsons series of dgita potogaps A ro read orontally from let to igt and ack agan tese inkjetted heashs are taken om mannens mens rones Bancsis nting tropies posters recod coves and magaines Beginning and ending it closeps of Cosican menirs te seres like te voyage t as named afte is a so of est for te origins of sclpte t in ts case a comically circla one e menrs ose erectons ave peaps een overy stressed aove are no pt on eal footing it a Bddaike state o Gertrde Stein and a stfed eave or exampe and Haisons democratic and orontal potogapic emrace takes n many otes too Styrofoam ig dsplays Kevin Bacon a detal o a Giacometi Byonc etc Sclpte (and identifcation) it seems egins and ends eveyee in te pak te street sop indos yard sales magaines te intenet etc And te ateal aange ment of tese images eminds s tat standing p is only one possile traectory or a ok tat is sclptal. Anote takes te form of a walk, as te aist a sot o ee in ts garden o foms goes camera in and trog everyday life colectng sclptres eever tey tn p If eseere in Harrisons ok te potograp is pt into pay as scptra material ere it contines ts ork y ote means o prodce sclptre is some times merely to notce t to fnd it saly not in te msem I rememe dgging arond
in ce cold ater for an orange soda pop. rememer Belmondos are ass (a move frst in a terie a movie called I tnk Leda. I ememe a lot o
movie star nose jo rmos e B
123
Mike Kelley F a F Insalatn v of Fra mix m 3 x x ch Magasi, NA Grenoble
Phoograph by Ad o
Wih phoography come sars arriso has appropraed images of celebriies may imes before (Liz Marly Mel ec pug her sculpures o awkward coversaios o oly wih phoog raphy bu wih People who ca oly be cosumed ad kow as readymediaed idusral producios ad usually as edors ers of oher dusrial producs such as caed ced ea. Ahees ad move sars joi Harriso i her work o oly as commo oud readymade maerials bu as muses ad models. I is a ucerai wideope space bewee Star Magaze ad he ar iss sudio ad wha beer guides ha hese huma commodi ies ad proper ames who move wh such ease bewee he bedroom ad he cover of a ablod? Mos fas would agree ha Michael Jackso is oe of he greaes lvig arworks of our ime a leas sce Warhol (sice Kg Ludwig I eve Ad he here is OJ., who like MJ is coeced (righly or wrogly o gloves kives ad sex crimes. Boh have edured he brighes harshes spolighs ad eiher has ever faied us as sars or as works Appropraed as he ile of Harrisos las exhibio i New York impsos If I Dd t could eve be a aesheic sloga for ariss oday a perfec aricuao of he ucerai relaio bewee producer ad produc i a ime where ariss oo come readymade Amog oher hgs wha he ceebriy eaches he sculpure is ha someimes he mos effecive way o show up is by fallg apa or a leas o ivove he viewer his dramaic ad aesheic possbiliy. Ad here is also he esso abou public ad privae he wo aces, ad how o pu a appearace wihou oaly givig yourself away Bu he mos capivaig ce ebriies are he oes who keep us fxaed o he mome of criss where hese wo faces migh faly colapse o oe. ca dal ad damage corol are aso sculpura possibiliies as is he wa o be aloe" o cera arrisos who ever sop seem ig o ur her backs o us he celebriy is a model for a way of showig up he galery ad he markeplace sculpure self lke cerai popuar womes magazies proposes models for a coempora pol iics ad aesheics of he sef. Is here ay possbiliy of re-appro priag lifesye culure as a meas of subecive emacipaio? Ca readymade bopoliical oios o he elf be piraed ad
rasformed o echiques we ca acually use? Is here, o he mos basic evel ay way o eperece a program ha already icludes us i s fucio? 's he way i ca simulaeously occupy ad abado he pace i sads i ad i he ruses by whch i opes up spaces of uceaiy bewee he maerias i appropriaes ad he uses hese come programmed wh ha a complex such as W Fassbder or Aleader the reat becomes a isace of poliics. Plce meas ellig us wha sculpure is polics reopes he quesio, or refuses o aswer i i jus oe way. Ad his is why whe hese sculpures sad up i heir pla ces hey do so mpperly ad like shoplfers fd her popeies wherever i whaever coex. Jacques Racre has deed pol iics as he ormaio o a subjec aroud wo coradico erms acve ad passive. I oher words whe he age o a aco s also ad immediaely he maeral ha s rasformed by his ac io here is poliics. culpure he whe i becomes poliical, s a specic reaio bewee ways of puig higs ogeher a of akg iself apa There s always oe more compoe ad i could be ayhig a ca, a wig a video a vacao ha shows up o aagoize he idea ha sculpure will ever be complee or ideical o iself. culpure sars aga from is ow coradicios I sads up o ge a beer view o wha's already bee e behid.
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