Art 365 2011 Catalog by Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition

C O N T E N T S

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ART 365 INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS JULIA KIRT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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GRACE GROTHAUS SYNTHETIC LANDSCAPE: THE NEW OK - ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO - GRACE GROTHAUS: AN IMPOSED LANDSCAPE, SHANNON FITZGERALD - GRACE GROTHAUS: LAYERED LANDSCAPES, LOUISE SIDDONS

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AARON HAUCK TRANSMUTATIONS OF THE STONE AGE AND “I GENERATION” - ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO - THE PHENOMENA OF MATERIAL / DISPOSABLE CULTURE, SHANNON FITZGERALD - CULTURAL IDENTITY (DE)CONSTRUCTION, KELSEY K ARPER

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GEOFFREY HICKS THE PHOTOGRAPHER - ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO - GEOFFREY HICKS: THE SIGHT OF PRODUCTION, SHANNON FITZGERALD - SEE AND BE SEEN: GEOFFREY HICKS’ THE PHOTOGRAPHER, BRIAN HEARN

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LIZ RODDA TOMORROWS - ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO - A DESIRABLE TRAJECTORY, SHANNON FITZGERALD - SHE WILL ENCOUNTER SOME KIND OF AN ACCIDENT, ALISON HEARST

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FRANK WICK TUSSIN SPACE - ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO - IS (IT) THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?, AND OTHER THOUGHTS, SHANNON FITZGERALD - STRANGELY FAMILIAR: FRANK WICK’S TUSSIN SPACE, SARAH JESSE

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ART 365 SPONSOR RECOGNITION OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION INFORMATION, ART 365 VENUES & CREDITS

ART 365 INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

JULI A K IRT, E X EC UTI V E DIREC TOR

The Art 365 exhibition epitomizes the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s commitment to support artists living and working in our state. Combining financial support of $12,000 per artist with critical feedback through an ongoing relationship with the guest curator, Art 365 provides pivotal career support that propels artists’ studio practice and broadens their professional exposure. This is only the second installment of the project, offering significant artist support for our region. This exhibition dovetails with the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s other programs that highlight, encourage and guide Oklahoma artists. For the first time, five promising writers from the Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship have contributed essays highlighting each of the five artists. The Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship encourages new writing that is informed, articulate, inspired and engages audiences in contemporary art. Through this biennial yearlong program, each of the twelve Fellows produces new art writing and curatorial projects in mentorship with art world luminaries. Art 365 also reinforces the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s other programs providing funding and critical validation such as project grants, Fellowships, professional development and visibility through web and print publications. Thank you first goes to the artists: Grace Grothaus, Aaron Hauck, Geoffrey Hicks, Liz Rodda and Frank Wick. These artists’ drive, exceptional concepts, and openness to the process make the exhibition constructive for all involved. Many thanks to curator Shannon Fitzgerald, who has brought keen insight and well-timed interchange to enliven both the artists’ projects and the direction of the exhibition. Exhibition sponsors invested in the research and development time for the artists, helping us offer artists more funding than ever before. Thank you to major sponsors the National Endowment for the Arts, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Oklahoma Arts Council, Kirkpatrick Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Oklahoma Humanities Council, and Allied Arts. Support of individual donors Jean Ann Fausser, John McNeese and John Richardson and many others strengthen the exhibition. Their backing pressed us to offer as much financial support, visibility and critical validation to the artists as possible. Thank you for your entrepreneurial support. We are indebted to our venue partners, [Artspace] at Untitled and Living Arts of Tulsa, for allowing artists to develop ideas for their spaces and helping this exhibition to reach broad audiences. The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Board continues to support the vision and implementation of this exhibition, for which they deserve thanks. Also, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition staff works conscientiously to execute this program. Thank you for viewing this catalog and learning about the artists’ projects.

G R A C E

G R O T H A U S

SYNTHETIC L ANDSC APE: THE NE W OK

Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 8, 2011, plastics, fuel line, LEDs, custom software, and electrical hardware, 24 x 48 x 6 inches.

S T A T E M E N T

GR AC E GROTHUA S

A RTIST STATEMENT

B I O G R A P H Y

Synthetic Landscape: The New OK

Beginning with westward expansion in the 1800s and continuing through the oil boom of the twenties and thirties to today early in the 21st century, the Oklahoma landscape has been variously redefined and sculpted by industry. Synthetic Landscape: The New OK is a series of translucent and backlit paintings that abstractly illustrate the state’s agro/industrial history. Each expressive and panoramic painting represents a site in Oklahoma important to that history. Sites include the oil refinery of Ponca City, tank farms of Cushing, and wind farms across the state, to name a few. In each, a collision of organic systems and industrial modification is apparent. Likewise, the materials used to create these works—various industrial plastics as well as leaves and plants taken from sites across Oklahoma—work together to illustrate the complex relationship between the natural world and industry inherent in the world today. Additionally, sensors in combination with LED backlighting in each composition carry these paintings out of the traditional, static picture plane to a dynamic, changing experience. Some works are viewer responsive, responding for example to proximity with additional or colored illumination, while others cycle slowly in their intensity of illumination. In either case the composition is made into a shifting dynamic of color, light, and shadow. The artist is donating a percentage of any sales from this series to the non-profit Oklahoma Sustainability Network.

BIOGR A PH Y

Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 1, 2011, plastics, leaves, LEDs, proximity sensor, custom software, and electrical hardware, 24 x 48 x 6 inches.

Grace Grothaus earned a BFA in Interdisciplinary Art and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Tulsa Artists Coalition Gallery, Mary West Gallery in Greenville, South Carolina, and Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City. gracegrothaus.com

Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 4, 2011, plastics, leaves and cast plant material, LEDs, proximity sensor, custom software, and electrical hardware, 24 x 48 x 6 inches. Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 6, 2011, plastics, leaves, LEDs, custom software, and electrical hardware, 48 x 24 x 6 inches. (left: full piece, above: detail)

Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 2, 2011, plastics, leaves, LEDs, custom software, and electrical hardware, 30 x 60 x 6 inches.

