Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999 Page: 57
60 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Marfa Letter
MARFA
by Elizabeth McBrideSince the early sixties, when Donald Judd
separated the Chinati Museum from the DIA
Foundation to form the Chinati Foundation,
rumors have circulated that there was in Marfa
a developing Art Community. Until, recently,
however, fine, international art was made here
only by the Chinati Foundation Artists in
Residence.
In July of 1997, Johan Westenburg opened
the first Gallery in Marfa in a spacious old
building now known as the Westenburg
Gallery. Almost simultaneously, former Interns
and Residents of the Chinati began returning
to live and work in Marfa. With the establish-
ment of writing residencies by the Lannan
Foundation, which bought and remodeled two
houses, and the independent but equally
important migration of talented writers and
artists from Houston, Dallas, and other parts
of the country, the arts are finally flourishing.
Marfa holds the potential to be not another
Santa Fe, but rather a remote center for serious
writers and artists who come to this small
desert town for the opportunity to work
without interruption.
As if to recognize this change, Stefan
Boddeker, former Intern at the Foundation,
and now Officer for Public Affairs for the
Chinati, has curated a series of shows held in
the outer room of the old Marfa Hotel. Shows
curated by Boddeker, along with shows by the
Artist in Residence at the Chinati, have
created a lively atmosphere of expectancy here.
Four recent shows have been remarkable.
I want to talk about these shows as a group
first, because they share certain qualities we see
more and more often. Poets have said that
Twentieth Century Literature is more about
tone, the attitude to the material, than about
the material itself. I would say all the art we are
speaking of here shares that quality. But more
importantly, the tone itself is one of consis-
tency, of reverence, affection, discretion, and
tact, guided by conceptualism and realized
with a true love for the image. Distinguished
by a quiet formalism, an abstract strength
(which we might simply call the strength of
their composition) contained even in repre-
sentational images, this art continues the
mysterious and promising wave of work
uniting representation with abstraction. One
experiences the images phenomenologically, as
if the object were stepping out of confusion
into clarity and simplicity. Whether or not the
work is dependent on the artist's hand, the artI will talk about is both moving and chilling.
Stefan Boddeker and Laura Sielen
Boddeker curated a group show entitled big
deal for the Westenburg Gallery at the Marfa
Hotel, which included the work of Jan Albers,
Kara Hamilton, Michael Roch, and Daniela
Steinfeld. I found the work of Michael Roch
most captivating, especially the mystery of
how it works together. Roch makes large
paintings which look like schematic drawings,
with part of the narrative off the edge. He also
makes animals, chickens, elephants, etc.,
either carved out of foam or built up from
chicken wire to burlap to plaster. In one
exquisite painting, Gallo, a narrow arm with a
bulge of an elbow extends downward, the
hand splayed out in a gesture of desperation.
Or is it excitement, or passion, or love, or
pain? Is it a rejection or an invitation? Another
arm crosses horizontally at the top of the
canvas. There is a narrative,
here, the story of a relationship,
perhaps human; perhaps not,
whose details are unobtainable.
Is Roch telling us that whatever
one makes, one must start from
a true heart? Who knows? There
are deep mysterious links in his
works which are easily felt but
not easily articulated. The show
ran from December 11, 1998
through January 11, 1999 in
the Marfa Hotel.
Organized again by Stefan
Boddeker, Craig Member's work
went solo. In one room, Member's
small geometric wooden con-
structions were mounted on the
wall. Perhaps too reminiscent of
Judd's own work, they were
nevertheless on a smaller scale and more
tender, demonstrating Member's individual
sensitivities. But in the other room were the
most unusual beautiful drawings made with
black ink on white graph paper, small shapes
like kidneys which the artist grouped a bit to
the side, allowing the free white space to create
a subtle, delicious tension. This beautiful show
ran from April 23 to May 22, 1999.
Richard Wearn, from New Zealand by
way of Los Angeles, showed four old refriger-
ator ice compartments mounted on a plain
white wall. On the back of the wall, Wearn
installed the refrigeration equipment intended
to frost the compartments, hoping to trans-
form the compartments into solid blocks of
ice. The work was not up long enough to test
the intention, but the boxes did get frosty.Wearn placed an additional work on the
floor at a pregnant distance from the boxes.
This piece, a free-form inflatable (just made to
be sat upon) made of vinyl which looked like
an amoeba or a minute steak, was reminiscent
of Sharon Englestein's organic floor pieces
shown in 1996 at the Texas Gallery. Wearn
planned this work to have the same volume as
one of Judd's sculptures, intending it to relate
to the Chinati Foundation and his Residency
and also to blur the boundaries between art
and everyday life. The works showed in
March, 1999 in the Locker Plant.
One additional show I want to mention
was remarkable for its disappointments.
Peter Reading, a famous poet in England,
spent a year's residency in Marfa as a guest
of the Lannan Foundation, which funds
activities of literary significance. Consisting
of scrawled writing on various types of
discarded paper,
Reading's drawings
were poorly curated
and amateurishly
installed, and fur-
thermore lacked any
perceptible form of
discipline. It was so
bad, in fact, that
one wondered if it
:I was done tongue-
in-cheek.
What does it
mean that art, or at
least some art, has
quieted down so
dramatically since
the violent images of
the eighties and
nineties? Perhaps we
are influenced by Dave Hickey's advocacy of
the importance of beauty. But the best work
here seems to signify a moment in history
proper, a disgust with ugliness, which we are
reminded of in the Reading show. There is a
legitimate question as to whether we are better
off when the world is represented as it is, or as
it might be, presented to us as a model for life
and behavior by offering the example of struc-
ture, of carefully made work. These works
indicate, effectively and more passionately, I
would say, a desire for a better world. O
Michael Roch
Gallo, 1998
Modeled plaster, 18" x 9" x 8"
Photo: Courtesy of the Artist
ARTLIES SUMMER 1999 57
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Lightman, Victoria H. Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999, periodical, 1999; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228053/m1/59/?q=%22Bryant%2C+John%22: accessed May 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .