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The Map vs. The Walk Karen Reimer

February 9 — April 24, 2022

Artist Karen Reimer

Karen Reimer is a conceptual artist based in Chicago, IL. She has a BA from Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas and an MFA from the University of Chicago, IL. Reimer primarily works in sculpture, language, and sitespecific installation. In most instances, her work combines the traditions of minimalism and conceptual art and the traditions of decorative craft. She uses handwork in the context of systems-based, serial, and chance operations. Reimer works to establish something more complex, more ambiguous, more symbiotic than the traditional oppositional binary relationships that ground so much of our culture. By combining the tactics and aesthetics of conceptual art with the tropes of domestic decoration, Reimer pushes concept and material, art and labor, language and linens, experience and representation, the map and the walk, into the same space.

Table of Contents Page No. 4...........................................................................The Map Is Not The Territory | Shannon Rae Stratton 6...........................................................................Copies 8...........................................................................Newspapers 10.........................................................................Boundary Troubles 12.........................................................................Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven 16........................................................................Jefferson Godard | Curator 22........................................................................Sea Change Cover: Big Blue Sky 2021 - 2022 site-specific installation pieced fabric and wood dimensions variable

My first encounter with Karen Reimer’s work involved Laffy Taffy and another work, not included in The Map vs. the Walk: Equal, both from 1999. I have no recollection of how I came upon them or in what order, but I was enchanted by these laborious “copies” of tiny, expendable food wrappers that get handled, removed, and disposed of countless times a day.

The Map Is Not the Territory Shannon Rae Stratton

Of course, these wrappers are not ersatz forms—they are not intended as poor substitutes for the original, nor are they designed to assuage our desire for unattainable objects, like those counterfeit designer handbags sold on the streets of New York City. The problem of perception is that “we see more what we expect to see than what really ‘is,’” and Reimer’s artwork requires us to examine that tendency, considering and reconsidering what is “real.” In this way, it challenges the viewer to be wary of perception and alert to reification.

Reification is the fallacy of misplaced concreteness: it treats the abstraction as though it were a real, material thing. (The treatment of the term “institution” is a useful example of a concept that has become reified as an object.) Polish-American philosopher and engineer Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase “The map is not the territory” to convey this fallacy. The beauty of Reimer’s conceptual practice is her adeptness at using “material” and the recurring assumption that in craft, labor is objectified (whereas “art” in the traditional modernist, disciplinary divide somehow avoids the association with the manual) to complicate our concept of “real.” Take, for example, A Faith in Documents (1999), an embroidered representation of the first page of a chapter of the same name from the book Voyager. The map is not the territory, and any faith in documents is misplaced. The document is not the real, and the embroidery is not the page. One of the great pleasures of Reimer’s work lies in what she omits or overwrites. With Copies (the body of work to which Laffy Taffy, Equal, and A Faith in Documents belong), on the surface is the dry humor of the labored-over embroidery of everyday detritus, coupled with the relatively romantic conceit of memorializing it. But considered together, the Copies begin to parallel footnotes without their corresponding text. I might relish the visual pun—is the joke that Equal is not equal to the package it reproduces? Or I might trace the same work back to Aleksandr Rodchenko, who in 1925 wrote: “our things in our hands must be equals, comrades”—a constructivist counterproposal to European commodity fetishism. As we pick through Reimer’s breadcrumbs, we can try to assemble a thesis, but there is some frustration and folly in that mission, and that seems like the point: cohesiveness is not possible. You can assemble the parts, but their boundaries do not dissolve and disappear; there is no totality or resolution here. What the parts signify has been erased, or overwritten—so the part is mistaken for the whole. Fragmentation is the condition of modernity.

