Joel Morrison

Joel Morrison

wexner center for the arts

Introduction

This presentation of sculpture by Joel Morrison is part of Six Solos, a suite of six discrete exhibitions each featuring the work of a rising international artist. Since its inception in 1989, the Wexner Center has embraced a strong commitment to the work of younger artists engaged in pushing their practice in new directions. For many of the Six Solos artists, this marks their first solo exhibition in a U.S. museum, and for all of them, their presentation at the Wex offers a welcome chance to introduce their work to broad and diverse new audiences. Each artist has taken the center’s invitation as an incentive to broaden their scope of address and expand their already ambitious repertoire of forms and ideas. We believe that all six artists are on the cusp of greater achievement and renown, and we are particularly pleased to be able to include them in the programs and festivities marking our 21st anniversary in November 2010. As we now leave adolescence behind, we’ve undoubtedly gained a modicum of professional and institutional maturity, but Six Solos remains true to the energetic, irreverent spirit of artistic exploration and discovery that has marked the Wexner Center throughout its first two decades. That sensibility will certainly remain embedded in our DNA for years to come.

Sherri Geldin, Director Christopher Bedford, Chief Curator of Exhibitions Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University

COVER

OVERLEAF

Lupé, 2010 Various metals, nickel-plated 32 x 22 x 24 inches Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

Untitled (Green), 2010 Fiberglass over found objects 78 x 49 x 43 inches Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

Untitled (Pink), 2007/09 Fiberglass over found objects 59 x 63 x 58 1/2 inches Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

Totems, Towers, and Black Bongs (detail), 2010 Found objects, cast aluminum, cast bronze, and stainless steel Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills Photo by M. Christopher Jones

Totems, Towers and Black Bongs (Leftovers), 2010 Found objects, cast aluminum, cast bronze, and stainless steel Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

Painting Irrespective Christopher Bedford

What has never yet been analyzed is why this particular

One of the most fashionable defenses of painting

way of painting is more poignant than illustration. I

marshaled by the medium’s dwindling cadre of

own, like the image one’s trying to trap; it lives on its

its ability to adapt to and reflect shifts in the

more poignantly. So that the artist may be able to open

culture; to be, first and foremost, responsive: a

suppose because it has a life of its own. It lives on its

partisans points to its fundamental elasticity,

own, and therefore transfers the essence of the image

form and content of contemporary visual

up or rather, should I say, unlock the valves of feeling and

barometer of a changing world. For painting to

—Francis Bacon1

account for not only the ebbs and flows of its own

therefore return the onlooker to life more violently.

stay “relevant,” so the argument goes, it must embattled history—it must be, in other words, completely self-aware and self-critical—but it must also enfold critical references to popular

Jaguar Nights, 2008 Acrylic on canvas and board in 2 parts 18 1/8 x 15 inches; 12 ¼ x 8 7/8 inches Private collection

visual culture, contemporary design, televisual

long dead—Max Ernst, for instance, or Francis

imagery, digital media, and the image stream

Bacon, as well as such “outsider” artists as

experience of life online, all in an effort to

Augustin Lesage, Forrest Bess, Martin Ramírez,

update its own compromised profile and renew

and Henry Darger—than to possibly like-minded

once again, always with the faintest hint of

contemporary peers.3 She also maintains a

apology, its tenuous claims to credibility. For

healthy disinterest in art theoretical tomes that

the painter working today, this rather tall order

might sanctify or bolster her activities in the

represents one possible means of securing a

studio, a position that puts her distinctly at odds

positive critical response for one’s work. And then

with an emerging generation of abstractionists

there is the matter of producing a compelling

who consider themselves “conceptual painters.”

picture. Daunting indeed. Perhaps the only path

None of this implies, however, that Moran is

more daunting would be to jettison these new

any less thoughtful about what it means to be a

orthodoxies entirely, which is precisely what

painter than her bookish contemporaries. Take

is most striking about Katy Moran’s paintings:

for instance the following comment on the death

they evince a natural estrangement from this

of painting: “That idea has never meant anything

self-justifying rhetoric that is startling in its

to me. But, I often get those moments, when I

assurance. Though she would contest the veracity

think, what is the point? Is there any need for

of the label, Moran is, simply put, an abstract

this to exist? But then I think about the way I feel

painter (more on that later), who works on a

when I look at other people’s paintings and that’s

modest scale, sometimes on a found support,

enough. I don’t think there is anything that can

employing expressionistic brushwork, lately

do what painting can. I think painting can raise

in combination with found materials, and a

a particular sensation, and no other medium

seductive, quirky palette to yield compositions of

can do it. The fact that it sometimes seems

unusual power, concision, and emotion.

