Breath on a Mirror: Marcus Kenney & Rikuo Ueda
Oct - Nov, 2002
Intro | Kenney | Ueda
About
Prior to the twentieth century, artists were judged by their technical ability to render a subject as “realistic.” The task of the artist was to mimic the real. Beginning in the late 1800’s and leading well into the twentieth century, the parade of Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstraction, and Minimalism brought about a breaking away from the confines of representation into realms of personal expression. Though it thoroughly resists precise definition, contemporary art can be said to posit that artists are no longer bound to a realistic representation of merely that which can be seen.
John
Cage was among the first American artists to explore and apply
the tenets of Eastern philosophy to modern art. Like many
artists of his generation, he was casting about for a more
encompassing, less restrictive worldview than the one offered
in the United States in the 1940’s and 50’s. Cage,
along with dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham, and photographer
Minor White, were among those who embraced Zen Buddhism, Taoism,
and Indian mysticism among other isms of the East as pathways
out of the prevailing Judeo-Christian mind-set. Not only did
these Western artists adopt Eastern philosophies, they also
absorbed the aesthetic of “less is more.” Cage,
inspired by Zen Buddhism’s respect for the patterns
in nature, applied them to musical compositions, performances,
and visual art expressions. For example, he took the bark
of an aspen tree and translated its pattern onto a musical
score which was then performed. With this one gesture, the
artist reconceptualized the concept of the representation
of nature.
Black
Mountain College (1933-56), located on a farm nestled in the
mountains of North Carolina, was an alternative to the highly
structured academic arts programs offered at most American
universities. The instruction offered there was personal,
interactive, and highly participatory. Students at the college
had to work on the farm as a part of their commitment to the
community. This requirement forced the students to have an
intimate relationship with nature as they were studying culture.
Some of the most recognized names in the twentieth century
spent time at Black Mountain College as either student or
teacher, including: John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, Joseph
and Anni Albers, Charles Olsen, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem
de Kooning, and Francine du Plessix Gray. The reverberations
of this “experiment in community” continue to
be felt in the work of many contemporary artists and thinkers.
Rikuo
Ueda and Marcus Kenney are two artists bound together by their
embrace of what John Cage termed “chance operations.”
Ueda’s wind drawings allow for a humorous, yet profound
interpretation of human ability to invent technologies to
chart and control nature, while Kenney’s found object
constructions transform society’s cast offs into ironic
icons.
Ueda, from Osaka, Japan has, with the aid of nature, created a set of “wind drawings” produced by elaborately engineered mechanical devices which harness the wind and transfer the energy to paper, canvas, or another surface. Ueda is our fall International Artist-in-Residence. His “tea house in the sky” located in the courtyard was constructed out of locally available materials and serves as a retreat for the wind. His “compositions” are fascinating traces of the natural interaction between the wind and the mind. Just as one never tires of gazing at a burning fire or ocean waves lapping, Ueda’s work offers a glimpse of the infinite in the particular. He would have been right at home at Black Mountain College in the 1950’s.
Savannah assemblage installation artist Marcus Kenney has filled the downstairs gallery with objects and images he has scavenged over the past five years. Through imaginative combinations and juxtapositions Kenney’s works address the poetics of detritus in a consumerist society. His constructions have a studied randomness about them, as if these combinations have appeared to us before, but only in a dream. Kenney’s oeuvre has the monochromatic patina of ruin and decay, while slyly commenting on the transitory nature of the objects that surround us.
This exhibition provides a contrasting view of eastern and western conceptions of nature -- in the service of art, and vice versa.
Mark Sloan, Curator