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

The bookend to these early works is Reimer’s recent Shoretime Spaceline (2016) installation —a gorgeous assemblage of hand-dyed blue fabric, originally shown as a site-specific artwork at the Hyde Park Art Center. Installed to have two different vantage points, the work resembles a stylized sky from underneath and the lapping waters of a lake when viewed from above. Shoretime Spaceline was a response to the site’s previous identity as the late-nineteenth-century Chicago Beach Hotel, which had been built on sand dredged from Lake Michigan to enhance the environment, effectively altering the shoreline. The finished work, positioned to float between possible interpretations, glows like stained glass, falling formally somewhere between constructivism and brutalism, a kind of tongue-in-cheek ode to the hubris of modernist design movements and the proposition of ethics over aesthetics, or maybe aesthetics as ethics. The ambiguity here is useful: utopic design premises offer critical lenses through which to imagine the possibility of repair through culture, a de-reification, if you will, that transforms the terms on which the world is addressed. Today, Reimer incorporates into her work scientific data on the climate crisis, a subject that many artists have turned to as disaster looms. But while one might perceive this turn as toward something more didactic—using artwork to communicate pertinent and alarming data through seductive means—I argue that Reimer’s conceptual foundation remains unchanged. The problems of perception and the real that Reimer has long investigated have always concerned humankind’s most dangerous blind spot: the (mis)perception that everything is fine.

1* The title references the work of Polish-American philosopher and engineer Alfred Korzybski, who coined the phrase “The map is not the territory” to convey the difference between the model or abstraction and reality itself. 2 Ann Marie Seward Barry, Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 16. 3 The politics of the handmade is a rich subject, recent criticism is collected in the book The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design, ed. Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. 4 The book, by Diana Gabaldon, is from the Outlander historical fantasy series, which utilizes time travel. 5 Christina Kiaer, “Rodchenko in Paris,” October 75 (Winter 1996): 3. 6 Andrew Feenberg, “Lukács’s Theory of Reification and Contemporary Social Movements,” Rethinking Marxism 27, no. 4 (October 2015): 490–507.

Shannon Rae Stratton Shannon R. Stratton is a writer, curator and artist located between Saugatuck/Douglas, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. She is currently Executive Director at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan, and co-conspirator with the The Working Group for Unmaking, a collective programming at The Poor Farm in Manitowac, Wisconsin.

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Copies is a series where the artist embroiders copies of food wrappers, book pages, ticket stubs, crossword puzzles, and other ephemera. The artist explains, “I was trying to do it in a slightly absurdist way. It’s this huge amount of work going into reproducing something that could be reproduced on a Xerox machine, and then on top of that would be a whole lot more readable if you had done it that way.” 2

Copies

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Artwork from left to right — top row then bottom row Acts of Revision

Problems with Antecedents

2000

(Continued)