incompatible with day-to-day life makes it all the

If Moran’s paintings seem outside time and happily (perhaps pointedly) oblivious to the

more relevant and important.”4 The spirit of Moran’s unabashedly personal

anxiety of critical reception so clearly inscribed

engagement with this persistent question of

in the work of many of her peers, a brief

painting’s relevance is reiterated in her work and

conversation with the artist is enough to confirm

in her working processes. In the way that she

both suspicions. She is deeply thoughtful about

thinks and talks about her process, she shares

what she does and how she does it, working and

the closest affinity with Francis Bacon, the

appraising her efforts constantly, and discarding

predecessor she quotes most readily. “Can you

more aborted canvases than she declares finished

analyze the difference, in fact, between paint

and allows to leave her studio. As she notes, “I

which conveys directly and paint which conveys

am trying to reach quite a specific outcome but

through illustration?” Bacon asks. “This is a very,

through an irrational process.” Naturally, this

very difficult problem to put into words. It is

leads to a higher than average rate of failure. But,

something to do with instinct. It’s a very, very

Moran’s deep engagement with her own studio

close and difficult thing to know why some paint

2

life aside, she operates at a considerable remove

comes across directly onto the nervous system

from the art world of the present, referring more

and other paint tells you a story in a long diatribe

readily and with greater conviction to painters

through the brain.”5 Like Bacon, Moran eschews

Captain Beaky and his Band I, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection

Captain Beaky and his Band II, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection

Ledger, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches David Roberts Collection, London

the goal of literal recognition in favor of a kind of

hues that comprise the background. Although

activity that rests on the generation of intense,

every push, pull, and scrape of paint could yield

imprecise sensations through concomitantly

a descriptive sentence, the consistent paradox

imprecise imagery. Indeed she has said herself

lies in the fact that one can lavish language on

that “sensation is the word or idea that resonates

every square inch of this small canvas without

with me most.”

gaining any firmer understanding of why one is

6

Some of Moran’s earliest paintings, a small suite of which are included in this exhibition, record the artist’s first tussle with the question

compelled to keep looking at it, and so closely at that. Perhaps because Moran’s style of painting so obviously reflects her sensation of seeing

of recognition through intellect versus the

the world one is given temporary permission

generation of sensation through experience,

to inhabit another subjectivity, to see through

outlined above by Bacon. Paintings like Captain

another set of eyes, an accommodation that is

Beaky and his Band II (2006) that, quite obviously,

both beguiling and irresistible.

entice the viewer to search for hints of the

an idea,” Moran claims. “Rather I want paint to

discernable amidst an inventory of autonomous

convey a sensation that captures a character. If

painterly marks, and to speculate that the

I were to make certain marks in paint that are

take as their point of departure a single image,

“I don’t want to paint to simply execute

painting represents an act of translation from

supposed to represent something, the paint

one language—perhaps a photograph or an image

would feel dead to me. But sometimes when I

found online—to another entirely different one:

find a set of marks within another canvas, that

a domestically scaled abstract painting. Maybe.

feels more authentic. But if I had orchestrated

Yet for all that remains just beyond one’s grasp in

those same characters, they would feel dead.

Moran’s paintings, they are nevertheless a joy to

This process emerges from my sense that my

describe. The way she handles paint and deploys a

conscious ideas may not be my best. I want

range of sensual rococo hues is a feast for the eyes

to imagine ideas that come from somewhere

and an invitation to ekphrasis.

else.”8 This ambition becomes more nuanced

In Captain Beaky and his Band II, unlike in

more fractured, variegated later works, it is

tempting to identify a figural presence in the composition, a temptation lent credence by the fact that Moran has maintained all along that the central objective of her painting is to describe a

and convincing in slightly later works like Ledger (2008), which do not derive from a single source image but from many sources and even

from memory. Ledger relies on a more limited, understated palette but incorporates a far

greater formal range of marks, and two decisions

“character.” Though the definition of character

combine to render the character or figure that

has become increasingly gaseous and intangible

presumably lurks somewhere in the composition

for the artist, here the word stakes a more literal

all but invisible. If we are to take Moran at her

7

claim on the image. A figure, drawn out more

word, such characters still exist for her, despite

through contrast than specific form, stands offset

their erasure from our field of vision, a claim

very slightly to the left, a clumsy, oddly disjointed

that draws attention to the important possibility

vertical presence composed of discrete dabs of

that abstraction in Moran’s work is less a hard

high key paint that together establish a clear

and fast formal line separating the legible from

figure/ground relationship to the thinner, darker

the illegible and more a question of personal

moonmen, 2010 Acrylic, collage, watercolor and cut paper on canvas, diptych 15 1/4 x 11 1/8 inches; 18 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches Private collection

subjectivity: a question, in other words, not of

collage-based compositions from 2009 and 2010

what is there but instead of what one sees. A

point to a more plural dimension in her work, a

tongue-in-cheek proposition about how best

willingness to let other voices, images, and ideas

to control the consumption of her work in a

comingle with her own.