GRACE GROTHAUS: AN IMPOSED LANDSCAPE

SHANNON FITZGER ALD, C UR ATOR

Grace Grothaus’ series Synthetic Landscape: The New OK explores contradictions that abound within the regional landscape of Oklahoma. Interested in the social, cultural, and political debates regarding landscape and environment, she has created seven multi-layered abstract compositions that expand the genre of traditional American landscape painting through a confluence of ideas and materials. She challenges the desire for idealized representations of the natural world by abstracting realistic photo-based imagery that is physically built upon in color-rich conceptuallydriven visual terrains. Additionally, derived from the practice of topography, the nexus of this project lies in the artist-taken aerial photographs documenting sites where nature and industry collide. Her work effectively traces the relationship between organic systems and industrial alterations that have occurred over time, and as such have contributed to the increasing fragility of our ecosystem. The Oklahoma landscape has been redefined, manipulated, and exploited in a myriad of ways as a result of westward expansion beginning in the 1800s and continuing through a history of oil booms and busts, agricultural growth, and other industrial developments. In the engineered space, Grothaus locates an inherently complex aesthetic rendered evocative through historical investigation and the lasting imprint these industries have had on the land. Resistant to romantic depictions of the American West—as extant in 19th century notions of Manifest Destiny and later through photographs documenting American progress and contrary to socially motivated initiatives such as New Deal murals and WPA photography—Grothaus elects to present an abstract of such perceived progress and reality. Moreover, her landscapes focus on a new era of national identity and consciousness that challenges a prevailing sense of entitlement to our natural resources. Iconographically, information transferred from aerial photographs—oil drills, refineries and tank farms, natural gas refineries, wind farms, and center-pivot irrigation systems—serve as the backdrop. The staging of the photos, in flight, allows for a shift in the vantage point from the horizon to a birds-eye view while also rotating perspective to exaggerate and/or understate proportion and scale. Formally, Grothaus employs modernist principles in her arrangement of hand-cut and painted Mylar, synthetic pours, plastics, organic plant substance, and colored LED light to compress matter and perspective in translucent, backlit compositions. Additionally, applying extreme hot and cold pigments that would not be found in the environments she explores, like caustic oranges, electric blues, and vibrating pinks, she instills an aggressive edge through abutment to earthy browns, faintly yellows, and warm greens. A nuanced critique emerges as the proximity between a threatened environment and the built environment is depicted alternatively in opaque densely packed space, and by contrast, in transparent and airy expanses that share a common boundary. Using accumulative processes, she draws, paints, and affixes associative materials, indigenous circular leaves stand in for tanks, for example, in symbolic conflations. She then further torques the image plane through a subtractive process of cutting and erasure to create a secondary spacial tension and complimentary metaphor. Thus, the optical trajectory and conceptual narrative unfolds in vectorial space imparting a captivating seduction and an inquisitive trepidation wherein the dramatic effect is enhanced by pulsating random light and color sequencing. In precarious balance, the human desire to impose order on and command power from our environment, underscores the timely social and political agency of this series. Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer in Oklahoma City.

GR ACE GROTHAUS: L AYERED L ANDSCAPES

LOUISE SIDDONS

Seeing landscape from a height, whether a mountain or a tower, had long conveyed a sense of dominion and control in American landscape painting—but the introduction of aerial photography radically transformed how artists visualized the land. Exten-

Layering and fragmentation are central to Grace Grothaus’s landscapes—literally, as well as conceptually. Grothaus’s paintings are made from multiple layers of

sive aerial photography of the Midwest in the 1930s led artists like Grant Wood to

Plexiglas, each holding a layer of paint, collaged elements, incised lines, or electronic light elements. The abstract images in each layer begin as aerial photographs

emphasize the quilt-like patterns of agriculture in paintings that explicitly blurred

of farmland, industrial sites, river systems and city grids. Every element of Grothaus’s paintings is formally similar, from roadways to agricultural patterns, or from

the line between large-scale landscapes and small-scale domestic production. More

industrial landscapes to individual leaves. This persistence of form—bifurcating lines, generally speaking, that move more or less systematically through space—belies

recently, Nikolas Schiller has used digital processing to transform satellite images

dramatic changes in scale and perspective, from microchips to aerial photography. Grothaus’s paintings thus confront us with a fractal sense of space and time that

of urban centers into geometric renderings he calls “quilts”—a process that fore-

compresses each layer into a simultaneous present.

grounds the aesthetic appeal of cities’ functional networks. New York artist Alexander Heilner, meanwhile, uses aerial photography as a straight medium, intent on

The funny thing about fractals is that they imply analogies. In other words, we have a tendency to identify connections between things that share a particular form, re-

revealing patterns in the landscape that are not visible from the ground. Focusing on

gardless of the scale of each. This was one of the fundamental insights of modern art: the grid became a modernist fetish in part because of its infinite ability to scale.

manmade structures or alterations of the landscape, Heilner’s photographs record

But unlike mid-century formalists, Grothaus exploits this fractal quality to unite disparate source imagery, ideologies and aesthetics in her work. For example, the

the transformation of the land into inadvertent modernist abstractions.

artist might use single leaves to stand in for holding tanks—by visual analogy, the veins of the leaf become the pipelines of the tank system. Grothaus’s formal strategies contribute to this unification: through minimal color palettes and the simplification of her source imagery, she underscores the similarity of each system in a clearly

Like Heilner, Grothaus takes her own aerial photographs rather than relying on found

diagrammatic way. “I’m chromophobic,” Grothaus happily admits, and even when she does use color it tends either to be the muted colors of the natural world or just

images. For both artists, framing the landscape below them is an important part of

one or two bright, artificial colors—products of the same kinds of industrial facilities that populate Grothaus’s work.

the creative process. But where Heilner presents the unaltered photographic image, Grothaus merely treats it as a starting point. Her transformation of the photographic

Grothaus observes that all her visual sources share an aesthetic driven by efficiency. The geometric patterns in evidence, whether on a circuit board or in cultivated

image into a semi-abstract painterly surface invites yet another genealogy: one that

fields, are created by practical concerns rather than aesthetic considerations. But the results are decidedly aesthetically pleasing, even in the case of industrial

includes, for example, Richard Diebenkorn, Jane Frank, and Michael Eble. Trans-

subjects—a discovery that is not new to Grothaus. Think, for example, of the visual (and tactile!) appeal of those notebooks for sale in countless museum stores that re-

forming landscapes into abstractions, these artists’ focus on the painterly surface of

purpose old circuit boards as book covers—or the stunning beauty of photographs by Edward Burtynsky of shipyards and quarries. Our widespread cultural fascination

their canvases refines, rather than denies, the geometries of their source material.

with manmade systems—and the aesthetic pleasure that we take in the complexity of their forms in Grothaus’s paintings — resists a simplistically negative interpre-

As Grothaus’s paintings oscillate between a formalist pleasure in materials—evi-

tation of industrialization. In other words, Grothaus’s works do not simply or naively condemn the systems they expose for degrading the environment or destroying

dent, for example, in her exploitation of the naturally veined pattern of ridges made

the natural world. Instead, the artist asks her viewers to contemplate the ways in which the natural and manmade landscapes are, at this point in history, irrevocably

by pulling a sheet of plastic up from wet paint—and an intellectual pleasure in the

interdependent.

sheer number of references the works make, from the visual to the environmental.

This relationship is figured materially by Grothaus’s handcrafted renderings of industrial/technological systems. Paint, cut paper, and graphite are her core tools as she

Overall, the profusion of signifiers in Grothaus’s paintings epitomizes postmoder-

transforms photographic images into complex, layered paintings. In this respect her work shares less with Burtynsky than it does with an artist like Adriane Colburn,

nity’s skepticism about our role in all this: we are left wondering, do we make the

whose carefully cut out, monumental paperscapes of sewer systems, oil pipelines, and other invisible systems combine the revelation of the invisible with the seduc-

landscape, or does it make us? This quandary is epitomized by a self-portrait by Gro-

tive tactility of paper. But Grothaus’s materials are not always the traditional materials of studio practice. Rather, she has created a sideways economy of traded skills

thaus that simply layers the road maps of all the cities she’s ever lived in over one

and crossover communities in order to incorporate programmed electronics, LED lighting, interactive sensors, and other multimedia elements into her work. Whether

another in a box suffused with purplish light. We think we learn something about the

it is exchanging art instruction for programming lessons, or adapting new lighting technologies as art surfaces, Grothaus has built herself an alternative economy of

artist from this object—we want it to give us, through its sensual light and intrigu-

creative adaptation.

ingly translucent layers, some essential insight into its creator. But what we actually get is a profound sense of the arbitrary, masquerading as order: each individual

Despite the fact that Grothaus’s works encompass painting, sculpture, electronics, and collage, the artist routinely refers to her objects simply as “paintings”—and

street grid follows that sensible plan of efficiency, but layered on top of one another,

we are quickly drawn to the history of landscape painting when seeking a context for her work. Any American landscape painting is still immediately contextualized by

their efficiency gives way to the accidental aesthetics of alignment and obfuscation.

the grandiose canvases of the nineteenth century, but Grothaus’s works have less affinity with Albert Bierstadt’s sublime panoramas than they do with Martin Johnson

There’s an analogy in there, somewhere.

