MINING THE URBAN DIVIDE -- The Work of Matthew McCaslin
To be an Installation artist in
the 1980s was to be extremely creative in a form generally perceived to be
approaching its grandfatherly phase. Born out of concerns related to the urban
experience, and added to that the new availability of huge loft “spaces” in the
early days of New York’s SoHo art
neighborhood, Installation Art drew attention to a concept of spectacle that
borrowed its formal constraint from a sense of objectness. These two elements may
seem immediately at odds with one another: the spectacle and the objects, but a
spectacle is an event dependent upon the arrangement of given objects, or
people. It is perhaps best described as a rearrangement of expectation, and the
use of objects or materials in an uncommon manner allows it to be fulfilled
more successfully. As people do not conform their everyday activities to the
unusual state of affairs that normally creates a spectacle, it is instead
formulated among their myriad interactions and the varied uses of the spaces in
which their lives intersect.
One of the most successful
practitioners of Installation art since the early 1980s has been New York
artist Matthew McCaslin, whose work actively comments upon the nature of
interior space by using those materials, which exist within the walls of all
our spaces. McCaslin’s work originally focused upon the dynamics of private
space. That concept has since developed into a focus upon the underlying
notions of ostensible privacy, public (in)action, and how these subtle
interactions form the basis of a visual tapestry that includes the natural
world as part of its exploration of space.
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| Landscapes of the Inbetween (1989) |
McCaslin tests the
ground equally held by installation and sculpture. His early solo exhibitions
at Daniel Newburg in Soho were radical experiments upon the degree of
perception inherent in our experience of interior space, whether domestic or
corporate, always deconstructing the formal qualities of these spaces and the
many elements, either formal or utilitarian, which build them and our
conceptions of them. Landscapes of the Inbetween (1989) presented a set
depicting a squatter’s home: a bed made from dozens of blankets laid one atop
the other and several sets of wall struts made for holding up sheets of dry wall,
in this case left uncovered, and set nine sections deep, as if a sound barrier
made only from repeated walls was the original intention. From the other side
of the area crossed by the wall struts, the office area of the gallery was
visible, and though the metaphor of a wall is overt, there was little sense of
the separation, only a diffusion of light, air, and the ability of gallery
visitors to easily interact with its staff. Though this mimics, in the barest
sense, a domestic environment, this space remained stolidly alienating to its
visitors. We were reluctant to settle onto the bed or transgress the field
covered by the wall struts. In making them habitually conscious of the degree
of artifice at work, McCaslin performed an act so subtle that it became difficult
to accept the plausibility of our role in it. Human beings, though necessary
for the creative realization of this work, are otherwise no more than furniture
themselves, entities which take up space, and in doing so, exert an ostensible
effect upon their immediate environment.
McCaslin’s second
exhibition (1991) depicted a site of recent mechanical construction, with
objects and tools scattered about the floor, the installation as a whole
remaining untitled, yet with specific works on the walls. These works are also
made to look as if they were recently constructed and perhaps abandoned halfway
through the process of their fashioning. They were composed of electrical
wiring, lights, fans, and switch junctions, and represented sculpture as the
merest utilities exposed from behind building walls. One work in particular,
Path of Least Resistance, represents a model of the world using a length of
electrical cable hidden within electrical piping, formed into a square with
curved corners and three distinct junctions: a bright, garish white light at
its upper left corner, and on/off switch located at the opposite side, just
above the center, and below, nearer the side with the light, a four-plug power
extension with one plug in place, a loose wire wandering away, across the
floor. The space as a whole represents a field of endeavor in a state of flux,
in which each individual work embodies an effort toward utopian ideals, which
fall by the wayside. The idiom of McCaslin’s metaphorical vocabulary relates
immediately to notions of connectivity and unity, yet the installation on the
whole evidences an idiosyncratic breakdown of systemic thinking. The wall works
exhibit a sense of disjunction, or mindless re-treading of the same
tautological ground, not dissimilar from many of the more overtly theatrical
presentations then occurring in downtown New York black-box spaces.
Subsequent exhibitions
by McCaslin in New York included two major works created for museum spaces,
Tribute to a Moment (Museum of Modern Art, 1992) and Harnessing Nature (Whitney
Museum at Philip Morris, 1996). In Harnessing Nature, the exhibition space was
completely dominated by a field of video monitors of varied sizes, arranged so
as to blanket the visual area of the gallery and also create an environment of
physical encounter with these inert forms projecting and interiorized portrait
of reality. The images they depicted were of the Atlantic Ocean viewed directly
head-on, with only rare glimpses of the horizon or shoreline. The images were accompanied
not by a matching soundtrack of waves, but by a collage of white noise that
assaulted viewers unceasingly, jarring them from the possibility of a
comfortable reverie. This drew attention not only to a subject which, by its
visual and aural wildness, is immediately separated from the usual expectations
of the contemporary art space, but also spoke to the passive activity of
viewing art as an exercise in ironic self-absorption.
