Critical Ceramics: Reviews: People of the Mud 2

[Author's Note: Matthew Groves, whose artwork is highlighted here, is the technician and studio manager at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I am a graduate student.]

The Chicago Cultural Center featured five Chicago ceramic artists in People of the Mud 2, 12 January - 9 March 2008. The show included utilitarian, figurative, conceptual, and abstract work. The dominance of tile works by Jason Messinger, Erica Jane Huntzinger and Dorothy Hughes suggested the local history of terra cotta building facades and perhaps the mosaic interior of the Cultural Center had seeped into the collective imagination of Chicago ceramic artists or the curator. The references were not mimetic and the tile works don't appear to be copies as much as unconscious abstractions. The large-scale Forest for Tea by the Yamaguchi Institute (Shoji Yamaguchi and Theaster Gates) dominated the first of two rooms. Gates explored the complexity of transfer from the Japanese aesthetic onto contemporary American ceramics through fictive narrative. Matthew Groves and Charles Van Gilder combined animal and human elements into cohesive forms. These elements reappeared on Laurie Shaman's tableware, while square serving dishes by Dorothy Hughes brought tiles from the wall to function. Much of the work came alive, not through the space or architecture, but through the eyes of the audience.

A father with his two children stopped to look at Matthew Groves' SOS-Qwatch Man. The father said, "He reminds me of an artichoke." The children agreed and so did I. Although the form is clearly figurative, male, dark brown, 'dressed' in layers, more furry animal than plant-like, there was nothing particularly 'artichoke' about it; yet, the reference made perfect sense once articulated. The French theorist Roland Barthes writes, "To give an author [substitute maker] to a text [substitute work] is to impose upon that [work] a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the [work]." While Grove states, "I know where I came from. I have a deep sense of place from growing up in Merseyside, England." This does not necessarily equate to an artichoke. His sense of nature had nothing to do with that reference. The father made a leap in visual logic between surface treatment and interpretation. We all make these leaps. The gap between what is seen and what is thought is often large and curious. Momentarily, I was drawn into "artichoke" logic.

The more I thought about it, the more apt Roland Barthes' essay, "Death of the Author" (1977) seemed to the dynamic in the gallery. Barthes sees the death of the author (for our purposes, artist) in the very act of writing, or, in our case, making. "Once an action is recounted for intransitive ends... this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the [artist] enters his own death, [making] begins." In the process of creating, the creator loses power and the viewer re-gains it. Barthes goes on to state that the role and the power of the [artist] has dominated criticism, in what he sees as "the image of literature [art to be] tyrannically centered on the [artist]." Barthes calls attention to the chinks in the cultural power of the artist, so that "the [artist] is never anything more than the man who [creates]..." Applying Barthes' ideas, the power dynamic shifts. The role of viewer ascends as that of the maker declines. The comments about Groves' work honed my attention. They not only engaged me but changed my association to the work. Random events linked me and a family for a few moments, forming a cognitive social network.

What does it mean to understand art within a social network? Reception theory addresses the dynamic between an art work and the viewer, examining the ways in which the history of the work meets the history of the viewer in 'conversation'. Wolfgang Kemp in "The Work of Art and Its Beholder: Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception" (1998) states that the "beholder has a specific gender, presence and history... the same conditions also hold true for the work of art..." These preconditions form the basis for a sealed discourse between the beholder and the work. If the knowledge inherent in these preconditions were opened up to all beholders, the potential for understanding a work grows exponentially.

Looking back to the highly stylized legs and face of SOS-Qwatch Man, reminiscent of a futuristic action figure, I felt suddenly awkward. I had the impulse to look around and see if anyone had noticed that this very un-artichoke personage reminded me of an artichoke. Social networks are complex and fragile. Like any civic moment, I had to decide to agree with the group or stand alone. In this case, after hesitation, I joined the artichoke contingent. The mixture of childhood action figure and nature was one of several ways this work managed to set up a psychological pushmi-pullyu. However, the relation between nature and toy was neither simple, binary, nor so long lasting. The next moment, I left the realm of the symbolic and became caught up in technical fascination. "That gap between the first and second toe is a nice little bit of mold making," I thought to myself.

