Inquiries of Art and Science
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INQUIRIES OF ART AND SCIENCE 2 3 Published on the occasion of Time as Landscape: Inquiries into Art and Science, on view at the Director’s Foreword Cornell Fine Arts Museum from September 29 to December 31, 2017. This exhibition is generously supported by the Director’s Circle of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum; Curators’ Acknowledgements the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Afairs; and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Additional support is provided by the CFAM General Exhibition and the Jessie and Eugene Incommensurable Temporalities by Abigail Ross Goodman Drey Exhibition Funds. Geographies of Time by Trevor Paglen The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is funded in part by Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. ©2017 Cornell Fine Arts Museum is funded in part by Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. All rights reserved no Plates part of this book may be published without the written permission of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum. The copyrights of the works of art reproduced in this book are retained by the artists, their heirs, successors, and assigns. Archives of Time: Yinka Shonibare, Xaviera Simmons, Howardena Pindell, Paglen, Trevor. The Last Pictures. (c) 2012 by Trevor Paglen. Published by the University of California Press. Dawn Roe, and Lucas Arruda by Amy Galpin ISBN 13: 978-0-972280-7-0 Marked by Time: Scientific Readings in the Work of Luis Camnitzer, CURATORS ABIGAIL ROSS GOODMAN and AMY GALPIN Sara VanDerBeek, and Thiago Rocha Pitta by Amy Galpin EDITOR PATRICK COLEMAN DESIGN LINE THRU ZERO and MAURER CREATIVE PRINTED BY PROGRESSIVE Exhibition Checklist 4 5 WORKS BY YINKA SHONIBARE, HOWARDENA PINDELL, XAVIERA SIMMONS, DAWN ROE, AND LUCAS ARRUDA BY AMY GALPIN Physical archives As Abigail Ross Goodman states in her history. Inspired by Indonesian designs, essay that begins this catalog, “The they were produced by the Dutch function as places of artists included in the exhibition desire and English, who later introduced the respite for many scholars. to understand, question, and describe cotton fabrics to their African colonies; the subject of time: as scientific fact, over time they became associated with They ofer scholars as relative experience, as aesthetic African heritage and tradition. The opportunities to focus archive.”1 By examining works by multiple cultural influences involved Xaviera Simmons, Yinka Shonibare, in the creation and ultimately the on research, consult Dawn Roe, Howardena Pindell, and meaning of these fabrics demonstrate primary documents, Lucas Arruda included in Time as Shonibare’s keen attention to hybridity Landscape common threads are in his artistic practice and the and interrogate historic formed, including the vital notion that complicated roles of the signifier and spaces. Archives also each of these artists creates aesthetic the signified. archives and uses time as a tool for energize new ideas and creative production. Shonibare’s new work, The American Library (Historians), presented in this can boost the theories Often interpreted through a framework exhibition for the first time, consists of those who use them. of postcolonialism, Yinka Shonibare of 225 books wrapped with fabric and makes work that questions European displayed on a bookcase, and similar The artists addressed in narratives historically dominated to earlier works critically examines this essay use time and by Anglo people. The past and meaning, how and whom shapes facts, present and the powerful and the ideas, and beliefs. An earlier, related archives either literally or oppressed often collide in Shonibare’s work, The American Library Collection metaphorically and both photographs, films, sculptures, and (Writers) (figs.12-13), consists of books installations. His distinctive works, written by American writers, both concepts are essential deeply informed by race, class, and well-known and lesser-known authors, to the exhibition, Time as demonstrative of cultural hybridity, are many whom are immigrants. Other often recognized by his use of textiles included texts are by authors who have Landscape: Inquiries of associated with West African cultures. stated anti-immigrant beliefs. Both These fabrics have a rich and varied of Shonibare’s American collections FIG 12 Art and Science. Yinka Shonibare, MBE The American Library Collection (Writers), 2017 300 Hardback books, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, gold foiled names, bookcase 98 x 40 x 13 1/4 in. JCG9170 © Yinka Shonibare MBE. Courtesy James Cohan, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle. 1 See Abigail Ross Goodman’s “Incommensurable Temporalities” in this volume. 