Exhibitions at Sandra
Gering (1998) and Feigen Contemporary (1998, 1999, 2004) have engaged themes
related to city living, with the use of individual sculptures projecting
specific topics such as the movement of crowds to architectural dimension, of
mechanized industry to human leisure, of velocity to languor, and of man’s increasing
psychological distance from the simple acts of nature. McCaslin’s themes have
naturally extended from his earlier installations, which utilized only hardware
materials, with the accent being on perimeter rather than media. Slowly, his
installations have taken the form of an amassing of complex functional (though
mnemonic) objects, which act as sculptures. Yet he has also remained interested
in the potential of interior space to express the qualities of intimacy and alienation,
which are self-evident in those environments that most, if not all urbanites,
choose to live and work.
The exhibition at
Sandra Gering consisted of four installations which all worked toward a single
effect. Video was used to provoke the sensibility of the viewer, with images of
office buildings lit from within, moonlight on water, and night action scenes
in which only street lights and car headlights and taillights are in
evidence—were aided by objects and materials that underscored their use as
constructs of experience. Darkness was the central sensation of this
exhibition, the darkness defined by electrical illuminations. In Split Level
Mind Revisited (1998) five large video monitors formed a totem with views of a
city at night: moonlight flickering off the river, downtown office buildings
illuminated by various business signs, and scenes of the city’s traffic
crosswalks, showing only stoplight, taillights, and headlights in stark tones
of white and red. The physical structure of a cage held the monitors in place,
anchoring them as fields of visual endeavor. Daydream on the 54th
Floor, a smaller totem with three medium-sized monitors and a small speaker
projecting a wash of white noise—the cosmopolitan equivalent of crickets or the
voice of the night—had a seething primeval energy produced from local and
distant noises both heard together.
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| Daydream on the 54th Floor |
The display at Feigen
Contemporary began with “Time Clock,” in which a portable stereo sitting in the
bed of a black metal wheelbarrow (shades of Beckett) emits a loud rhythmic
pulse of white noise. The noise changed in variety and intensity, flailing out
in a crescendo of imaginary explosions, which caught in the metallic tongue of
the wagon’s load area and echoed about the immediate area, even into the
street. Blinker, another piece, is comprised of a square bank of small video
monitors and their attendant hardware. The image of a human eye fills each
screen, repeated with variations in color and brightness. The eye functions
like a normal eye: it blinks. This action is constant though intermittent;
causing a chain reaction among the multiplied eyes, until not one resembles its
previous appearance or position in the wall of images.
“Check It Out” has a
single stack of four video monitors accompanied by a large clock face sitting
on the floor to its left, and by two yellow construction lanterns, one on the
ground beside the clock, the other hanging over the far side of the screens.
The screens project the image of a shifting mass of people as viewed through
security cameras in shopping malls or train stations. The mass of bodies,
filmed in such an indiscriminate manner, based upon spatial position within a
particular building, becomes both a current of human activity and a narrative
of human reflection when shown in intermittent movement or listless waiting.
There is a great pleasure in being able to view this mass as it mills about,
and then sometimes one “actor” steps close to the camera lens, even notices it,
and shows the depth of individual self-consciousness in a tic, a nervous smile,
or a look of slight horror. When the film loop ends, as in other works, these
images are replaced with a fine mist of static, which tends to heighten the
sense of visual pastiche formed by the combination of recognizable entities
with a nonrepresentational depiction of space. The visual images and even the
flow of static enter into the context of narrative and drama, made physically
approachable by the lamps and by the constantly moving clock beside the
screens.
In “Pop Cycle” five
monitors are lined chest-high along the wall, accompanied by a long white
fluorescent bulb. The images rapidly alternate between machines making
hamburger patties and of men and women surfing upon huge blue-green waves of
tanning themselves upon beach furniture. The use of the fluorescent tube to
physically illuminate the local area around the work frames it as a reflection
of real-life elements, occurring physically as well as thematically, while as
an art object it simultaneously contains and contextualizes the images which
flit across its screens. The images themselves, along with the title, seem to
refer to another aspect of the modern working life, but one in which human
beings are removed from the act of production and are mainly beings of
consumption and relaxation.
“Junction Blvd” has
three video monitors of different sizes sitting upon a low wooden dolly,
swathed in black rubber electrical wiring and lit by three lamps, one beside
the monitors, and two others among them. The monitors face outward in a circle
one must traverse before discovering that the image in each is the same—an
anonymous spot at which cars and trucks on a highway and cargo cars on a train
pass alongside each other for a brief period. This image is purposefully
general and ambiguous, but it also entreats one to reflect upon the various
possibilities of metaphor, such as the notion of differing modes of
transportation for both persons and goods as symbolic components of American
cultural identity, identified with certain periods of historical growth and
change in the American “national consciousness.” Both thoroughfares are busy,
and each references the other in the manner of its motion, its burden or
weight, and the history and identity that each takes in the popular
imagination. The props, including the dolly and the lights, are used to
emphasize themes of industry and labor, and the repetition of the image in a
fashion which does not differ from one screen to the next even as one
undertakes to discover this, also imposes a passive aggression upon them, and a
sense that the dramatic components of this view of the world are not mutable to
individual choice.
