Introduction
For over fifteen years, Evan Holloway has been producing art that investigates the history and theory of modernist sculpture, perceptual and psychological phenomena, and the ways context and intention can affect the reading of artworks. Holloway considers the relationship between his objects, the meanings of those objects, the viewer鈥檚 body and perceptions, and the social environment and physical spaces surrounding these elements. Holloway鈥檚 practice鈥攊ncluding sculptures, drawings, sound works, and videos鈥攊s as diverse as his personal research, material choices, and the objects themselves. Grounded in Conceptual art, art history, pop culture, funk assemblage, and music, Holloway鈥檚 works鈥攆rom the abstract to the figurative鈥攁re fabricated from materials such as steel, plaster, rope, wood, and often include found objects鈥攂atteries, furniture, musical instruments, etc.
The artist鈥檚 creative process reflects a more humble approach to sculptural materials than the traditional modernist view of sculpture as a solid, unified object. Moving beyond the purely formal, Holloway employs a funky, handmade aesthetic that begins by collecting found and scrap materials, continues in the intuitive process of designing and fabricating the objects, and culminates in the objects themselves鈥攁 thoughtful consideration of material and formal properties with astute commentary on sculptural issues.
For Project Series 35, Holloway has transformed the gallery into a sculptural and perceptual installation that expands on ideas found in his earlier work. Holloway states his intentions for this exhibition as the following: 鈥淭his was an opportunity to make an artwork with different parameters than the sites I normally work within: the gallery, the art fair, and the museum group show. These locations often require works with portability and clearer boundaries. In this exhibition, the artwork is constructed over a very large and varied terrain. I see the work as the interrelationship of the publication, the installation, the downloadable mp3, the students, and the college as a location of discourse between ideas.鈥
Drawing on sources such as Minimalist sculpture, Light and Space art, Op art, and Conceptual art, Holloway鈥檚 untitled installation creates dramatic optical鈥攁lmost psychedelic鈥攅ffects from the most ordinary of materials鈥攕teel panels, newspaper sheets, and painted cardboard. The artist-designed book that accompanies the exhibition not only documents the exhibition鈥攚ith a conversation between the artist and critic Bruce Hainley鈥攂ut it is in fact an integral component of the exhibition鈥攄ot pages from the 鈥渘ewspaper鈥 cover the gallery walls. Available free of charge, the newspaper serves as art object, artist鈥檚 book, and, potentially, wallpaper, gift wrap, or craft material, linking the viewer directly to the artist鈥檚 project.
Evan Holloway鈥檚 exhibition is the thirty-fifth in the 麻豆影视 Museum of Art鈥檚 Project Series, an ongoing program of focused exhibitions designed to introduce experimental art with new forms, techniques, or concepts to the 麻豆影视 campus. I extend special thanks to Professor Mercedes Teixido and students in her class Installation: Art and Context for their assistance in creating the installation: Jessie Bigelow, Margy Boll, David Brynan, Kendall Fleisher, Janelle Grace, Elly Harder, Kayley Hoddick, Casey Hood, Naqiya Hussain, Becca Lofchie, Rody Lopez, Leia Steingart, Nancy Townsend, Amy Vazquez, and Anna Wittenberg.
Rebecca McGrew
Curator
Catalogue Essay
Let There Be Light #1
An Email Conversation Between Evan Holloway and Bruce Hainley
December 2007 鈥 January 2008
Evan Holloway: Shall we start with the poem?
When I began thinking about this Pomona project and its relationship to Turrell, another part of my mind, coincidentally, was engaged in thinking about poetry.
I was thinking about contemporary poetry, and trying to figure out what it is supposed to do, what people expect it to do, etc.
It appears that contemporary poetry, not entirely, but in the popular mind and in the practice of many poets, is engaged with conjuring poignancy.
I know there is more than this, but twentieth century poetry really got this idea going鈥斺渟o much depends upon a red wheelbarrow...鈥
This is not a fair evaluation I鈥檓 making, but it got me started.
So, then I started reading Alexander Pope. I liked that poetry could be a display of wit and clearly outlined ideology, with pleasure in rhythm and rhyming.
I took the opportunity to write a whimsical verse while working out my thoughts about Turrell. It鈥檚 a pretty crudely manufactured poem at this point, but here it is:
What sort of man builds monuments
For light effects and sentiments
To conjure the transcendent?
To tweak one鈥檚 sensing apparatus
And give the tweaking God-like status
(All Nature鈥檚 truth is in the skies.
Why would our senses tell us lies?)
I鈥檝e read a bit of Robert Bly
So I mistrust an airborne guy.
Marie von Franz read Exupery
and saw Puer Aeternally.
But what鈥檚 with me? Have I some tumor
鈥橞ids me attack a baby-boomer?
And call astounding works mere junk
Like an aging, Gen-X, bobo punk
Who won鈥檛 admire but just attacks?
Because my lifetime鈥檚 work still lacks
Such clarity and simple Truth
I wrongly pose as angry youth.
This man in question has great vision
While I just have half-assed derision.
I can鈥檛 afford to buy a crater
So I鈥檒l just be a Hoodoo hater.
Bruce Hainley: Well, you鈥檝e certainly gotten to the heart of things important to both of us, whether or not that was your first intention.