Heade’s orchids and hummingbirds. Heade’s carefully detailed paintings implicitly argued that the same cosmic forces governed everything from the veined petals of an orchid to the immense atmospheric patterns of weather and the geological forces that produced mountain ranges. Grothaus’s paintings adapt Heade’s fractal concep-

Louise Siddons is Assistant Professor of American, Modern and Contemporary Art at

tion of nature to include the manmade landscape—and implicitly they make the argument that the manmade is a natural extension of Heade’s logic.

Oklahoma State University and formerly assistant curator of works on paper at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She earned a PhD in Art History from Stanford. Grace Grothaus, The New OK: 7, 2011, plastics, leaves and cast plant material, LEDs, proximity sensor, custom software, and electrical hardware, 48 x 24 x 6 inches.

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Enjoy, 2011, enamel on acrylic, 40 x 18 x 6 inches.

A A R O N

H A U C K

TR ANSMUTATIONS OF THE STONE AGE AND “I GENER ATION”

S T A T E M E N T

A A RON H AUC K

A RTIST STATEMENT

B I O G R A P H Y

Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation”

My project consists of a series of sculptures that depict the Clovis point. These points juxtapose implements used in today’s consumer culture. One series consists of numerous individually cast polyester and polyurethane Clovis points in which the scale is historically accurate. These pieces are all slightly different in appearance. They come in a wide range of colors, textures, opacity, and some are adorned with imbedded objects or are hand painted. The varied appearance is meant to mimic the way that people today seek to individualize everything that we use in public, most specifically our tools used for communication and other social media like smart phones. A second series also depicts Clovis points, but on an exaggerated scale. The large points are made from thermoformed plastic sheets and displayed on the wall as if they are commercial signage like those found at box stores or fast food restaurants

BIOGR A PH Y

Aaron Hauck earned an MFA in Sculpture from Montana State University in 2007; he has also studied in Sweden, Italy, and Missouri. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at East Central University who has exhibited in curated, juried and invitational exhibitions nationally. aaronhauck.com

Aaron Hauck, Network Assemblage, 2011, enamel on acrylic, floor installation, dimensions variable.

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Expect, 2011, enamel on acrylic,

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Shuffle, 2011, enamel on acrylic,

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Reach, 2011, enamel on acrylic,

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Break, 2011, enamel on acrylic,

40 x 18 x 6 inches.

40 x 18 x 6 inches

T H E P H E N O M E N A O F M AT E R I A L / D I S P O S A B L E C U LT U R E

Aaron Hauck, High Technology Forager; Always, 2011, enamel on acrylic, 40 x 18 x 6 inches. SHANNON FITZGER ALD, C UR ATOR

Aarron Hauck’s installation Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation” is a contemporary archeology and anthropology inspired by the tools used by the prehistoric Clovis culture that inhabited regions in North America (including Oklahoma) approximately 13,500-13,000 years ago. In a smart threedimensional inquiry into material culture and social history, Hauck explores cultural construction and its impact on society and the environment. Hauck’s exhibition focuses on the evolution of Clovis culture, a Paleo-Indian culture characterized by and named for its mass-production of distinctive stone and bone projectile tools known as the Clovis point, first discovered in North America in the 1930s. As masters of their environment, Clovis culture invented and manufactured various sized bifacial fluted points of superior technology that served as a tool critical to their survival through usage and trade. Hauck, intrigued by the culture’s absolute reliance on these tools—instruments produced for and by its own people—creatively considers the evolution of tools and trade, the local and global, and imports and exports to address a contemporary material economy and society’s all-encompassing obsession with technology, gadgets, access, and communication. With humor, Hauck combines astute observation with subtle alarm to explore commodity and consumerism that resoundingly exposes an inherently fractured history of disconnect, and perhaps discontent, as prominently found in the most connected generation in world history, the internet generation, better known as the I Generation. This generation grew up on technology and without a frame of reference to the past, they possess an expectation of always being present, a drive to be first, and participate in a peer race in which their engagement with technology is a mindset critical to the construction of their identity. Hauck exploits this dependency with the creation of a 21st century Clovis point, ripe for consumption anew. Exaggerated in scale and with an exacting color palette and heightened plasticity the Clovis points act as commercial signage and comprise seductive wall and floor pieces that dazzle and attract the eye. Only upon closer scrutiny does the viewer realize that the glossy combinations are direct visual quotes abstracted from the branded identity of the worlds’ biggest corporations: Wal-Mart, Target, AT&T, Coke, McDonald’s, and Apple. The artist purposefully selected these companies based on the direct impact they have had on his life, beginning as an infant, and for the potential they have to affect his entire generation. In combination, the installation successfully underscores the magnitude of these profitable engines’ global impact and worldwide dominance. This transference communicates a sense of absurdity, waste, and alarm. In a second series, Hauck has manufactured nearly 100 hand-made, individually cast polyester and polyurethane Clovis points that are historically accurate in scale. Presented in locked display cases as an archaeological find or recently discovered cache, each point is individualized and “branded” with a wide variety of colors, textures, adornments, and hand painting. Read now as signature ritual implements, they function to parody the way contemporary society seeks to personalize, stamp, tag, mark territory, and own everything. Hauck’s multilayered exploration into the nature of cultural mining and appropriation, through a faux archeological lens, provides a contemplative space for thinking about our own individual, social, and environmental footprint. Hauck’s transmutations direct ones’ attention to the phenomena of disposable culture. Just as outdated technology, mobility, and the environment led to the decline of the Clovis population, Hauck subtly warns of a similar fate. Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer in Oklahoma City.

C ULTUR AL

IDENTITY

(DE)CONSTRUCTION

KEL SE Y K ARPER

valuable brand. All six of the works in this series represent brands that have permeated everyday life, particularly that of Americans, to the point where many people cannot imagine life without them.

Ten thousand years from now, what artifacts of American culture will remain? An archaeologist would use the term “high technology forager” to Aaron Hauck’s Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation” causes the viewer to contemplate this question. All the works in this series manifest in a

describe a people who rely on technology rather than local aware-

similar form – one easily recognizable to those who paid attention in early world history classes. They are Clovis points, an artifact of early humans in North

ness for survival. For example, the Clovis people depended upon

America. There is something different with Hauck’s Clovis points, however, which come in an assortment of slick, candy-coated colors and patterns. While

the technology of their highly specialized stone tools which allowed

the collection of works may resemble an exhibition of archaeological discovery, further looking reveals a message, or perhaps a warning, regarding the

them to be nomadic, rather than staying in one place and relying

artifacts of today.

on knowledge of their local area for survival. Today, although many people tend to stay in the same place for long periods of time, a

In Network Assemblage, fifty-six oversized thermoformed plastic Clovis points are placed in a grid on the floor. There are an equal number of blue and yellow

need for convenience along with a general loss of connection to the

points, which form a stair step pattern within the grid. The rows of points, arranged with military-like precision, are all headed in the same direction, resem-

environment has forced modern humans to become high technology

bling a fleet of battle ships or an army formation. Historically, a Clovis point could have been used as a spear for taking down prey, however this strategically

foragers of sorts, depending upon technology for survival.