1999

professional seamstress

Embroidery on fabric

1999

Embroidery on fabric

1999

8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in

Embroidery on fabric

3 1/2 x 2 1/4 in

Embroidery on fabric

9 x 6 1/4 in

Courtesy the collection of

8 7/8 x 5 7/8 in

Stephen Pratt and Sarai

Solution to Last Weeks Puzzle 1999

Made for you by a

5 Laffy Taffy

7 Receipt

Hoffman

Popeye’s Cup

Embroidery on fabric

1999

5 x 4 1/2 in

Embroidery on fabric

Awkwardness and Obscurity

1999 Embroidery on fabric

Courtesy the collection of

5 x 3 1/4 in

1999

5 1/4 x 4 x 2 3/8 in

Stephen Pratt and Sarai

Courtesy the collection of

Embroidery on fabric

Courtesy the collection of

Hoffman

Melissa Weber and Jay

7 7/8 x 5 1/4

Mark and Judy Bednar

Dandy 2000

1999

Embroidery on fabric

2000

Embroidery on fabric

3 3/4 x 2 in

Embroidery on fabric

4 3/4 x 9 in

3 1/8 x 1 1/4 in

1999

4 Corruption

6 7/8 x 4 in Relativity

1 Paid

Stephen Pratt and Sarai Hoffman

1999

1998

Embroidery on fabric

4 5/8 x 1 3/8 in

9 1/8 x 7 3/8 in

2 1/4 x 3 3/4 in

Courtesy the collection of

Pictures of Objects

Courtesy the collection of

Melissa Weber and Jay

2000

Curt Conklin

Dandy

Embroidery on fabric

A Faith in Documents

Courtesy the collection of 6 Violation Notice

The Consequences of

10 Band-Aid

2 Moving Words

Untitled

Instruments for Making 8

8 1/8 x 5 3/8 in

1999

Courtesy the collection of

Embroidery on fabric

Photographer’s Eye

6 5/8 x 4 1/4 in

1998

1999

Courtesy the collection of

Embroidery on fabric

Mark and Judy Bednar

9 x 3 5/8 in

3 1/4 x 2 1/4 in

Courtesy the collection of

Robert and Sarah Peters

Melissa Weber and Jay

8 Not For U

Tom Van Eynde 9

Dandy

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Artwork from left to right Local Values 2001 Embroidery and appliqué on fabric 13 1/2 x 22 in Courtesy the collection of Stephen Pratt and Sarai Hoffman Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2001 2002 Embroidery on fabric 21 3/4 x 24 1/2 in Courtesy the collection of Igor DaCosta and James Rondeau Chicago Tribune, April 16, 2000 2000 Embroidery on fabric 21 3/4 x 26 3/4 in Courtesy the collection of Jeff Mercer and Linda Glass

Newspapers

Socialist Worker, March 31, 2000 2000 Embroidery and appliqué on fabric 16 1/2 x 22 1/8 in

Chicago Tribune, April 8, 2001 2002 Embroidery and appliqué on fabric 21 3/4 x 12 3/4 in Courtesy the collection of Annie Morse and Kevin Pierce

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Boundary Troubles

Boundary Troubles 9 2004 Embroidery on fabric 26 x 13 1/4 in

Boundary Troubles 12 2005 Embroidery on fabric 27 1/4 x 34 1/2 in

Boundary Troubles 10 2004 Embroidery on fabric 37 x 32 1/2 in

Boundary Troubles 7 2004 16 1/4 x 7 in Embroidery on fabric Courtesy the collection of Peggy and Marty Friedman

Boundary Troubles 3 2003 Embroidery on fabric 25 x 37 in

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Karen Reimer’s Boundary Troubles series continues her practice of creating 4

intricate but inefficient simulations of everyday ephemera. Previously, Reimer’s labor-intensive production of the embroidered copy made the original material partially or completely illegible and transferred the specific meaning of the original into an ambiguous visual pattern. In Boundary Troubles, she continues her investigation by meticulously attempting to recreate the mass produced and seemingly insignificant details of the world, attempts that eventually add up to a blurry sense of the larger relationships that entail there. In this series of pattern-based work, Reimer plays off the implied endlessness of pattern by embroidering the figures of one fabric onto another. Sewing together pieces of fabric whose patterns have differing, sometimes conflicting, cultural associations of class, taste, gender, fashion era, and other domestic or social territories, the competing logic of each pattern dominates, transmutes, blends in or disappears. These mergings can be read as metaphors of infection or invasion, or as attempts to make wholes out of disparate parts. In any case, the results are inevitably incomplete and unresolved rather than neat coherent syntheses, and, as with much of Reimer’s work, the amount of labor invested raises the question of whether such attempts are misguided or optimistic. Boundary Troubles is another exercise in order gone amok, order that doesn’t know its boundaries, limitations or purpose.

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven 12

As in much of her work, Reimer begins with a strict set of rules. Here she pairs swatches of fabric with drawings of three-dimensional geometric solids. Shapes and patterns in the fabric dictate where it meets the geometric form. The excess fabric left floating outside the lines is covered in gold leaf. This “golden repair” is a reference to the Japanese tradition of Kintsukuroi: a tradition of repairing ceramics with a compound made from lacquer dusted with powdered gold, in order to highlight the damage rather than obscure it. The overall effect of Reimer’s conceptual technique creates an optical dissonance, where our mind oscillates between the fullness of the object and the flatness of the fabric. Ultimately, her work inhabits the gap between experience and representation, the slippage between the knowledge we gain through our bodies and codification of this knowledge in our languages of visual representation.

