assemblage – Articultures

Lands End

at the former Cliff House

The FOR-SITE Foundation, founded in 2003, has taken on the unique project of mounting exhibitions of immersive, site-specific installations set in some of the Bay Area’s national parks. With memorable exhibitions including 2012’s International Orange set at the imposing Fort Point, followed by 2014’s @Large:AiWeiwei at Alcatraz housed in the stark and unforgiving former prison, our relationship with the ocean, nature, and the environment, coupled with concern for human rights and freedom of expression, have long been at the forefront of their mission. Other exhibitions have dealt with thorny issues such as the needs for shelter, safety, and security.

The latest in this series is Lands End, curated by FOR-SITE’s executive director Cheryl Haines, which takes the site of the former Cliff House restaurant—vacant since 2020—as a point of departure for the work of 26 artists and artist teams from around the globe. With its spectacular vistas and precarious perch, the work is brought to our attention in a setting that dramatizes it and also holds it at a distance, our attention torn between the interior and the exterior. The show, Haines states, “invites visitors to wade into an immersive environment where their charge is twofold: to discover artwork in unlikely places and to consider the planet’s health.”

This is my second visit to the site, the former Cliff House, an iconic SF restaurant and ballroom—which I somehow managed to completely avoid during its lengthy history of providing dining with a spectacular backdrop to countless SF natives and tourists alike. The first Cliff House was built in 1863, and was destroyed and rebuilt twice, the rambling structure is perched at the edge of the Pacific Ocean on a bluff, quite literally the land’s end. On my previous visit, a clear day, the jaw-dropping views outside distracted me from focusing on the art for some time. This time, SF has been socked in and the coast is still blanketed in wispy fog. Crashing waves on rocks outside still beckon. With such a large show, I intend to give just a taste of the work, installations which stood out the most to me. As I am getting my bearings and juggling my pen, notebook, and other belongings, another visitor remarkably precisely echoes my initial sentiment, that “it’s hard to know whether to look inside or outside…” Well, perhaps it’s not so remarkable, given the show being put on in the bluffs.

Andy Goldsworthy, Geophagia, 2021; Ione kaolin clay and wooden tables. Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Off the bar area, which seems a fine place to start, is a large-scale work by Andy Goldsworthy, Geophagia (2021).Salvaged restaurant tables have been covered with Ione kaolin clay from a mine in the Gold Country near Sacramento. Goldsworthy is of course known for site-specific works often set in nature, using natural materials at hand. Here, the brittle clay echoes the earth with the changes it undergoes as it dries and cracks, while alluding as well to the white tablecloths often found in restaurants. We may read the cracks as a metaphor for the parched earth as California repeatedly deals with prolonged and cataclysmic droughts. “Geophagia,” incidentally, refers to the psychological disorder of earth-eating, creating an allusion to the tragic fact that many in our world have a meager table laid for them.

The restaurant is huge, sprawling rooms opening out into vast dining areas with expansive picture windows, lengthy stretches of bar, and other massive spaces whose functions may remain a bit of a mystery. The whole undertaking has the feel of a secret and kind of spooky place, a very cinematic vibe with it’s echoes of a bourgeois past juxtaposed against a harsh yet spectacular present. My first take is that there are some vibrations of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining, I could envision a reclusive restaurateur going mad here in the empty shell of the facility.

One Beach Plastic, for here or to go, *2021; plastic collected at Kehoe Beach and ceramic dishware;* Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Moving, perhaps, from horror to scifi, one might flash on the scene in Jurassic Park where the children are pursued by velociraptors into the hotel’s kitchen. The brushed steel cabinets here are certainly large enough for a small person to hide in to avoid being devoured. But rather than a game of reptilian hide-and-seek, we find a remarkable work by One Beach Plastic, the husband and wife team of Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang, who have created a striking and sobering installation for here or to go (2021) using an enormous amount of white plastic debris—a fraction of the tons they have cleaned from Kehoe Beach in Marin County since 1999. The West Marin-based couple have made combating plastic pollution of the ocean very much a life mission. Simultaneously playful and horrifying, the detritus is sorted into piles of different types of things, bottle caps, tampon tubes, hunks of Styrofoam, tortured plastic bags that refuse to die. Many are arranged aesthetically, almost appetizingly, on ceramic plates lining the steel shelves…“order up!”