aligned grouping seems ready for a confrontation of a different kind. While appearing defensive, their bright colors undermine their potential for threat, and the stair stepped color pattern hints at the well-known AT&T ad claiming “more bars in more places.” With the modern-day obsession with the instant

The current generation of youth is growing up in a world of rapidly

gratification of online social networking, many of us depend upon having “more bars in more places” to share the developing nuances of our personal identity

developing technology, having more ways to connect and communi-

instantaneously.

cate than ever before. More specifically, they are experiencing the introduction and rapid growth of media, devices and networks that

While many viewers may recognize the nod to the cell phone company’s marketing campaign, an archaeologist may find other references. Hauck’s choice to

assist in the creation of self-identity. The perpetual state of being

place the piece on the floor likens it to a knapping floor, an archaeological site where debris is left from the reduction of raw material, evidence of tools being

plugged-in to “i-devices” that are changing the definition of social-

made on the site where the material was available. Assemblage, in archaeological terms, is defined as the aggregate of artifacts and other remains found on

ization and identity prompted the term “I Generation.” The moniker

a site, considered as material evidence concerning the culture(s) inhabiting it. Through analysis of this data, an archaeologist constructs the identity of the

also implies a certain self-obsession that contributes to the detach-

people who left it behind.

ment from their surroundings.

Enclosed in glass display cases, the cast polyester and polyurethane Clovis points and blades in Transmutations are made particularly precious, in a way that

Hauck’s juxtaposition of the Stone Age Clovis point with modern

historical artifacts are displayed in museums. While their scale is true to the form of the Clovis artifacts, their dazzling array of colors and patterns is unques-

day icons and technology is smart and subtly startling. In a culture

tionably modern. With close to one hundred points on display, no two are alike. Hauck has hand painted the cast Clovis points to resemble the mass-produced

that encourages steady consumption, much of our cultural debris

designs from the likes of Louis Vuitton and Ed Hardy. Viewing the display cases full of brightly colored points is much like standing in front of the rows and

is related to a consumerist addiction to the new and the disposable.

rows of cell phone faceplate covers in any mall in America. Consumers are presented with an infinite selection of options to personalize their phones, an

Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation” prompts more

expression of their own identity. Although true to the form of the Clovis people’s most important survival tool, the points in Transmutations seem more like

questions than it offers answers. How will the archaeologists of

the modern day survival tool – the smart phone. The title of the work is clear, as over time we see one essential tool replacing the other.

the future assess and define our current culture? What will the assemblage of our artifacts tell them? Has our fascination with con-

Reminiscent of the glowing beacons that are fast food restaurant signage, the six pieces in The High Technology Forager series appear familiar. These large-

structing a distinct identity for ourselves superseded our collective

scale points are created using the same thermoformed plastic process as Network Assemblage, but are painted with patterns and color schemes referencing

cultural identity?

specific brand identities. The designs on The High Technology Forager series are macro views of well-known corporate logos, although the artist’s choice to include only a small portion may delay the viewer’s recognition of some of the world’s most familiar brands. For example, The High Technology Forager: Enjoy

Kelsey Karper is Associate Director of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coali-

includes a swath of white against a red background, alluding to the Coca-Cola logo, which, according to a 2004 Business Week report, is the world’s most

tion, where she serves as editor of Art Focus Oklahoma magazine.

Aaron Hauck, Transmutations, 2011, polyester resin, epoxy resin, polyurethane resin, and enamel, dimensions variable.

G E O F F R E Y

H I C K S

THE PHOTOGR APHER

Geoffrey Hicks, The Photographer, 2011, refurbished GE P50 Robot arm, DSLR Camera, electronics, software, (2) 32 inch monitors, c-stands, dimensions variable.

S T A T E M E N T

GEOFFRE Y HIC K S

A RTIST STATEMENT

B I O G R A P H Y

The Photographer

I have always been fascinated by robots and automated technology. In our daily lives we interact with robots all the time, perhaps at an ATM machine, or while pumping gas. Even at a grocery store we can choose “self checkout” where a computer system makes sure that all the items are scanned and paid for. Our culture has trained us to accept this as the new normal. As a photographer who has taken hundreds of portraits over the past few years, I know how personal the experience of photographing another person can be. This project entitled The Photographer explores what happens when you remove the human element of a person behind the camera. For this installation, I have created a surrogate for the human photographer; my photographer is a six foot tall industrial robotic arm, much like those seen in car commercials after having replaced many auto workers years ago. We have been programmed to understand that these robots are designed and here to help us in our day-to-day existence and assist us in tasks that we no longer need or want to do ourselves. The robot in my installation is trained by me—via software I developed specifically for this project—to locate individuals who are near and photograph them, just as its human counterpart would. It is the physical interaction between the robotic arm photographer and it’s human subjects that prompts gallery visitors to relate to their own experiences with technology by becoming participants in the process. *Face detection and tracking technology used in this project is licensed from Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition, Pittsburgh. The artist also used open source software from Openframeworks, an online C+++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.

BIOGR A PH Y

Geoffrey Hicks studied at the University of Oklahoma and the California Institute of the Arts. He is a selftaught computer programmer whose technology-based work has been exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Tulsa Artists Coalition and installed in juried group exhibitions regionally. geoffreyhicks.com

Geoffrey Hicks, The Photographer, 2011, refurbished GE P50 Robot arm, DSLR Camera, electronics, software, (2) 32 inch monitors, c-stands, dimensions variable.

Photographs taken by The Photographer during the run of the Art 365 exhibition at [Artspace] at Untitled.

GEOFFREY HICKS: THE SIGHT OF PRODUCTION

SHANNON FITZGER ALD, C UR ATOR

The Photographer, a multi-media, audience-driven performative installation by Geoffrey Hicks investigates sets of conditions when a particular human creative labor is replaced by a machine. Interested in how photographers, more broadly, frequently becomes invisible behind the lens, and how he, more specifically has been rendered inconspicuous in his image taking, has created a non-human surrogate for himself. His mechanical stand-in is a six-foot tall industrial robotic arm comparable to models that replaced human workers in the auto and aeronautics industries. Fascinated by technology and production output, Hicks’ new worker functions in the role of a highly programmed engine possessing a sophisticated eye. Re-purposing an 800-pound defunct General Electric P50, Hicks’ robot arm equipped with a camera is now run by artist-designed smart electronics and intuitive software. Hicks has essentially trained this massive historically resonant anatomical machine to detect human faces, hone in on them, and take a photograph just as a human counterpoint might. Hicks’ animated agent seemingly works in isolation as a slightly archaic form that despite its’ commanding physical presence roves the space with discrete caution that is strangely elegant, as if it possesses a conscience. Its crane-like arm extends, reaches out, retracts, hovers to the left and to the right before focusing in on its subject. Now re-tooled in the role of art producer, the anthropomorphic contrivance is productive and inventive as it establishes contact with its subject while surprisingly retaining a distant objectivity. Thus without human subjectivity and with its selective criteria in place, it mathematically sorts through its growing database of recent images to identify like images to build both a sequential and non-linear index of affinities and dissimilitudes. Within seconds, these indexes flash across two nearby plasma screens providing the audience an instant experience of looking and being looked at, as the beholder becomes subject and spectator—almost instantaneously. As a generator of information, the robot also functions as surveyor. While not addressing surveillance per se, the robot’s axis of movement and targeting conveys an inherent discomfort as if it assesses its environment, takes inventory, and arranges information to systematically manufacture content beyond its’ task locating human subjects for portraiture. It performs this beneath what is visible, its alternative intelligence concealed lending a heightened curiosity. Alternatively, a playfulness also occurs as a sense of nostalgia likewise permeates the installation. The previously inoperative now revitalized robot arm, circa the 1980s, was functioning to its capacity at the same time the artist, who as a child growing up in the 80s was playing with Radio Shack’s latest toy, the Armatron. The robot’s historicity imbued with the artist’s personal affection creates a time slippage that elucidates reverence for simpler, low-tech lifestyle as extant only in the past. Far from being a contemporary Luddite, Hicks however communicates a slight resistance to machine reliance that, while not cautionary, manifests heedfulness. Lastly, challenging intentionality, Hicks’ collapses notions about originality and authenticity regarding art, mechanical production, and reproduction. The artist, via his producer, has established a labor intensive pictorial production that appears deceptively rudimentary. Considering the speed in which Hick’s ‘original’ digital reproduction occurs, is disseminated, and categorized as a work of art delightfully further mystifies the site of artistic production, authorship, and visual consumption. Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer in Oklahoma City.

