CRITICAL REFLECTION
Meow Wolf: House of Eternal Return
Meow Wolf Arts Complex 1352 Rufina Circle
IT’S GOING TO BE REALLY, REALLY HARD NOT TO SPEND THE NEXT FEW hundred words raving about Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return. Seriously, it’s just not like anything you’ve ever seen before, even if you, like me, consider yourself familiar with the Meow Wolfian aesthetic: unselfconsciously hyperactive, drenched in neon, and completely, consistently weird. A morning tour of the House just prior to its grand opening revealed a positively electric vibe, with dozens of artists busy wiring, polishing, welding, and otherwise engaged in all manner of art making. Comparisons to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were immediate and recurring; from the top-secret aspects of the project (ground was broken over a year ago, but only a trickle of information has been available to the public) to the marvelously off-the-wall weirdness of, well, all of it, the House is easily Santa Fe’s most talked-about art space. By now, most Santa Feans know that George R.R. Martin bought the long-shuttered Silva Lanes
bowling alley last year and made Meow Wolf his tenants. I went to Silva Lanes a couple of times as a teenager before it closed, so I figured I would be somewhat familiar with the space, but apart from the neon-squiggled black carpet, I wasn’t. The warehouse-y building on Rufina Circle has been utterly, ingeniously transformed. Not only are thousands of square feet devoted to exhibition space, but there are also rooms where (for a reasonable fee) visitors can use 3-D printers and laser cutters, or take classes in digital mapping and neon-making. There’s even a taproom courtesy of Duel Brewery, whose headquarters are just around the corner. The use of multipurpose space gives credence to Meow Wolf’s oft-repeated goal of community outreach, while simultaneously guaranteeing income if House tickets are slow. To the left of a curved information desk is a gift shop, and to the left of that, winding around a dark corner, is the entrance to the installation
itself, where visitors open an unremarkable wood door onto the manicured lawn of a true-to-scale Victorian home, whose wrap-around porch features intricately carved trim and hanging flowers. Once you go up the steps and through the front door, you enter a gracious living room with a tufted sofa and a television that plays closed-circuit content created by Meow Wolf. One of the first giveaways that something is amiss occurs in the dining room, whose wallpaper looks like it’s warped and melting, and whose white wainscoting dips and curves disconcertingly. On the table is a novel written by Lucius Selig (one of the House’s fictional characters) with a seal on the cover that boasts “Over 100 Million Copies Will Be Sold!” Strange little clues to the house’s inhabitants are everywhere; you’ll be struck (sometimes downright dumbfounded) by the detailed, cunning use of materials and space, abundant testimony to the collective’s joyful circumvention of traditional art. As a recovering Luddite, I’m most impressed with Meow Wolf’s mind-boggling technical acumen, made visible—and often touchable and audible— around every corner of the installation. Paintings are great and everything, but inserting a motionsensing, moving eyeball into the knot of an aspen tree? That’s next-level stuff. You might think of House within the context of an experiential venue like St. Louis’s City Museum, or else as a sort of counterculture visual attraction like the Ra Paulette Caves—only on acid. With Santa Fe’s median age hovering around 45 years old, the city’s dearth of activities for young people is a major source of discontent, which is one of the reasons House feels so blessedly welcome. The site hopes to draw around 100,000 visitors a year, and though its location in the industrial Siler Road neighborhood isn’t exactly glamorous, its southerly setting offers car travelers a relatively quick jag off 1-25, with free, plentiful parking to boot. It’s an undoubtedly experimental, complex project that feels like a breath of fresh air not only for Santa Fe’s art scene but for its community at large. —Iris McLister House of Eternal Return, Meow Wolf Arts Complex, installation view, 2016
APRIL
2016
THE magazine | 37