SPACE
Selections from the Permanent Collection
Saturday, September 15 - Friday, October 26, 2001
University Museum of Contemporary Art
SPACE: Selections from the Permanent Collection presents works which depict different qualities of space from the architectural to the psychological. Included in the exhibition are prints by Charles Garabedian, April Gornik, Syliva Plimack Mangold, Martin Puryear, and Gerhard Richter; drawings by Stephen Antonakos, Donna Dennis, Cristos Gianakos, Loren Madsen, Sandro Martini, and George Trakas; photographs by Harry Callahan, Mark Klett, and Al Souza; and objects by Joseph Cornell and Richard Fleischner. SPACE is on view at the University Museum of Contemporary Art from September 15 through October 26 with an opening reception on Friday evening, September 14 from 5 to 7 p.m.
Artists have been interested in achieving the illusion of a naturalistic setting on a two-dimensional surface since the Italian Renaissance of Western Europe. Prior to this time, what mattered was not the physical dimensions of space, but the spiritual hierarchy of God’s creatures. Distance in medieval panels and altarpieces was typically denoted in an upward fashion and figures were larger or smaller than one another according to their importance in a religious scheme that bore little separation from daily life. The classical leaning of the Renaissance promoted an insatiable curiosity about the integration of man and his surroundings which signaled a more objective approach that affected all areas of applied learning. Scientists employed empirical methods in their analysis of physical laws and linear perspective—the geometry of space—became a preoccupation for many artists. Over the centuries, the history of art has shown a variety and blending of attitudes towards the understanding of space. Erwin Panofsky, an eminent art historian, noted that "each period in western civilization had its own ‘perspective,’ a particular symbolic form reflecting a particular Weltanschanuung or world view." Impersonal empiricism mixed with soulful musings as well as the pictorial images and spatial arrangements of other cultures. The definition of space was not necessarily the displacement of it by animate and inanimate masses, but could be a description of the emotional, spiritual, or psychological nature of space. Playing with compositional scale, light qualities, colors, patterns, perspective, etc. holds the potential to evoke the many compelling moods that touch people with joy or trouble.
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George Trakas, Isle of View (View from West Bank), 1996, graphite and charcoal on paper, 30 1/8 x 22 1/4 inches |
George Trakas, Isle of View (View from East Terrace), 1996, graphite and charcoal on paper, 30 1/8 x 22 1/4 inches |
The artists in SPACE have inherited the benefits of much experimentation, both modest and rebellious, since the Renaissance in Western Europe. They have all absorbed the formal inquiries of abstracting the reality of space and of viewing it as an abstract principle. They have looked well at works which gauge the power of human thoughts, sentiments, and actions. Some of the works currently on display fall within the area of solving formal problems or within the realm of the personal while others combine the two aspects. Drawing/neon for the University of Massachusetts, (1978), by Stephen Antonakos for example, is the artist’s understanding of the neon artwork that he placed on the exterior of the Fine Arts Center prior to its fabrication. George Trakas’s drawing is that of another public artwork, Isle of View (View from the East Terrace),(1996), situated at the extreme southern end of the Campus Pond. Whereas Antonakos has considered a formally abstract aesthetic—the spatial placement of the neon—Trakas gives us an abstracted image of the bridge, the island, and the far bank. It is an abstraction that, through the sensuous flow of his marks, has us feel what it might be like to approach and cross the bridge and island taking notice of the different textures underfoot.
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| Martin Puryear, Dark Loop, 1984, woodcut, 22 15/16 x 30 1/8 inches |
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Quite a few of the drawings are working notations for past installations at the University Museum of Contemporary Art. Cristos Gianakos, Loren Madsen, and Sandro Martini accepted the challenge of incorporating the spatial dimensions and peculiarities of the Gallery’s interior within their respective visual vocabularies and chosen materials. Such installations are referred to as site-specific or site-related.
Introspection is a theme for several of the works. In Night Parthenon (1980), by Charles Garabedian, a man seems to be running through not so much a landscape as his own mind. A similar silence is created in Martin Puryear’s Dark Loop (1984) with the most delicate line defining a vulnerable form from an unknown expanse. Joseph Cornell’s Hotel (1973), with its empty interior and spider-web crack, speaks of lonely abandonment or, perhaps, an unsettling dream.
SPACE: Selections from the Permanent Collection is supported in part by funds from the UMass Arts Council.
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