SEE AND BE SEEN: GEOFFRE Y HIC K S’ THE PHOTOGR APHER

BRI A N HE A RN

The Photographer is a direct descendant of Edward Ihnatowicz’s pioneering work The Senster. Developed in 1970, it was the first robotic artwork controlled by computer. The Senster

Let’s face it; robots are everywhere. A decade into the 21st century, robots are doing all manner of repetitive, everyday tasks from vacuuming our floors to

was a large robotic arm that moved like a lobster’s claw with

checking out our groceries to building automobiles. We are in fact so interdependent with these artificially intelligent machines that we are becoming more

a head containing microphones and motion-detectors that

like them while they become more like us. The term that best describes the current state of our species is “cybernetic organism” or “cyborg” for short. In

could sense and respond to sound and movement. It was

the robotic art installation The Photographer by Geoffrey Hicks, we encounter a robot trained by the artist to move, see, frame, focus, photograph and display

programmed to be curious and move toward quieter viewers

images of people. In this closed cybernetic system The Photographer functions as a kind of sequential mirror of time, place and face, transforming passive

while shying away from noisier ones. Its display of intelligent

viewers into active participants.

behavioral autonomy was “the first physical work whose expression in space (its choices, reactions, and movements)

Human fascination with automation can be traced back thousands of years to ancient cultures in China, Greece and Rome. Perhaps it is the creative im-

was triggered by data processing (instead of sculptural con-

pulse to want to “play God” by animating the inanimate. As technological innovation has progressed through hydraulic, mechanical, electrical, and digital

cerns).”1

paradigms, our innate response to movement and the appearance of intelligence remains a mixture of curiosity and fear. We recognize these capacities and project our human-ness into the machine. Literature, film and television of the last two hundred years have a rich vein of science fictional automata,

Hicks’ highly technical artistic practice hybridizes photog-

robots and artificial life forms. Consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet’s Robbie the Robot, or the android Lieutenant Commander Data on

raphy, computing, robotics and installation in a way that

Star Trek: The Next Generation.

challenges our notion of artistic production. By introducing a robotic surrogate Hicks deemphasizes the role of artist

It’s no surprise that the artist had a toy robotic arm when he was a kid. Growing up Hicks displayed a talent for mechanics while cultivating an interest in

as image producer. His sympathetic relationship with The

photography and art. He has taken hundreds of portraits in both personal and professional contexts noticing the subtle behaviors people display when be-

Photographer as its creator and trainer echoes that of Dr.

ing photographed. Who hasn’t strained to hold a smiling pose or avoided stepping into another person’s shot? One could even divide the world up into those

Frankenstein. But instead of an uncontrollable monster, The

who are comfortable in front of the camera and those who prefer to remain behind it. Hicks puts himself in the latter category. He began to think about how

Photographer is trained to reflect, through images, our be-

people might react differently if the subjective human awareness of being seen, and thereby judged, by another was removed from portraiture. Enter The

havioral response to the robot’s gaze. In contrast to surveil-

Photographer.

lance systems that covertly record and store images, often from high angles, Hicks’ work meets us at face level, imme-

Hicks acquired a General Electric industrial robotic arm on eBay without instructions or specifications. His artistic process commenced with reverse en-

diately revealing its image of us and comparing it to others

gineering its guts with the intensity of a self-taught troubleshooting tinkerer. In a matter of months he had resuscitated the human sized robotic arm to its

it has taken. For the artist and the viewer The Photographer

intended range of motion using a combination of mechanical and computer engineering. Installing a camera on the end of the arm, he programmed the robot

is a work of cybernetic sculpture that is far more interesting

using specially licensed facial recognition software to “see” human subjects through the camera lens. With aesthetic choices limited to the artist’s prefer-

to experience in person than not. To be in its presence is to

ence for photographing people horizontally, the primary project of The Photographer was for it to operate reliably and independently within a gallery setting.

sense and react to the silent physicality of a curious, intel-

It’s ability to move up and down and swivel from side to side in pursuit of the nearest face gives it an engaging quality found in the earliest kinetic sculpture

ligent, powerful toy.

that disrupts the static forms of artistic display. Brian Hearn is the film curator at the Oklahoma City Museum of Robotic art emerged simultaneously with kinetic art in the 1950s and 60s. Contemporary artist Eduardo Kac traced this trajectory in his 1997 essay “Origin

Art and was a 2010 Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellow.

and Development of Robotic Art.” In it he observes that, “the fascination robots exert on the population at large has unexplored, social, political, and emotional implications.”1 To best understand robotics in the contemporary art context we must consider “the new aesthetic dimension of modeling behavior (the artist creates not only form but the actions and reactions of the robot in response to external or internal stimuli) and developing unprecedented interactive

NOTES:

communicative scenarios in physical or telematic spaces (the object ‘perceives’ the viewer and the environment).” And so it is with The Photographer that

1. Kac, Eduardo. “Origin and Development of Robotic Art”. Art Journal, Vol. 56,

gives “precedence to behavior over form.” To view it as a sculptural object is to contemplate 1980s industrial design, which is secondary to its ability to initi-

N. 3, Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology, Special issue on

ate interactive behaviors around portrait photography. Similarly, the images that it takes and displays are documentary byproducts of the actual art of the

Electronic Art, Johanna Drucker, (ed.), CAA, NY, 1997, pp. 60-67.

piece, the human interaction with the robot in real time.

L I Z

R O D D A

TOMORROWS

Liz Rodda, Curtains, 2011, single video projection, dimensions variable.