Tuula Närhinen, Baltic Sea Plastique, 2013–14; plastic washed ashore near the artist’s studio, glass vases, water, single-channel video (color, sound). Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

With a related aesthetic, Tuula Närhinen, a Finnish artist, presents Baltic Sea Plastique (2013-14). A row of acrylic tubes contains colorful plastic assemblages suspended in water, all filled to the same precise level, suggesting a science project whose intent is unknown. These appealing, almost floral works make the menacing issue of aquatic pollution a bit seductive; one might liken them to colorful plants and animals who lure in their prey with beauty.

Shumon Ahmed, Metal Graves 14 *and* 15, 2009; When Dead Ships Travel 10 *and* 12, 2015; digital prints on archival rag fine art paper; Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Lurking in an alcove, perhaps the old freezer, we may find a display of solemn photographs, Metal Graves 14 and 15 (2009) and When Dead Ships Travel 10 and 12 (2015) Living in Bangladesh, Shumon Ahmed documents desolate areas there which constitute a container ship graveyard. We may think of the current issue of global supply chain breakdown, with these massive vessels stranded unloaded in ports around the world.

William T. Wiley, Punball: Only One Earth, 2008; rebuilt and restored pinball machine with original artwork;Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

On the lower level, the prolific punster and skillful draftsman William T. Wiley, who sadly passed last year, is represented by an uncharacteristically spare installation—a single pinball machine situated in a large wedge-shaped room. Wiley’s piece Punball: Only One Earth (2008) takes the theme of pollution and global warming to a repurposed vintage Gottlieb “North Star” game. Wiley’s alter-ego, Mr. Unnatural, poses bent over, wearing a red commedia dell’arte clown/jester nose and doffing his wizard cap to Buster time, a character who reminds viewers that the clock is always ticking. Wiley always had a strong social conscience, as as the environmental issues facing us grew more dire they became increasingly important in his diverse body of work. Recalling the artist’s propensity to a bit of excess, in its opposing starkness this work serves much as a memorial totem.

Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood,Confectionery Marvels and Curious Collections, 2021; resin, insects, porcelain, plaster, glass, various dry and wet specimens; Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Echoing the theme of something which beckons, but is a bit repellent on closer inspection are the Confectionery Marvels and Curious Collections (2021) of Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. These evoke ornate jello-molds in sparkly, colorful rows perched on small glass shelves set in circular niches, six glimmering jewel-like on either side of this elegant lower bar. Dotted with butterflies and other taxidermy insect specimens, the contrast implies the dual existence of food waste and excess for some, and food insecurity for others.

Ana Teresa Fernández fills an airy, light-filled room with her installation of seven large acrylic cylinders, each about human height at six feet tall, filled with sea water and perched on small heaps of sand. The cylinders distort the view outside, bringing it indoors, and create mesmerizing visual effects. On the Horizon (2021) alludes to the disturbing fact that sea levels are expected to rise at least six feet in the next century. We may think of Roni Horn’s installation Library of Water, in Stykkishólmur Iceland, where similarly-scaled tubes are filled with water obtained from melted glaciers. It bears noting that Fernández also created an earlier version of this work, temporarily installed on nearby Ocean Beach with the help of community volunteers.

Doug Aitken, migration (empire)*, 2008; single-channel video installation (color, sound), one projection, steel, and PVC screen billboard sculpture;* Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Taking the cinematic aspect of the exhibition to another level is Doug Aitkin with migration (empire) (2008), a single channel video installation. Aitkin has filmed surreal vignettes in empty motels where wild animals explore their unlikely surroundings; a puma enters, looking wary and alarmed, reindeer, peacocks, and even a buffalo roam. The banality of the motel gains an eerie, ominous quality when seen through the eyes of the unwitting animal visitors. Scenes of desolate roadsides are interspersed, giving the work a feel of a dystopian future somehow particularly appropriate for this moment.

Exiting Aitkin’s work through passageways that feel remote and a bit disorienting, one may encounter Norway-based Jana Winderen’s sound installation Energy Field (2010). The artist collects sounds from inaccessible places, like the bottom of the ocean or the interior of ice sheets, and quite appropriately here we also cannot reach the source of these unsettling sounds. Cold blue fluorescent light adds an unsettling quality.

Chester Arnold, Survivors, 2021; oil on linen. Part of the exhibition Lands End, organized byFOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick.

With so much to see, don’t miss Chester Arnold’s five small-scale oil paintings hanging in a narrow corridor. Unlike the traditional placid nautical scenes one might expect at a restaurant, here roiling seas churn with whirlpools from which these vessels clearly have no escape. Arnold’s meticulous style shows to good advantage in this intimate space, with Survivors (2021) huddling in a life raft showing a particularly deft balance command of gesture. Clearly Arnold finds a metaphor in the image of vessels and their crew at peril for the journey we all embark today on our imperiled planet.

