"In New York [in the sixties], I felt a distance between myself and others. I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on, what people said or how people felt about art. I feel that to this day. I don’t feel threatened by it anymore. I don’t understand, sometimes, what other people are seeing, or what they’re after, but back then it seemed necessary to pretend that I understood. Sol LeWitt’s 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' had been published, one of the great mid-century poems. And on a good day I could follow 15 of his 32 rules."
-Jennifer Bartlett
from an interview with Elizabeth Murray for BOMB magazine (2005)
Have you ever played Minesweeper? It's a trite computer game that I first experienced in the mid-nineties on what now seems like an an operating system artifact, Windows 95. When the game begins, there's a grid full of undifferentiated grey blocks that one has to blindly click. You may unknowingly strike a mine on the first turn and BOOM! Instant explosion. Or you'll discover a number that alerts you as to the possibility of a local mine through hints of pattern. Identify the "rhythm" of the suggestive numbers correctly and you just might win.
The haze of Jennifer Bartlett's recent work Song initially acted as a wall that I had to "blindly see" through in order to discern anything. As my eyes bounced like they were in a pin-ball machine amidst the thousands of dots, I began to recognize patterns that led to "explosions." Unlike in Minesweeper, however, these bursts were the rewards.
Song, 2007enamel over silkscreen grid on baked enamel steel plates
6 ft. 3 in. x 97 ft. 4 1/2 in. overall
(Installation views courtesy of www.locksgallery.com)
As I stepped in three-quarter time (1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3) through Song, some shapes elevated from the enamel squares and arrested me in ways that transcended traditional Op-Art through progressive spatial manipulation. What the hell does that mean? It means that Bartlett's shapes evolve, expand, retract, dissipate, aggregate, and constantly refresh themselves through a series of mini-evolutions. Yes, they move (due to their multiplicity and sequentiality).
Bartlett narrowed her palette to wheat (pale tan) and black to give pixely form the mic and I'm ferociously dialing to cast my vote. Arthur Danto, in a written response (published in The Nation in 1986) to Bartlett's Rhapsody (her career-making work from the 70's), mentioned that Bartlett attempts to paint everything through reduction i.e. she finds universals in elemental forms not unlike Thales, the first Greek philosopher on record, who attempted to find the common denominator in all materiality. His answer was water. Since water could transition from solid to liquid to vapor, it seemed the most likely candidate for our universal essence. In this room-spanning work, Bartlett's solution, like many masters such as Seurat and Close, is dots. A fitting conclusion because dots can represent molecules, cells, (maybe even monads?) and more importantly, bits (a measurement for quantities of information).
Bartlett's pieces compliment each other like layers of a matryoshka doll (those Russian dolls that when opened, reveal more dolls) and all the fragments harmonize like a devoted choir. It's safe to say that Bartlett's Song is a hit.
Outside of Song, Bartlett's work at the Locks gallery (in a show that is now closed--so this review is rather gratuitous) goes awry due to pure colors that should be locked up for battery (they defeat form and block any compositional nuances) and/or imagery that reminds me of elementary art projects:
Untitled (Ocean & Mountain), 1975enamel over silkscreen grid on baked enamel steel plates
12 x 25 inches
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