The power in this work lies in its ability to trigger an impulsive and mythic train of thought and then yank the viewer away as one moves to a different section of the figure or some technical curiosity. The little boy who acknowledged his dad's comment about the artichoke simply stated, "That is an alien," and pointed to the bright yellow figure, Chomatic Alien. Like Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a Pipe), the figurine is not an alien. It is an interpretation of an alien by Groves and a reinterpretation by a boy, each drawing on their own bank of references. These works are not so much about the treachery of images, as about the ability of art works to trigger association across memory. I jump from action figure, sci-fi movie and Magritte, reflections of my own experiences. When these associations form a social transfer, the power of a single viewer expands beyond the self.

These are not stale figurines, but odd creatures that find their way into improbable imaginative tales. A viewer might very well feel goofy, thoughts bouncing from the fawn in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to the technical aspects of supporting an outstretched arm during firing, on to why an overused shiny brown glaze reminds everyone of an artichoke. Narrative gyrations, technical curiosities, and jumpy references all serve to trigger viewer imagination. SOS-Qwatch Man still looks, at least to a father, two children and me, like an artichoke. It is precisely this ticklish confusion in Matthew Groves' work that entices the viewer. So, Roland Barthes proves correct. These figures are powerful because they activate an internal set of references beyond the maker's control.


Modified 17 June 2008	Home \| Articles \| Reviews \| Events \| Sponsors \| About \| Site Map