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Artwork from left to right on pg 14

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven 14

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #17

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #23

2015

Collaged paper, graphite, fabric, gold leaf

30 5/8 x 24 15/16 in

41 7/8 x 37 3/4 in

Courtesy the collection of Mark and Judy Bednar

Pictured below

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #16

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #4

2015

2014

Collaged paper, graphite, fabric, gold leaf

Collaged paper, fabric, gold leaf

29 3/4 x 31 3/8 in

23 5/16 x 27 7/8 in

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #9 2014 Collaged paper, fabric, gold leaf 23 5/16 x 27 7/8 in Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #19 2015 Collaged paper, graphite, fabric, gold leaf 26 1/8 x 40 in Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #8 2014 Collaged paper, fabric, gold leaf 23 5/16 x 27 7/8 in Courtesy the collection of Dr. Scott J Hunter Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #2 2014 Collaged paper, fabric, gold leaf 23 5/16 x 27 7/8 in Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #20 2015 Collaged paper, graphite, fabric, gold leaf 27 x 23 5/16 in

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #28 2015 Wood, graphite, fabric 17 1/2 x 20 x 7 in Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven #25 2014 Wood, graphite, fabric 9 x 20 x 12 in

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

16 The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Jefferson Godard Curator | Salina Art Center

Therefore—we do life’s labor— Though life’s Reward—be done— With scrupulous exactness— To hold our Sense —Emily Dickinson, excerpt from #443

Artwork from left to right Sleeping Under the Sky/Sleeping Under the Lake #2 2018-2020 Quilt 112 x 89 in Observed Annual Average Lake Level Projected Lake Levels, from the Shoretime Spaceline series 2020 Quilt 93 1/2 x 88 in Great Lakes and Basin, from the Shoretime Spaceline series 2021 Quilt 100 x 70 in Lake Michigan and Watershed, from the Spacetime Spaceline series 2021 Quilt 91 x 72 1/2 in

We come in from the outside to be greeted by a vast sky overhead: expansive swaths of blue fabric pieced into geometric patterns festoon the ceiling. Light passes through this textile and we are reminded of stained glass. Fabric teems and swirls in various shades of blue, a circular pattern fracturing into crazy quilt randomness and then reemerging elsewhere. This is our welcome to The Map vs. The Walk, a survey of works from artist Karen Reimer. The title is a nod to the difference between knowledge and experience, a balance between abstraction and sensation which affords the viewer an entry point into the artist’s conceptual practice. Through her painstaking embroidery, a repetitive movement that activates thinking, the artist aims to make knowledge material, and thereby become more connected to the information that she is embroidering. Moving further into the exhibition, the viewer gains a better understanding of the intensity and discipline of her work ethic, yet not all is revealed. In short, Karen Reimer makes her viewer think.

The Map vs. The Walk poses questions through several of her series including Copies, Boundary Troubles, Newspapers, Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven, and Sea Change. Throughout her thirty-year practice, the artist has continued to create laborious textile-based works and installations that question how we perceive.

Jefferson Godard Curator | Salina Art Center

Reimer’s work attempts to slow down the process by which we classify and assess information. She is deeply attracted to things that are not easily classified, that are in the realm of ambiguity. Language, cultural assumptions, and value systems are all examined through these methodical hand-stitched works. Cognition, meaning, value, pattern recognition, and systems are all important to this Chicago-based, Kansas native.