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| Hello Good-Bye |
“Hello Good-Bye” has a
single video screen that sits in the bed of a bright red hand drawn wagon, and
is illuminated by a single lantern. Te screen depicts the image of a sunset,
and follows it slowly as the large red orb hangs patiently above the horizon of
an ocean, until it passes just beyond view. The image is framed in such a way,
by the corners of the physical screen, that neither sand nor surf is visible.
The use of the lantern hidden behind the monitor underscores our sensory
experience of the illumination of a sunset, even as we recognize that it is
being recalled for us on the monitor. McCaslin seems to be urging us toward an
interpretation of sensation as a product of divergent reality—that the image of
the sunset is not enough, the technology is not enough—that the image and the
illusion of narrative, with its undertones of causality, represent only a slick
attempt to breach the difference between them, as it dramatizes and elaborates
upon the fascinating but humble qualities of this real event.
“Turn Green at the
Light” has nine monitors with images of flowers blooming in slow motion, cows
munching on grass, and brightly colored automobiles speeding back and forth,
their frantic vitality a jarring contrast to the thoughtful slowness of the
animals and plants on the other screens. This piece constitutes rumination on
daily life and the velocity with which me move through it. Repetitions in the
occurrence of images of flowers and cows occur in a circular fashion,
enveloping and surrounding those of the cars, which erupt from the center
screen and screens vertical and horizontal to it. This pastiche, as both symbol
and physical collage, evokes a flower’s mantra-like order in its rhythmic
alternation, from one set of images to the other, embodying youthful vitality
and renewal.
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| Turn Green at the Light |
The period of
development from McCaslin’s earliest solo exhibition to the present is around
twenty years. During this time, he has utilized a variety of materials and has
referenced a broad range of motifs. Yet his work has maintained its metaphoric
relation to the physical elements of the constructed experience: first its
wires, lights, fans, and clocks as indicators of the natural subverted for the
use of the unnatural, and made to represent a form of totemic super-reality;
and to the visual elements of dynamic experience in and of themselves,
transferred to a realistic sensory context through the use of video commingling
with the aforementioned functional items. All of these objects and events exist
in a time and space which is idiomatically post-urban, and their effects fall
into that void of made existence which I have referred to as a divide, an area
which is defined by its reliance not upon innate physical detail, nor upon a
practical purpose which it may alone provide for its occupant, but upon the
range of phenomena that is possible within it. Any made environment can be
stripped of those natural details and sensory aspects which allow us to
experience its environment as similar to one found in nature. Once stripped, a
process of subversion begins in which any effect may be achieved by the
subtlest placement of objects or a shift in sensory amplitude, such as those
imposed by McCaslin’s work. Their earliest manifestations depended on how our
recognition of physical space is structured through our common and subjective
experience of urban interiors. We may be quite accustomed to such environments,
in which case we may naturally take for granted their muted range of color and
noticeable detail, and the physical separation which they interpose between us,
as living organisms, and the living, natural environment from which we sprang.
The elements of time, of sensory experience, and of the spatial quality of
objects, are each important determinants in our constant self-education as
human beings. Cut off from the natural world first by the larger urban
environment, and second by the layered areas in which we choose to work and
live, we experience a certain numbing of sensory expectation, and it is that
expectation which McCaslin addresses, while simultaneously critiquing the
forces which subvert it.
The use of video has
transformed the visual vernacular of McCaslin’s work. The sense of spectacle
has altered in its construction from a manually created environment to a
visually narrated one. This adds a degree of perspectival remove that injects
more narrative, and therefore more irony, into the work. His installations have
ceased to function as a mere constellation of objects, or as a
dematerialization of the internally functional landscape made external, but
continue as a complex tapestry of found experience projected into the limited
sphere of the urban divide. The visual character of video depends upon its use
of time. Either it introduces the element of duration, of intermittence, or of
oscillation. Images of the natural world allow him to dispense with having to
dramatize the physical interiority of sculptural experience as intimate space
and allow the qualities of the natural world—scale, speed, and the dynamic of
complicated physical interaction—to both obfuscate and enrich our experience. This
allows us to engage both the dynamic and passive elements of live experience
within the continuum of viewed existence, turning sensory and visceral events
into aesthetic ones, and turning ourselves as gallery viewers into spectators
of these same elements infinitely recurring both in and outside the gallery
space. Our expectation of what comprises an artistic event is transposed with
our recognition of those generally unnoticed elements occurring within the
built sphere, so that what effects us in our dynamic, exterior life can be
recontextualized from the passive, interior version represented by the artist’s
installation in general and the work of Matthew McCaslin in particular. The
divide is partially engendered by a recognition of such elements, and by the
questions we pose for ourselves.
Originally published by PAJ: A Journal
of Performance and Art, Issue 77, May 2004
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