S T A T E M E N T

B I O G R A P H Y

Liz Rodda, Triple Possibility, 2011, 3 channel video installation with sound, dimensions variable. LIZ RODDA

A RTIS T S TATEMENT

Tomorrows

Tomorrows is derived from speculations about the future, actuality and illusion. I am curious about the intersection between what is considered provable and suspect. Each of the projects identifies ways of considering these ideas in relationship to cultural expectations, self-portraiture and imagined realities. Triple Possibility is a three-channel video for which I hired three fortunetellers in Beijing to interpret my dreams as representative of my future. Each analysis is documented with video and translated with English subtitles. The piece serves as a medium to consider translation, premonition and authorship. The Future is Not What I Used to Think is a hand-drawn flowchart illustrating the dramatic actions I may take in response to the premonitions revealed in Triple Possibility. This companion piece to the video reveals an individual’s ability to create depictions of imaginary situations and emphasizes the potential outcome of our flawed logic. 2010/2011 is a pair of photographs of the night sky taken a split second before and after midnight on New Year’s Eve. The photographs document indistinguishable moments in two different calendar years. 2010/2011 references the otherworldliness of outer space and the belief that fate is written in the stars. Curtains is an endlessly looping video in which a red stage curtain moves faintly. The movement alludes to an activity backstage that is never revealed. Without beginning or ending, the piece suggests infinite waiting in which viewers anticipate nothing more than anticipation. Plan For Victory consists of black jade cut into the shape of an icosahedron. Black jade is believed by some to possess magical properties that guard against negative thoughts and smooth the roller-coaster ride of emotions. Plan For Victory is modeled after the twenty-sided die used in role-playing games, like D&D, to determine the success or failure of an action. I am interested in what is beyond here and now. The work does not attempt to clarify any mysteries, but is intended to offer ways of thinking about what is currently indefinite or unknowable.

BIOGR A PH Y

Liz Rodda earned an MFA in the Studio for Interrelated Media Program at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at venues such as Domino Gallery, Liverpool, Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Dumbo Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY, 808 Gallery, Boston, MA, and the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN. lizrodda.com

Liz Rodda, 2010/2011, 2011, 2 ink jet prints, 12 x 15 inches each.

Liz Rodda, The Future Is Not What I Used To Think, 2011, ink on paper, 39 x 106 inches.

D E S I R A B L E

T R A J E C T O R Y

SHANNON FITZGER ALD, C UR ATOR

All The World’s A Stage, And All The Men and Women Merely Players. Shakespeare’s line from As You Like It suggests that we merely go through the stages of our life acting out various roles. Inspired by Shakespearian notions of fate, Liz Rodda woefully explores probable, desirable, imaginable, and unimaginable futures based on past and present day events in her exhibition Tomorrows. In this multi-media installation, Rodda examines biography, narrative, and the unknown future as literal and metaphorical entrances and exits. Tomorrows includes singular works juxtaposed together to create a larger conceptual terrain that considers fate, probability, and desire. Within this narrative, Rodda is the protagonist seeking and even fumbling for the next adventure, the next love, and the next mystery. Although biographical in origin, her inquiry resonates more broadly as a collective fascination with the charting of one’s path in a complex world. Setting the stage for Tomorrows is Curtains, a large-scale projected color film in which a drawn, deep crimson red velvet stage curtain moves faintly in an endless loop. The subtle movement alludes to activity backstage. Tellingly, the drama is “without beginning or end” and suggests “infinite waiting in which viewers anticipate nothing more than anticipation itself.”1 Interested in what lies beyond the here and now, Rodda creates a curious theatricality of nothing, as what exists behind the curtain is never revealed. In The Future Is Not What I Used To Think—a hand-written flowchart of premonitions, scenarios, and chain reactions—the artist determines possible futures based on conflicting dream interpretations. Indeed, a map of fate, a map of circumstance, a map of desire—both real and imagined—disclose internal musings born of physical vulnerability, emotional fragility, and psychological insecurity, wherein the plausible reads as poetic. Sequential recordings culminate in an obsessively lovely, longing. The sculpture Plan For Victory, a tiny black jade cut into the shape of an icosahedron is isolated in an encased pedestal. The twenty-sided glossy die, materially imbued with magical connotations, is presented as artifact; its function in determining fate is now preserved in static honor. The installation is punctuated by a pair of photographs, 2010/2011, in which the past and present are rendered indistinguishable. The images of the night sky—specifically Rodda’s zodiac Taurus—are taken a split second before and after midnight on New Year’s recording moments in two calendar years. Referencing the distant cosmos, a doppleganging occurs that proposes an inconsequentiality of astrology, while also punning the way in which fate is often understood as written in the stars. As such, she puts forth a temporary condition in which she is concurrently extradited from the past and estranged from her present. Rodda acknowledges that she is not master of her own fate: she is a mere player. She considers the micro and macro that build upon themselves in tenuous proximity; tiny everyday human revelations are juxtaposed alongside more ethereal ones to balance a distinct interior monologue. Despite the burden of the unknown and a fanciful obsession with reflection and indecision, Rodda’s distinct unease is quietly stunning. Liz Rodda, Plan For Victory, 2011, black jade, 16 x 16 millimeters (on pedestal). Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer in Oklahoma City.

1. Liz Rodda, Artist Statement, 2011.

SHE WILL ENCOUNTER SOME KIND OF AN ACCIDENT

ALISON HE ARST

structures: personal fate, the future, and the passing of time. Closely related to how chance intersects causality in Tomorrows is Gilles Deleuze’s text, The Dice Throw (1962), which discusses Friedrich Nietzsche’s existential ideas on chance and destiny: “What Nietzsche called necessity (destiny) is thus never the abolition but rather the combination of chance itself... The bad player counts on several throws of the dice, on a great number of throws.

In 2009, in a tiny room tucked behind a commercial street in Beijing—a room part ramshackle apartment bedroom, part covert fortunetelling stu-

In this way he makes use of causality and probability to produce a combination that he sees as desirable.”4 Operating alongside this idea is Rodda’s Plan

dio—Liz Rodda was told that in the future she will encounter an accident. The fortuneteller’s prophecy, captured in Rodda’s film Triple Possibility, was

For Victory—a black-jade icosahedron that is scaled and modeled after the 20-sided die used in role-playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons,

authoritative yet oblique. Taking this ominous forecast as her cue, The Future is Not What I Used to Think—a large, sprawling handwritten flowchart on

and in the Magic 8 Ball toys of our childhood. Like any die-based game, each roll determines the next step for the player and is based on chance. Here,

paper—is a stream-of-consciousness musing that maps out various potential life paths Rodda might incur after the accident. The chart begins on the

however, the dice is rendered in smooth black jade and is devoid of numbers, thus eliminating the potential to advance, fail, or succeed in the game.

left-hand side with the phrase “she will encounter some kind of an accident,” and forks off into two directions: “it happens right away” and “it takes

Plan For Victory ultimately emphasizes that the outcome is unwritten, yet its open-ended nature nonetheless leaves room for us to envisage playing

time for the prediction to materialize.” These two options forge off into further meanderings; some chains end in Rodda’s immediate death, while

the bad player and to, thus, at least hope to have a crack at producing a desirable combination.

others veer off into fanciful vignettes featuring the artist walking across the United States, becoming pregnant, or writing an acclaimed cult classic novel, for example. In so doing, Rodda obsessively attempts to define the indefinite through an imaginative series of hypothetical events and what-if

As control over the future is rendered illusory in Tomorrows, so, too, is the notion of time. In 2010/2011, Rodda present twin photographs of the night

scenarios. Yet while she strives to author her yet-to-be-determined self-narrative, the work’s multiplicity of outcomes elucidates that “lack of control

sky taken a second before and after midnight on New Year’s Eve. Although the work technically depicts two years, because the photographs are nearly

over the future and limitations of our understanding”1 ultimately subsist despite one’s insistence on planning ahead. With the drawing’s abundance

identical and precariously hinge on their title, Rodda highlights that time is merely a mental construct used to organize our perceptions. Moreover,

of life paths that are causal in nature, Rodda also partly recalls existentialism and freewill, or the belief that the human condition is subjective and

2010/2011 would lose its meaning if untitled or framed within a different time zone or calendar, such as the Chinese lunisolar calendar. Also noteworthy

determined through an individual’s actions towards given situations. Moreover, Rodda points to the impossibility of an entirely planned or predictable

is that the photographs also depict the Taurus constellation, which is Rodda’s astrological sign. By laying emphasis on her zodiac sign, Rodda attempts

fate, and instead stresses that unforeseen accidents, chance, and causality are the forces guiding existence.

to locate something personal within the vastness of the universe—or the micro within the macro.