An early example of these examinations can be found in Copies, a series of embroidered reproductions of book pages, receipts, and even food wrappers, rendered in thread on fabric. Through this process, the artworks themselves now become originals, yet they lose their value and legibility in the process. For, as much as labor informs the value of an object, the copy decreases in value through this act of embroidery, as it is an insufficient means of reproduction. While retaining some likeness to their originals, these works often become illegible and rely upon the viewer to recognize and complete them. We must employ alternative means of cognition and pattern recognition to “read” these copies. Contemporary culture waxes heavily on the misreading of information as we often fail to fully assess it due to the ways that it is presented to us. Two cognitive terms that describe how we potentially incorrectly process visual information are “pareidolia” and “apophenia.” Recognizing familiar things in random objects, like seeing a face in a cloud is referred to as pareidolia. Similarly, apophenia is the tendency to see meaningful connections between unrelated things and can be a bit more extreme. In her work, Reimer exacerbates how these cognitive tools play with our ability to make accurate and informed conclusions.

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

This can also be evidenced in Boundary Troubles and Sea Change. In these fabric-based works, the artist intentionally layers information on top of material that already has a language of its own. Stitching the pattern of information onto material that already has a floral or striped pattern, creates a dizzying mixture and makes reading either pattern more difficult. Boundary Troubles connects two otherwise incongruent decorative patterns and joins them, embedding their patterns one within the other, making them transmute and leach into one another. In the artist’s words, the visual languages are often “short-circuited” by this action. The patterns themselves draw associations to levels of taste, fashion, and decorative arts while making a nod to their utility. Usefulness as a term in the art world is often negatively associated with craft and the artist does not shy away from this. Craft is not a pejorative, but a positive value to her, coming from the ethics of Reimer’s working-class roots. The paper-based works in the Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven series reference Kintsukuroi, or the Japanese art of “golden repair,” whereby damaged ceramics are repaired using gold dust, thus emphasizing the damage and making it the most beautiful aspect of the object.In these works, collaged and drawn threedimensional geometric shapes are matched to seemingly incongruous sourced fabric bits that “fit” them in one way or another. Any bit of fabric that does not fit inside of the geometric shape is covered with gold leaf, emphasizing the part that is “wrong.” Sea Change is the artist’s latest body of work. In it she embroiders data-driven imagery onto fabric. Through the layering and overlapping of the patterns of abstracted information and decoration, the artist explores our complicated relationship with data visualization while highlighting climate change and its environmental consequences. Data visualization, hearkening to the colloquialism “a picture is worth a thousand words,” can be defined as, “drawing graphic displays to show data…(where) The main goal is to visualize data and statistics, interpreting the displays to gain information” (Unwin, 2020). The escalating climate crisis is a central concern of the artist and this series focuses on that, including images of data on sea level rise, melting ice caps, and algae blooms in the Great Lakes. For this exhibition, she has created four works that hone in on Kansas-related environmental concerns, including the shrinking High Plains Aquifer and the state’s increasing drought-affected areas. The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Most of what resonates in The Map vs. The Walk lies in the connection between the work and the viewer. The material-rich works from Karen Reimer speak to her dedication of making and her subtle, yet evocative manifestations. Unwin, A. (2020). Why is Data Visualization Important? What is Important in Data Visualization? . Harvard Data Science Review, 2(1).

Jefferson Godard Curator | Salina Art Center

Curator Jefferson Godard (left) Artist Karen Reimer (Right)

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

The Real and the Ideal 2005 Embroidery on fabric 56 x 52 in

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Detail

1 Changes in Recoverable Water in the High Plains Aquafir 2021 Embroidery on fabric 18 1/2 x 12 3/8 in 2 Original Tallgrass prairie/Remnant Tallgrass prairie 2021 Embroidery on fabric 15 1/2 x 13 in 3 Adaptation approaches. 2020 Embroidery on fabric 16 1/2 x 11 in

Sea Change

Artwork from left to right

Observed Annual Average Lake Level Projected Lake Levels 2020 Quilt 93 1/2 x 88 in