Gülnur Özdağlar, The Last Reef, 2021; plastic bottles, fishing line. Part of the exhibition
Lands End, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers
Herrick.

By the entrance/exit is Gülnur Özdağlar’s The Last Reef , (2021) a beautiful suspended installation of jellyfish made from plastic bottles, a glowing, ethereal work. This piece, like many visually stunning works on view, helps temper the harsher, more pessimistic vibes that also abound. Certainly plastic can be beautiful, it comes in so many bright, cheerful colors. The fact that it has been so inexpensive to manufacture for so long has made us complacent about using it once, then “recycling” it; we are just learning that recycling the material often merely meant shipping it overseas where it would ultimately end up in the landfill. Now, as these markets are increasingly saying “no thank you” we are stuck ourselves with this monster which we have created.

Reflecting on Lands End, I was delighted to play the game of seeking out the artworks amid the architecture, and the underlying message of environmental devastation hit squarely home. A third, strongly felt dimension is that of time, of the feeling of stepping into a realm caught between the past and the present, the lingering presence of different times and ways of living. We may sense how fragile our world is, how what we assume is permanent may without warning vanish, from a beloved restaurant to the polar ice caps.

Barbara Morris

Due to space concerns, many additional noteworthy works could not be discussed here. The other artists in the exhibition are Daniel Beltrá, Andrea Chung, Ólafur Elíasson, Elizabeth Ellenwood, Adam Eli Feibelman, Angelo Filomeno, Carsten Höller, Suzanne Husky, Brian Jungen, and Tony Matelli.

Lands End is free and open to the public Thursday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm, through March 27. Admission by timed ticket.

https://www.for-site.org/project/landsend/

Travis Somerville and Keris Salmon at Jack Fischer Gallery

In a similar fashion to that of German artists grappling with the Holocaust, caucasian American artists, perhaps in particular those who come, as Travis Somerville does, from the South, have a substantial burden of grief and shame to bear. Setting aside, for the moment, issues of geography and ethnicity, anyone paying attention to the political climate in our country in recent days—or to be frank at least the past four horrific years of the Trump White House—has to feel outraged and in despair. As I write this, we have thankfully voted that destructive presence out of office, and it looks like he at last has faced the reality of his loss. (Well, that hope for a glimmer of sanity has since been crushed-bjm)

1965 vintage ballot box with audio and video components 2020

Visiting Jack Fischer Gallery to see “One-Two Punch” before the election, it was a particularly fraught moment: so much was at stake. Given all the attempts to restrict voting in numerous nefarious ways, interfering with the US Postal Service perhaps the most insidious, the piece that had the greatest initial impact was not one of the artists massive and powerful wall-mounted works, but 1965 (2020), a sculptural installation. A wooden box, resting on a pedestal, was lit with a crackling video projection of dancing flames. A recording of LBJ’s 1965 speech approving the voting rights act sent chills down the spine as the wooden object came into focus as a vintage ballot box, particularly in light of the fact that several ballot boxes had actually recently been the target of firebombing.

Once one absorbs that sobering and dramatic content, the rest of the gallery comes into focus as filled with Somerville’s gargantuan and challenging paintings, as well as some moody and mysterious photographs which we will come to a bit later…

Year of Our Lord 2020, acrylic, collage, gesso on found truck tarp, 118″ x 123″ 2020

Somerville has taken every offensive triggering image in the racist playbook and painted it, beautifully, one might add, in oil on the rugged surface of recycled truck and army tarps. These rough images are juxtaposed with iconic American symbols like the flag and the Liberty Bell, and layered with some genteel lacy wallpaper. One work, Year of Our Lord 2020, features scrawled text stating Jeff Davis was not a president, punctuated by a Confederate flag. An image of a figure, toppled to the ground, may evoke images of statues of very unpopular Confederate Generals being pulled down in recent protests. We may recognize the dark blue suit and oversized red tie of the hooded figure holding the bible—upside-down.