In her remarkable multi-part exhibition, Tomorrows (2011), Rodda accentuates that control is an illusion, and that chance, freewill, and causality al-

What can be perceived as Tomorrow’s poignant endnote is Curtains—a continually looping video picturing red-velvet stage curtains that tremble with

together factor into life’s narrative. In Rodda’s Triple Possibility, three filmed segments display different fortunetellers that she consulted in Beijing;

backstage activity. The behind-the-scenes movement is never revealed and it is unclear whether or not there is a performance about to commence,

each one is seen interpreting her dreams from the night before in order to shed light on her destined career path, health, and love life. What results

or where the video begins and ends. We are, nevertheless, left waiting. Curtains mimics the anticipatory moments peppered throughout the human

are three divergent, yet sometimes overlapping portraits of Rodda that are driven, to skeptics, by speculation. Fortunetelling is intrinsic to Chinese

experience—instants that feel especially drawn out when waiting for our imagined plans to materialize. Yet while the fortunetellers and Rodda attempt

culture and originates in the classic Chinese text, the I Ching, which provides a system of hexagrams used to predict one’s future. As Carl Jung states

to unveil or plan these futures, Tomorrows ultimately dismisses the human need or proclivity to anticipate such expectations. Moreover, Tomorrows

in his foreword to the text, “An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by

embraces the uncontrolled spontaneities and unknowns that comprise the future, time, and life itself and renders them with eloquence.

chance...The matter of interest [in the I Ching] seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation...”2 However, by seeking multiple oracles for second and third opinions, Triple Possibility offsets the notion that a sole configuration—to be deduced through premoni-

Alison Hearst is the Assistant Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. She is also a cofounder of Subtext Projects and writes for Art Critical, Art

tion—exists. Instead, the work metaphorically conjures a dice roll, emphasizing how life can offer multiple outcomes and the future is, therefore,

Lies, Glasstire, and …might be good.

shrouded in probabilities. Furthermore, contrary to The Future is Not What I Used to Think, Rodda relinquishes much control in the piece itself; the fortunetellers are unscripted, and the work’s outcome is purely dictated by the structure Rodda presents by visiting fortunetellers with her dreams. NOTES:

The concept that chance and chaos are the fundamental forces of life is something philosophers and artists have investigated for centuries. Most

1. Liz Rodda in conversation with the author, March 3, 2011.

famously using chance as an artistic strategy, John Cage began composing music in the 1950s by asking the I Ching certain questions and “imitating

2. C. G. Jung, foreword to The I Ching; or, Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wilhelm and rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), xxii- xxiii.

nature in its manner of operation;”3 thus, Cage gave up personal control to let chance dictate his musical arrangements. Vito Acconci’s Following Piece

3. James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 97.

(1969) also placed the artist and artwork at the mercy of the random strangers he diligently pursued. A more recent example of this is Francis Alÿs’

4. Gilles Deleuze, extract from Nietzsche et la Philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962); trans. Hugh Tomlinson, Nietzsche and Philosophy (New York: Columbia

The Collector (1991—92), in which he pulled a magnetic child’s toy around Mexico City to collect random objects he happened across. The projects by

University Press, 1983); reprinted edition (London: Continuum, 2006), 24—5.

Acconci and Alÿs also operate outside of the confines of the studio to further blur the line between art and everyday life. Although experimental in nature, the aforementioned examples primarily only allow chance to arise within specific given parameters set by the artists. However, Rodda’s Tomorrows operates differently in that it establishes chance and causality as strategies and subjects within larger, ambiguous

F R A N K

W I C K

TUSSIN SPAC E

Frank Wick, Sick Daze, 2010, foam and spray paint on base, 27 x 13 x 12 inches. (displaying both sides with 2 images)

S T A T E M E N T

B I O G R A P H Y

Frank Wick, Pain Killer, 2011, foam and spray paint, 62 x 33 x 25 inches.

FR A NK W IC K

A RTIST STATEMENT

Tussin Space

Tussin Space is a body of work comprised of six sculptural objects made of expanding foam and painted in psychedelic colors. The bases for the objects consist of domestic materials such as worn vinyl flooring, aluminum trim, and cream-colored Plexiglas. Together, these sculptures address a variety of topics including speculative fiction, fantasy and horror. DEATH DRIVE—a dripping mass of foam standing on a base constructed of repurposed materials—speaks to Sigmund Freud’s Beyond The Pleasure Principle. In this essay, Freud theorized on the individual drive towards death, self-destruction, and a return to the inorganic. In Pain Killer, swelling tactile pillars conjure images of smoke trails and rocket launches. The hyper-feminine color palette, however, subverts the masculine imagery. The sculpture rests on a large black circle, meant to reference a launch pad. Modeled after the Walt Disney character, Goofy, No Future Now resembles a hallucinogenic mushroom cloud, with its eruptive plume growing from its base. Through Tussin Space, I am exploring ideas related to attraction and repulsion and the concept of futility. The title of the work, Tussin Space, refers to Robitussin, a pharmaceutical drug that is used recreationally by teens and adults. The objects themselves are meant to appear as psychedelic visions reminiscent of science fiction horror movies in which alternative timelines and imagined realities coexist.

BIOGR A PH Y

Frank Wick earned an MFA in sculpture from the University of Miami. He has shown both in the United States and abroad in such venues as Projecktraum M54, Basel, Switzerland, Twenty-Twenty Projects, Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. frankwick.com

Frank Wick, DEATH DRIVE, 2011, foam, spray paint, 46 x 17 x 18 inches.

Frank Wick, Plateau Sigma, 2010, foam and spray paint, 33 x 30 x 28 inches.

IS (IT) THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?, AND OTHER THOUGHTS

SHANNON FITZGER ALD, C UR ATOR

Frank Wick, No Future Now, 2010, foam and spray paint, wood armature and base, 74 x 34 x 19 inches.

Frank Wick’s new body of work, Tussin Space is comprised of six sculptural objects made of expanding foam and painted in psychedelic colored spray paint. Each work emerges from floor platforms, atop of pristine pedestals, and literally off the wall. Together, the sculptures address topics ranging from science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, horror, and drug counterculture that resonate within his generation, particularly male youth, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Referents to horror films (The Thing, A World Without End), sci-fi movie posters (Star Trek), disco, glam, garage, and rock music album covers (Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon), societal fear of nuclear and atomic expansion, and the beginning of the DIY phenomena in youth culture provide a tactile and evocative visual sampling of the full-circle we currently find ourselves in.