Lake Michigan and Watershed, from the Spacetime Spaceline series 2021 Quilt 91 x 72 1/2 in

Great Lakes and Basin, from the Shoretime Spaceline series 2021 Quilt 100 x 70 in

The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Artwork from left to right below

Not pictured

Wells associated with earthquakes 2021 Embroidery on fabric 27 1/4 x 37 3/4 in

Percent Area for High Plains Drought 2020 Embroidery on fabric 27 1/4 x 30 1/2 in

Kansas Drought Outlook 2021 Embroidery on fabric 19 x 25 in

US Seasonal Drought Outlook Embroidery on fabric 21 x 22 1/2 in Courtesy the collection of Mark and Judy Bednar

“The embroideries in this room are data visualizations, images of huge amounts of scientific climate and environmental data on phenomena that are certainly affecting our bodies and our habitat, but which it is difficult for us to truly understand because the changes are incremental and mostly invisible, happening on a larger-than-human scale of time and space. Data visualization is a process of abstraction, and that can certainly be useful. But there is still a big difference between looking at a map and walking across a landscape. Copying these pieces of complex data in the long slow process of embroidery lets me connect my body to the information somehow. I’m trying to reintroduce some element of the walk into the map, to connect myself physically to abstracted information. The quilts are made from extra pieces of the Big Blue Sky installation in the entryway. Most of the dialogue around reuse in the art world refers to using formerly useful materials to make art; I am reversing that, using old art to make potentially useful objects. Quilting was invented to reuse material, so it seems appropriate to make quilts out of this fabric.” —Karen Reimer The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer

Programming

February 16 | 12-1 PM | Lunch & Learn Karen Reimer, Artist Talk via Zoom and Facebook Live. February 23 | 5-7 PM | Opening Reception Nate McClendon, orchestra leader, performer and teaching artist at the Beach Museum of Art will perform. April 20 | 12-1 PM | Lunch & Learn Catherine Shotick, stained glass scholar and Curator at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art will speak about stained glass, via Zoom and Facebook Live Experience the gallery wherever you are in the world! Take a virtual tour of this exhibition on our website at www.SalinaArtCenter.org/Karen-Reimer

Catalogue published by Salina Art Center to accompany the exhibition, The Map vs. The Walk | Karen Reimer Salina Art Center 242 S Santa Fe Ave Salina, Kansas 67401 February 9 - April 24, 2022 Essays by Shannon Rae Stratton and Jefferson Godard Design by Hannah Crickman Photos by Hannah Crickman and courtesy of the artist Founded in 1978, the Salina Art Center is a 501(c)3 creating exchanges among art, artists, and audiences that reveal life. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Art Center’s galleries, Art Center Cinema, and Warehouse are located in the heart of downtown Salina, KS. Learn more online at www. SalinaArtCenter.org. Supporters include artists, educators, and community members who envision a center to engage people in art experiences of quality, relevance, and significance to our global community. A heartfelt thank you to our patrons, sustainers, advocates, and benefactors for their generosity. Salina Art Center exhibitions and programs are supported in part by donors, members, underwriters, foundations, the Salina Art Center Endowment Foundation, and the City of Salina.

THANK YOU Monique Meloche Gallery Team: Alyssa Brubacker Megan Foy Öykü Kolat Monique Meloche Installation Team: Shea Clark Shawn Delker Anne Hoekstra Jerzee Mullins Jeroen Nelemans Daniel Picking Bobby Sexton Special Thanks: Karen Reimer Shannon R. Stratton The Map vs. The Walk is funded by Salina Art Center members and Giving Tuesday donors including the Orbit Fund, Karen Black, Sydney & Morrie Soderberg, Bill & Kathleen Pierson, Mike Soetaert & Melanie Terrill, John & Debbie Divine, William Counter & Lee Romaniszyn, and Fred & Sue Guzek. Artwork courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery

www.SalinaArtCenter.org

The Map vs The Walk | Karen Reimer