Erica Hunzinger Charles Van Gilder Jason Messinger Yamaguchi Institute Matthew Groves SOS Qwatch Man	People of the Mud 2: Viewers' Power by Amber Ginsburg [Author's Note: Matthew Groves, whose artwork is highlighted here, is the technician and studio manager at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I am a graduate student.] The Chicago Cultural Center featured five Chicago ceramic artists in People of the Mud 2, 12 January - 9 March 2008. The show included utilitarian, figurative, conceptual, and abstract work. The dominance of tile works by Jason Messinger, Erica Jane Huntzinger and Dorothy Hughes suggested the local history of terra cotta building facades and perhaps the mosaic interior of the Cultural Center had seeped into the collective imagination of Chicago ceramic artists or the curator. The references were not mimetic and the tile works don't appear to be copies as much as unconscious abstractions. The large-scale Forest for Tea by the Yamaguchi Institute (Shoji Yamaguchi and Theaster Gates) dominated the first of two rooms. Gates explored the complexity of transfer from the Japanese aesthetic onto contemporary American ceramics through fictive narrative. Matthew Groves and Charles Van Gilder combined animal and human elements into cohesive forms. These elements reappeared on Laurie Shaman's tableware, while square serving dishes by Dorothy Hughes brought tiles from the wall to function. Much of the work came alive, not through the space or architecture, but through the eyes of the audience. A father with his two children stopped to look at Matthew Groves' SOS-Qwatch Man. The father said, "He reminds me of an artichoke." The children agreed and so did I. Although the form is clearly figurative, male, dark brown, 'dressed' in layers, more furry animal than plant-like, there was nothing particularly 'artichoke' about it; yet, the reference made perfect sense once articulated. The French theorist Roland Barthes writes, "To give an author [substitute maker] to a text [substitute work] is to impose upon that [work] a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the [work]." While Grove states, "I know where I came from. I have a deep sense of place from growing up in Merseyside, England." This does not necessarily equate to an artichoke. His sense of nature had nothing to do with that reference. The father made a leap in visual logic between surface treatment and interpretation. We all make these leaps. The gap between what is seen and what is thought is often large and curious. Momentarily, I was drawn into "artichoke" logic. The more I thought about it, the more apt Roland Barthes' essay, "Death of the Author" (1977) seemed to the dynamic in the gallery. Barthes sees the death of the author (for our purposes, artist) in the very act of writing, or, in our case, making. "Once an action is recounted for intransitive ends... this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the [artist] enters his own death, [making] begins." In the process of creating, the creator loses power and the viewer re-gains it. Barthes goes on to state that the role and the power of the [artist] has dominated criticism, in what he sees as "the image of literature [art to be] tyrannically centered on the [artist]." Barthes calls attention to the chinks in the cultural power of the artist, so that "the [artist] is never anything more than the man who [creates]..." Applying Barthes' ideas, the power dynamic shifts. The role of viewer ascends as that of the maker declines. The comments about Groves' work honed my attention. They not only engaged me but changed my association to the work. Random events linked me and a family for a few moments, forming a cognitive social network. What does it mean to understand art within a social network? Reception theory addresses the dynamic between an art work and the viewer, examining the ways in which the history of the work meets the history of the viewer in 'conversation'. Wolfgang Kemp in "The Work of Art and Its Beholder: Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception" (1998) states that the "beholder has a specific gender, presence and history... the same conditions also hold true for the work of art..." These preconditions form the basis for a sealed discourse between the beholder and the work. If the knowledge inherent in these preconditions were opened up to all beholders, the potential for understanding a work grows exponentially. Looking back to the highly stylized legs and face of SOS-Qwatch Man, reminiscent of a futuristic action figure, I felt suddenly awkward. I had the impulse to look around and see if anyone had noticed that this very un-artichoke personage reminded me of an artichoke. Social networks are complex and fragile. Like any civic moment, I had to decide to agree with the group or stand alone. In this case, after hesitation, I joined the artichoke contingent. The mixture of childhood action figure and nature was one of several ways this work managed to set up a psychological pushmi-pullyu. However, the relation between nature and toy was neither simple, binary, nor so long lasting. The next moment, I left the realm of the symbolic and became caught up in technical fascination. "That gap between the first and second toe is a nice little bit of mold making," I thought to myself. The power in this work lies in its ability to trigger an impulsive and mythic train of thought and then yank the viewer away as one moves to a different section of the figure or some technical curiosity. The little boy who acknowledged his dad's comment about the artichoke simply stated, "That is an alien," and pointed to the bright yellow figure, Chomatic Alien. Like Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a Pipe), the figurine is not an alien. It is an interpretation of an alien by Groves and a reinterpretation by a boy, each drawing on their own bank of references. These works are not so much about the treachery of images, as about the ability of art works to trigger association across memory. I jump from action figure, sci-fi movie and Magritte, reflections of my own experiences. When these associations form a social transfer, the power of a single viewer expands beyond the self. These are not stale figurines, but odd creatures that find their way into improbable imaginative tales. A viewer might very well feel goofy, thoughts bouncing from the fawn in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to the technical aspects of supporting an outstretched arm during firing, on to why an overused shiny brown glaze reminds everyone of an artichoke. Narrative gyrations, technical curiosities, and jumpy references all serve to trigger viewer imagination. SOS-Qwatch Man still looks, at least to a father, two children and me, like an artichoke. It is precisely this ticklish confusion in Matthew Groves' work that entices the viewer. So, Roland Barthes proves correct. These figures are powerful because they activate an internal set of references beyond the maker's control. Information Amber Ginsburg's current practice focuses on site-generated works. Rather than looking at a place and seeking to transform it through imagination, she uses the specific history of a site as a starting point, and unearth a-heroic narratives from conversations and trips to historical museums and libraries. Amber Ginsburg www.amberginsburg.com amberginsburg@gmail.com The Chicago Cultural Center 8 E. Washington Street Chicago, IL 60602 312-744-6630 www.cityofchicago.org/Tourism/CulturalCenter/ Dorothy Hughes www.dorothyhughes.com Erica Jane Huntzinger www.ericahuntzinger.com Jason Messinger www.jasonmessingerart.com Laurie Shaman www.laurieshaman.com The Yamaguchi Institute Shoji Yamaguchi and Theaster Gates www.theastergates.com


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