The figure which has been knocked down is, in fact, a boxer, an image that recurs in several of the paintings. In one, The Mat (2020), a powerful torso and arms float in space, a klansman’s hood replacing its head, its hand clad in boxing gloves, one red bearing the initials “GOP.” The same figure appears in Poster Boy, only here we see his angry, mask-like face, shorn of an empty hood dangling adjacent. My initial take on this imagery was that the figure perhaps represented anger against racism and political injustice, but further thought on this has yielded a more probable conclusion that the pugilist, with tan skin of a hue that does not initially ascribe race, is perhaps the “Great White Hope” of the early 20^th century boxer Jim Jefferson, who came out of retirement in 1910 an ill-fated attempt to beat Jack Johnson, the African-American heavyweight champion. This figure as well is a stand-in for Trump, whose white-supremacist leanings are well-documented, with famous incidents such as his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. And, with the initials RNC and GOP prominent in The Mat and Poster Boy, it doesn’t take much of a leap to assume that Somerville finds the Republican party as well to be complicit in the rise of racism and white nationalist violence in our country.

*Poster Boy*, acrylic, collage on found painter’s tarp, 64″ x 48″ 2020

Sadly, as I have been working on this story, a new and tragic chapter has been written, with the storming of our nation’s Capitol last week by an angry mob of violent, deluded, Trump supporters, egged on by their amoral and lying leader. These ugly and appalling images, including rioters smashing Capitol windows, invading the sanctity of the most secure and private areas of our nation’s houses of government, carrying off the lectern of the speaker of the house, and even beating a police officer with of all things an American flag. When will this insanity stop? As I write, a second impeachment process has begun for this disgraceful excuse for a president. Some Republicans have, in the wake of their own lives being threatened by his mob, turned against the president, but others remain, if not loyal, unwilling to do anything to upset the status quo and in particular their Trump-supporting constituents.

It is hard to fathom the situation, but it certainly is reflected quite clearly in Somerville’s work, which seethes with rage and indignation at this twisted mutation of patriotism. Back to the hooded figures. Anyone paying attention to contemporary art has likely heard of the huge controversy over recent postponement of the major retrospective Philip Guston Now organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and scheduled to run at the Tate Modern, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All pulled out of the commitment, citing concerns in particular over how Guston’s challenging imagery—also containing hooded figures suggesting klansmen—would be viewed in the light of increased sensitivity to racial injustice. It is particularly ironic that those who support freedom of expression would censor the voice of Guston, one of the more influential painters of the 20^th century and one whose leftist political leanings are quite clear. As a youngster growing up in Los Angeles, Guston was profoundly affected by the KKK’s persecution of the Jewish community. Images of this violence are foundational to his later use of the imagery. These later hooded figures are, admittedly, more nuanced in nature, alluding perhaps to how we ourselves often contain elements of that which we most despise.

*The Mat*, acrylic, collage on found painters tarp 60″ x 48″ 2020

With heavily-loaded symbols, and there are a boatload of them here, one may feel the urge to tread lightly. Taken out of context, one might find them highly offensive, frightening, dangerous. But the ugliness is not created by the artist, rather he is reflecting the ugliness he sees before him in our fractured society. The references to Guston are likely meant to include a commentary on the thorny issue of censorship in the museum community. We even have some quotes from Guston in Somerville’s palette, with it’s bubble-gum pinks and candy-apple reds, while Gutted (2020) offers a klansman image lifted almost in entirety from Guston’s The Studio (1969).

*Gutted*, acrylic, collage on found painters tarp 66″ x 54″ 2020

“One-Two Punch”…so one blow is the racism and injustice perpetuated by elected officials, the other is the knockout punch of death and havoc wrecked by the COVID-19 virus. A jaunty ball with coronavirus spikes is tossed in the air above images of a skull and a patient on oxygen. Honestly it’s hard to imagine a more challenging time to be alive, at least from where we currently sit. With new administration just days away, we are holding our collective breaths for a return to sanity. Somerville’s unflinching work clearly struck a nerve.

Along with Somerville’s work, Jack Fischer presented The Architecture of Slavery, a haunting series of cyanotypes by Keris Salmon, an African-American artist. Salmon was appalled when her caucasian husband shared that “he had something to tell her about his ancestors.” They were, in fact, slave owners, and her work is derived from photographic negatives exposed at the estate where they had lived. Processing the real and intimate details of a world where ownership of human beings was commonplace is heartbreaking and sobering. A folio of works, To Have and To Hold, accompanied her exhibition.

What happened to the “Great White Hope”? Jim Jefferson lost the contest, and faded into obscurity. We may hope that the 45^th president soon does the same.

Barbara Morris

One-Two Punch closed in December at Jack Fischer Gallery

Jack Fisher Gallery: Travis Somerville