gallery context illustrates this idea of subjectivity

Other painters, rough contemporaries

as established through vision: “It’s also about

like Charline Von Heyl, for example, explain

viewing distance. I almost want to mark the floor

their desire to paint abstractly as an effort to

where people should stand. Not too close, and not

generate an image they have never seen before.

too far away. I want people to see it as I see it, but

Moran turns this tidy, quasi-utopian aspiration

I realize that is almost impossible.”9 Moran’s most recent paintings, those

on its head. She stops working on a canvas when absolutely certain that she and she alone can

from 2009 and 2010, incorporate found elements

discern the figure or, more accurately, character,

including antique frames and collage materials

that was present from the beginning; she refers

that she uses as part of her palette along with her

to these ghosts of likenesses as existing “in a

conventional acrylics and, in another new turn,

different language.”11 Moran, then, does not paint

oil pastels. If the artist’s move away from a single

to make an image she hasn’t seen before, but

source image to multiple sources represents

rather reworks and ravages her subjects knowing

one major shift in her career to date, this still-

that they can never lose their familiarity in her

developing interest in collage represents another.

eyes if they are to succeed as finished works

Although Moran’s work has always rested on

and have a life in the world. Once she finds that

appropriation to some extent, motivated by a

character in an accident of process, it becomes

desire, as she has noted, “to make it more my

the element that anchors the work through

own,” the use of found material literalizes

completion. The burden of the new, then, is

this process, bringing her hand into collision

born or measured not by Moran but instead by

with preexistent images.10 This meeting of the

the viewer who takes up her way of seeing as

autographic (the painterly mark) and the mass

something new. It is perhaps the otherness of

produced (paper shards and magazine fragments)

this deeply personal transaction that makes her

introduces a worldly element to Moran’s painting, paintings, so apparently indifferent to time and shifting her work slightly but vitally away from

relevance, paradoxically fresh and present.

the simple designation of painting and into dialogue with another set of predecessors entirely including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. She still insists on the persistence of a “character” in these works, and the brushstrokes are unmistakably hers, but the integration of pictorial elements not entirely her own signifies, perhaps, a slight loosening of her drive to create an impermeably autographic field of vision. If the first two phases of her career were marked by a desire to develop a very personal painting style that threw into relief the singularity of vision, her

Christopher Bedford is the Wexner Center’s chief curator of exhibitions.

Notes 1 Francis Bacon quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon 1961–1979 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980), 17.

2 Katy Moran quoted in “The Tate Would Be Nice Wouldn’t It?” Useless 4, 41.

3 In an email from October 4, 2010, Katy Moran noted her interest in contemporary painters as well as historical ones and expressed her strong interest in the work of “outsider” artists such as those mentioned here: “I see a power in their work and wonder if this power comes from the fact that they supposedly were not aware of an/their audience. That maybe ego, social progression, or the intellectual process didn’t come into their work.” She concluded, “I suppose in feeling this way, I might feel a considerable remove from the art world at present.”

4 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010.

5 Francis Bacon quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon 1961–1979, 18.

In the October 4 email cited above, Moran reminded me that she is drawn less to Bacon’s paintings than to the way he talked about his work and his process.

6 Katy Moran quoted in Sara Hughes, “An Interview with Katy Moran,” in Katy Moran (St. Ives, Cornwall: Tate St. Ives, 2009), unpaged.

7 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010.

8 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010.

9 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. Perhaps the emphasis I’m placing on the question of how each viewer sees Moran’s work is a means of balancing my belief that she is, as I wrote above, “an abstract painter” and her own discomfort with that designation.

As she wrote in her October 4 email: “I see figurative things in more or less every painting I make.… I appreciate that they also have very abstract qualities but to me they feature characters or landscapes or some recognizable image.” Yet because those elements are unrecognizable to me, I see her work as abstract.

10 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010.