Most prevalent is an exploration into several visual conceits about fantasy and reality and the seductive and curious desire to navigate the physical and metaphorical space which exists in-between the two. As such, the implied movement between this duality explores time as elastic, form as fluid, and meaning as malleable, resulting in a poignant futility—both immediate and distanced. This particular futility is expressed with a biting and often humorous punch that works in tandem with irony, as located somewhere between seduction and repulsion. With comedic figuration (Walt Disney character Goofy) alongside a heavy-handed abstraction (explosive plumes and mushroom clouds), Wick’s precarious structures convey a tension amidst a hypothesis of fun and terror.

The title Tussin Space, refers to “Robitussin high” a high derived from recreational use of the common cold product, a practice prominent among teens also known as Robo Tripping. Conveying excessiveness via color slathered, oozing and dripping bulbous manifestations, the sculptures appear as psychedelic visions of alternative realities. The hallucinogenic referents signify altered consciousness that is not quite escapist, but slightly apocalyptic, and resonates in a hyper-real unknown and unidentifiable universe or unearthly dreamscape.

While space and fiction are at the root of Tussin Space, reality is recognized as that which is perceived as alien and begins to reveal a most human and troubling relationship. Speculative and unlikely affinities unfold in a unpredictable complexity, where morphology, transference, and mutation or adaptation yield a more human and global polemic with regard to present day conditions of our planet and its inhabitants. With a respectful nod to several inspiring precedents, one may locate inspiration for Wick’s current work in the art historical canon such as Lynda Benglis’ early installations and Franz West’s Adaptives assemblages—both from the early 1970s, along with incorporating influences from more recent articulations by artists Tom Friedman and Rachel Harrison. Wick’s dramatic color palette combined with tactile muscle presents a conceptual and visual odyssey that succeeds in expanding the clichés of both science fiction and youth culture that allows for a timely social-political critique to emerge.

Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer in Oklahoma City.

S T R A N G E LY FA M I L I A R : F R A N K W I C K ’ S T U S S I N S PA C E

SAR AH JESSE

Dichotomy is perhaps most evident in DEATH DRIVE, a phallic, monolithic form resting on a base of black flooring. Indented into the glossy surface of the floor is a grid pattern painted with white dots and stars to indicate an inter-

The title of Frank Wick’s exhibition Tussin Space refers to the chemical high achieved through the abuse of Robitussin cough syrup. It is a clever metaphor

galactic scene. A depiction of a prism on the base is a nod to Star Trek, while

for the deliberate act of relinquishing reality, similar to the effects of recreational drug use. The six trippy, bulbous sculptures in the show allude to low

the title refers to an impulse articulated by Sigmund Freud in which humans

budget horror films from the 1950s, space exploration and the end of the world. The work is not about fantasy and the supernatural though; it encourages

embrace self-destruction and death at the expense of survival and propaga-

the viewer to suspend disbelief in a way more akin to science fiction.

tion. Despite the sculpture’s tumor-like surface and catastrophic reference, the glitter sheen of the bright automobile paint is recognizable, attractive and

Some biography is helpful in understanding the breadth and impact of Tussin Space. As a teenager, Wick developed a penchant for zombie and apocalyptic

could even be perceived as uplifting. Like its appearance that treads the line

scenarios in books and films and subscribed to lurid magazines such as Fangoria. His current position at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural

between seduction and repulsion, it is ultimately unclear whether the mean-

History also played a role in the conception of the series, if only subconsciously. Wick’s job provides personal contact with extraordinary artifacts and

ing is nihilistic or redemptive.

specimens on an everyday basis, from meteorites to fluorescent rocks. The collection is a constant reminder of the ways reality can be stranger than fiction, a theme that runs throughout the series.

Through working with the foam over time, Wick has developed a sense of its properties like a more traditional sculptor understands how to manipu-

A trademark of the most interesting science fiction is that imaginary elements are largely possible within the laws of nature. One of the reasons Star Trek

late clay. Wick’s knowledge of how the substance takes shape allows him a

gained such popularity is because it utilizes scientifically plausible scenarios for verisimilitude. Similarly, Wick’s sculptures are otherworldly and maca-

great deal of spontaneity in his process, and he wields his spray can with the

bre—yet they maintain an accessible quality. Consider No Future Now, which at first appears to be the silhouette of a mushroom cloud, though the shape is

same sense of freedom. Purples, pinks and greens overlap without exces-

actually based on the profile of the Disney character Goofy. Throughout the series, Wick counteracts recurring dystopian elements with similar strategies.

sive concern for their relationship on the color chart. Like action painting, Wick’s method is automatic and almost entirely additive. Each blotch of paint

Scale also serves as an important tool for Wick in tempering dark subject matter. The sculptures are less than five feet tall and four feet wide, thus non-

and bulge of foam documents an individual action by the artist. The nature

threatening in size. Their unintimidating presence suggests they are replicas of larger objects and environments, with their full potential revealed only

of Wick’s materials supports his intuitive process and results in a surreal,

through the viewer’s imagination. In this way, Pain Killer, with its craggy peaks and artificial palette could be considered a prototype for a peculiar, inhos-

homemade aesthetic reminiscent of special effects in B-horror films.

pitable planet. In Wick’s model version, the site seems less foreboding. Considering Wick’s method of balancing the mundane, strange, alluring and Humor is another device Wick uses to temper the ominous aspects of the work. A sense of play is most obvious in Sick Daze, a bizarre blob resting on a

horrifying, it seems he permits the viewer to leave one symbolic foot on the

pedestal and positioned at the viewer’s eye level. Though vague, ostensibly it appears to be a bust in the vein of Alberto Giacometti with a similar gnarled

ground while engaging the dystopian aspects of the work. The inclusion of

surface and attenuated features. Covering the majority of the monstrous face is a white glop that has hardened into a shell. The effect is a dead ringer for

these competing tendencies throughout the work seems to reflect his per-

the classic “pie in the face” slapstick comedy trick. In the context of Tussin Space, the white substance likely isn’t meant to indicate whip cream—more a

sonal, conflicted views on the subject. To Wick, atomic warfare, overpopula-

deadly toxin. Wick’s sense of humor makes that likelihood easier to accept.

tion and time warps signify equal parts terror and fascination. Like the best

Frank Wick, New Age Proud, 2011, foam and spray paint on base, 69 x 23 x 18 inches.

science fiction, Tussin Space provides a fairly innocuous way to explore a The banal materials Wick uses to construct the sculptures also serves to ground the audience. Each form is comprised of spray foam more commonly

rather unsettling future—that is, if we can suspend disbelief long enough to

used for sealing cracks in homes. The curdled surfaces of the objects are layered with coats of spray paint. Likewise, a few of the bases are constructed

consider an alternate reality.

from fragments of vinyl flooring customary to kitchens. Wick makes little effort to conceal the household materials employed in each work as a device to make it somewhat relatable.

Sarah Jesse is the Bernsen Director of Education and Public Programs at the Philbrook Museum of Art and Vice Chair of Programs for the American

Contrasting the domestic, familiar nature of the materials are their inherently sinister connotations. As striking as the sculptures appear, it is impos-

Association of Museum’s Education Committee. Prior, she was the Assistant

sible to forget that toxics—polyurethane foam and spray paint propellant—are creating this effect. It is analogous to realizing that a brilliant-colored sky

Director of Public Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

is the result of pollution. Also worthwhile to consider is the symbolic function of the foam acting as only a makeshift, temporary solution for keeping out unwanted things—insects, leaks, rodents. The multiple meanings derived from Wick’s choice in media alone parallels the unresolved ideas in the series.

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