78 – ARCHIVES OF TIME ARCHIVES OF TIME – 79 were preceded by The British Library, Although athletic competition While time is scientific, it is also 2014, which included 6,000 books and can encompass style, artistry, and inherently human, and tethered to also focused on the contributions of sheer grit, it also involves scientific emotional experience. Lucas Arruda’s immigrants. All three works testify to processes, and in Pindell’s drawings, landscapes inspire diferent emotive the power of the written word, to the a concrete understanding of physics responses. The cycle of time leads to historic practice of collecting books, becomes a clear advantage in athletic shifts in color and the temperament and to the multifaceted space in which achievement. While Pindell has of the water. In a dedicated, even collections and libraries function. received greater recognition for her obsessive manner, he paints the ocean, films addressing race and her abstract the horizon line, and the sky. Choosing Textual analysis—whether literary, compositions,2 her drawings function a small-scale for subject matter that is historic, or scientific—allows for a as maps of movement on the television often rendered large, the artist creates series of hypotheses to be developed, screen through her own system of a distinctive contribution to the time- and ultimately tested. An important lines, dots, numbers and arrows. tested muse. Smaller ocean views practice when digging into an archive These diagrams of activity, invented are often studies, while fully realized is dividing the newly obtained and enacted by the artist, may evoke pictures tend to be grand in an attempt evidence into categories. By dissecting questions regarding how a baseball to portray the expansiveness of nature. information, the investigator can find spins or the location of where a tennis what information works and what ball lands on the court. Pindell’s video Time is inherent in Arruda’s work as information does not. Howardena drawings, however, relate a scientific it relies heavily on the idea of natural Pindell’s video drawings interrogate approach that dissects a dominate light. As evidenced by Untitled, 2012 motion on the television screen. Many mechanism and its output, the (pl.2), Arruda’s painterly evocation of Pindell’s video drawings present television and its programming, and of light at the horizon line reinforces sporting events (figs.14-15) while others resulting efects on American lives. the practice of timekeeping. Steady depict innocuous imagery like fish Who are the actors, choreographers, observation of the horizon line yields (pl.14). The works are the result of a owner, and participants? Pindell’s a cyclical process from which one can multi-step process that includes taking diagrams evoke scientific processes, identify a range of time. Curator and a still image of moving image on the but they are not scientific documents. critic Chris Sharp writes, “Indeed, what television screen and then placing a Instead they force the viewer to slow Arruda does speaks to a journey that transparency that maps the movement down, ponder the imagery, and to is both outward and inward, gesturing over the still image. The still image and deconstruct the composition. toward a threshold, which, like the transparency are then photographed unattainable horizon itself, irradiates resulting in a final representation. FIG 12 Yinka Shonibare, MBE The American Library Collection (Writers), 2017 300 Hardback books, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, gold foiled names, bookcase 98 x 40 x 13 1/4 in. JCG9170 2 A long overdue retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2018. Her large-scale abstractions are represented in © Yinka Shonibare MBE. Courtesy James Cohan, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle. major museum U.S. collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her seminal video Free, White and 21, 1980 is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and was included in the exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 at the Brooklyn Museum. 80 – ARCHIVES OF TIME ARCHIVES OF TIME – 81 FIG 14 FIG 15 Howardena Pindell Howardena Pindell Video Drawings: Baseball, 1975 Video Drawings: Tennis, 1975 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print 8 x 10 inches 8 x 10 inches Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery 82 – ARCHIVES OF TIME ARCHIVES OF TIME – 83 the existential angst of the seeker while connections, including the Venezuelan In Catalonia, Roe further linked to the exemplified by Bark Lines on Cypress photographs like Red (Number Two), guardian figure head, Songye power touching upon the romantic sublime. painter Armando Reverón. historical past and to memorials, the Tree at Cementerio de Portbou (fig.16). 2016 (pl.18), are carefully constructed figure, and Punu mask appear on the Such a series of preoccupations places physical area covered by the artist Although the history of photography tableaux in which she appears as the board dedicated to African art.9 These Arruda at the center of international In Dawn Roe’s work, a sense of cyclical, encompasses the forests near the creates a complex apparatus that protagonist. The artist depicts herself, objects likely date to the nineteenth debates about painting which are at rather than linear time, becomes footpath where philosopher Walter informs Roe’s work, the artist also but the work is not meant as a self- and early twentieth centuries; they are once totally current and perfectly reinforced.