11 Katy Moran quoted in Sara Hughes, “An Interview with Katy Moran,” in Katy Moran, unpaged.

Checklist Captain Beaky and his Band I, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection Captain Beaky and his Band II, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection Sick Boy, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 x 1 1/4 inches The Mario Testino Collection Lazy Wears Blue, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection Salters Ridge, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection, Courtesy of Stuart Shave, Modern Art, London Take Me To Barbados, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16 1/8 inches Zabludowicz Collection Volestere, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Private collection, New York Wasabi without Tears, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Ninah and Michael Lynne Daniel, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection, San Francisco, Courtesy of Anthony Meier Fine Arts Ledger, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches David Roberts Collection, London Orton, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Nancy and Nate Kacew Rinky’s, 2008 Acrylic on wood panel 15 3/4 x 19 3/4 x 1 3/8 inches Courtesy of Stuart Shave, Modern Art, London Short legs. . . I’m coming, 2008 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas and wood panel in 3 parts 15 x 18 inches; 20 x 10 7/8 inches; 18 x 15 inches Private collection Whistan, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches Collection of Mark and Emily Goldstein boy cat, 2009 Acrylic and frame on canvas 24 x 19 3/4 inches Private collection

Dogs, Flowers, and Summer Holidays II, 2009 Acrylic and oil pastel on board 15 5/8 x 18 5/8 inches Collection Nunzia and Vittorio Gaddi, Lucca, Italy, Courtesy of Galleria il Capricorno, Venezia duchess mouse on her way to the port, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 18 7/8 x 13 3/4 inches Collection of Christen and Derek Wilson If we don’t have it you don’t need it, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 18 7/8 x 15 3/4 inches From the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish lady bear with a back full of hair, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 19 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches The Collection of Niels Kantor Muffin Power, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 25 5/8 x 21 3/4 inches Ken and Helen Rowe, London Pillow Drinker, 2009 Acrylic, oil pastel and collage on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Dr. and Mrs. I. Rowan, Northern Ireland Travelling Mercy, 2009 Acrylic on canvas in 3 parts with found frames 17 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches; 15 x 18 1/8 inches; 21 7/8 x 18 1/4 inches Collection of Lord Browne Wacky Races 2, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Jay Bauer Bear 1, 2010 Acrylic and collage on canvas 15 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches Private collection Bear 3, 2010 Acrylic and collage on framed canvas 16 1/4 x 19 3/8 inches Collection of Hugh Gibson, London Black Moon, 2010 Acrylic and collage on canvas with found frame 21 1/8 x 17 3/8 inches Collection of Dana and Shimon Sheves moonmen, 2010 Acrylic, collage, watercolor and cut paper on canvas, diptych 15 1/4 x 11 1/8 inches; 18 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches Private collection Whitmore, 2010 Acrylic and frame on canvas 19 1/8 x 14 15/16 inches Collection of the artist

About the Artist

Six Solos Erwin Redl Megan Geckler Tobias Putrih/MOS Gustavo Godoy Katy Moran Joel Morrison

Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1976, Joel Morrison

November 9, 2010–February 13, 2011

currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received

Six Solos is organized by the Wexner Center, with Chief Curator of Exhibitions Christopher Bedford as the overall curator for the series and project curator for Joel Morrison.

his BA in English literature from Central Washington University in 1998 and his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, in 2001.

Primarily know as a sculptor, Morrison also produces and exhibits video works such as the single-channel project Birds/Lewitt (2005), which is included in this

exhibition.

Solo exhibitions of Morrison’s work have taken place at the Santa Monica Museum of Art; Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, California; Griffin Contemporary in Santa Monica, California; and ACE GALLERY in New York and Los Angeles; as well as at Art Forum Berlin; Art Cologne; and Galerie Michael Schultz in Berlin, Germany. Group exhibitions of note

All exhibitions and related events at the Wexner Center for the Arts receive support from the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members, as well as from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. © The Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts.

Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University 1871 North High Street Columbus, OH 43210-1393 wexarts.org

include The 2008 Peekskill Project at the Hudson Valley

Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York;

Signals: A Video Showcase, Mash-up at the Orange County

Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2008); Die Macht des Dinglichen—SKULPTUR Heute! (The Power of

the Tangible—Sculpture Today) at the Georg-Kolbe-

Museum in Berlin (2007); the 2006 California Biennial

at the Orange County Museum of Art; and Thing: New

Sculpture from Los Angeles, at the UCLA Hammer Museum,

Los Angeles (2005). Morrison’s work has been reviewed and discussed in periodicals including Artforum, Art &

Antiques, Artweek, and Artpapers, and in the catalogues

accompanying the exhibitions Die Macht des Dinglichen and Thing.

Photo credits: Unless otherwise noted all photos

by Sven Kahns