NCECA
April 7 – 11, 2009 University of Arizona
Medical Campus
550 E. Van Buren Street
Phoenix, AZ
One way of catagorizing visual content may be by its means of cultural dissemination. It can be public, personal or private. Public images are those where the image and the subject are public. A personal image, the symbols may be idiosyncratic but its subject is public. A private image is one where both the image and the subject are personal. Agenda, Content Driven Ceramics, a three person exhibition concurrent with the NCECA conference, reflected this dynamic.
Richard Notkin - Tile Installation
Richard Notkin exhibited tiles impressed with images. Some of the tiles have highly specific images Picasso’s Guernica, images from Abu Ghraib and Michelangelo’s David and Pieta. Others are more general; skulls, feet, barbed wire, a die, a field of sperm, heart tissue and a bombed out building. Laid out against the wall a second subject emerges – that of image saturation. Thus, this work becomes a statement which is powerfully nihilistic. Presented on uniform tiles, the images read as flash cards. Those powerful or those pedestrian are just two of a thousand images that we absorb every day. Unfortunately, the most profane, obscene or sacred often become lost in the white noise.
Richard Notkin - Tile Close Up
A number of Notkin’s pieces reference specific narratives of contemporary culture: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and images of Abu Ghraib prison, for instance. The Guernica tile depicts a Cubist horse screeching at a light bulb. The image from Abu Ghraib depicts a hooded man standing on a crate with wires attached to his finger tips. Both tiles depicted images from the most widely disseminated images of their time. Time has obliterated much of the Guernica narrative – devolving from a pivotal historic event to a footnote. In pairing, Notkin asks the viewer to consider the fate of the Abu Grahid images similarly; in the not too distant future, his narrative could be nothing more than a hooded man standing on a box.
Marko Fields - Venus Gaia
Like Notkin, the work of Marko Fields often depicts political outrage. The pillow in Prince Darwin Loves the Hot Pillow Princess decorated with Dow, Chevron and Exxon logos shows two frogs copulating. One of the frogs is mutated. It has a conjoined torso of a second frog growing out of its back. Fields’ other works are far more cryptic. Gaila’s New Friend and Venus Gaia are nearly indecipherable. In both, every centimeter of surface is saturated with decoration. This horror vacui conjures primitivism as integral to the narrative. Returning to more familiar ground, Fields’ chemical protest is also the subject of DDTeapot, an antique spray bottle fitted with a pistol handle and the text “SUPER BUG KILLER: Long-Lasting & Fully-Penetrating! Kills Critters You Can’t Even See!” While Notkin’s imagery has specific cultural reference, when Fields work uses corporate emblems the stories are personal.
Marko Fields - DDT Pot
Mika Negishi-Laidlaw -
The public narrative content of Notkin and Fields contrast strongly with Mika Negishi-Laidlaw’s distinctly private images. Her intimate visual haikus encompass personal sensuality, sexuality and reproduction. Circle of Life, a circle of eight forms, renders a common denominator brilliantly. The belly, buttocks and thighs of a hunching pregnant woman also resemble a heart. This equation of gestating womb to vital organ works emotionally. Text, rendered in Asian characters adds another layer of narrative; starting with a single band and ending with the object covered by characters lost of any semantic meaning. The infinity of allusions generated from such simple forms and decorative devices is stunning. Her ability to portray much meaning through simple devices is confirmed in All in One, a serial work of 23 slip cast cups. In these forms, Negishi-Laidlaw merges a vulva and buttocks in a double helix shape. In all, Negishi-Laidlaw has distilled human sensuality into a touchstone.
Mika Negishi-Laidlaw - Lullaby
On the simplest level, be it public, personal or private, content is the transfer of meaning from one person to another. Everything said is also heard. The measure of how anything that proposes to transfer content is the reaction it excites. In very different ways, Notkin, Fields and Negishi-Laidlaw provoke strong and profound reactions from the viewer.
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Tony Merino has published internationally and gives lectures on ceramic art, criticism and critical theory.
Tags: abu ghraib prison, artist, contemporary culture, exhibition, gallery, guernica, pablo picasso, review, richard notkin, show, tile installation