Yikes! How to respond? I鈥檓 tempted to start antithetically, far removed from everything immediate. I may leave it hanging, an open question, perhaps to be returned to, perhaps not. A brilliant friend of mine, Jack Shamama鈥攚ho works in and around the gay porn industry with his ally, Mike Stabile (they helm gaypornblog.com and long ago were my students at Wesleyan; when they won an award for best porn script, I couldn鈥檛 have been prouder than if they鈥檇 won an Oscar!)鈥攕ent me a link (thesword.com/2008/01/francois-sagats-youtube-identity-crisis.html) to his brainy, funny analysis (accent on the anal) of the homemade videos of Fran莽ois Sagat, a gay porn superstar going through what Jack calls a 鈥淵ouTube identity crisis.鈥 For the past year or so, Sagat has been making these simple but nevertheless quite remarkable music videos set to tracks from Marilyn Manson, the most recent Britney Spears release, and Nine Inch Nails, among others. He uses masks, simple special f/x, and his astonishing physique to create strange, elegant interventions, at least as good if not better than most videos I鈥檝e seen anywhere in the art world. Sagat posts them, and I sense that he makes them to amuse himself and to not go crazy. So let those Sagat videos and Jack鈥檚 loving, smarty-pants critique float like thought bubbles above my opening gambit.
Always good to remember Marianne Moore鈥檚 opening line about poetry, from her poem, 鈥淧oetry鈥: 鈥淚, too, dislike it.鈥 Don鈥檛 we all? Doesn鈥檛 any thinking person (poets, too!) dislike poetry? Moore continued:
鈥溾here are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
耻蝉别蹿耻濒.鈥
That is my Plymouth Rock: I dislike poetry, don鈥檛 know what a poem is, and yet鈥ew things interest me more than trying to engage its 鈥渦sefulness.鈥
Nothing is worth less than a poem. No one wants a poem, no one asks for a poem, no one pays for a poem. John Ashbery, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, still has to teach, while all his artist peers (I mean in age, not quality [Ashes is a much better artist]), Brice Marden, etc., worry about their dozen or more homes, staff of assistants, and investments. The topic of poetry fairly quickly becomes a consideration of economy or of differing economies. Moore wrote her great work in syllabics, counting each syllable of every word and arranging the accumulations in idiosyncratic snaking lines of stanzas.
Too many people replace 鈥減oignancy,鈥 tugging-at-heartstrings, for usefulness and economics. That wheelbarrow of Dr. Williams had been used, painted, and repainted because it was too expensive to buy another one.
Your and other people鈥檚 difficulty with contemporary poetry is akin to the problem many (most?) people have with contemporary art; either 鈥淚 don鈥檛 understand it鈥 or 鈥渕y kid could do that.鈥 Because everyone uses language to communicate, every day, every night, in the kitchen, in the classroom, at a pick-up bar, most people have, at some point or another, written poetry, or, as that kind of thing is usually condescended to, verse. And they do this without shame, because we all enjoy the happenstance of our speech falling into rhyme or double entendre or rhythm (Look, I鈥檓 a poet and didn鈥檛 know it!). While I know there are a lot of people who throw pots and paint pictures, very few people would call themselves artists with the same, um, aplomb.
There鈥檚 a vast range of and in contemporary poetry, perhaps rangier than even the modes of contemporary art. While there鈥檚 a lot of poetry that capitalizes on poignancy and godsiness (there鈥檚 always a bull market for epiphanies), not every contemporary poet is the equivalent of Shirin Neshat, the art world鈥檚 Ethel Merman and Esther Williams of alterity, belting out and choreographing otherness and cultural empathy like some Paula Abdul-wannabe; or Jim Hodges, knitting those flowers into funereal (sadly, rather than venereal) wall-hangings of mournfulness; or Tim Hawkinson, Willy-Wonka-ing his gee-whizisms. There鈥檚 nothing wrong with poignancy or venom or flamboyance or smuttiness: it should all be available. Frederick Seidel, Anne Carson, John Ashbery, Susan Howe, and Dennis Cooper, to mention only a few living poets, couldn鈥檛 be more different from one another, each conducting their experiments in an array of emotion and language, murmuring and blankness, wit and plangent cries.
Turrell stands for some kind of epic quest鈥攆or man (gender specific in his form, right?) and his striving for the beyond, communicating with it. This age of ours has little truck with greatness, with masterfulness, with authoritativeness鈥攁nd I, too, dislike those things. But certain (male) artists and architects are allowed to channel the epic: recently, Turrell, Serra, and, certainly, Frank Gehry (there are plenty of others). And yet, and yet, I crave the well-made, the person who really knows something and is not afraid to express it. So many contemporary artists seem to have abandoned the idea that art could strive to be something bigger and/or older and/or deeper than any person. Poetry鈥檚 epic quests have been into the interior of language itself; women have gotten there (?) even more quickly and brilliantly than men. Of course, because the topic is Turrell, I鈥檓 trying to think about the epic; if the artist were Morandi, we鈥檇 be having a very different conversation: There鈥檚 something about how to negotiate the monumental at stake for you in confronting Turrell, right?
Ball鈥檚 in your court.
EH: Thank you, Bruce. I feel put in my place regarding my thoughts on contemporary poetry. Not that I was craving being reprimanded, but I did want someone to explain it to me. Asking a question like 鈥渋s contemporary poetry just about conjuring poignancy鈥 is a sort of bull-baiting approach. But, maybe that鈥檚 my style.
So, you鈥檝e reminded me my knowledge of poetry is pretty much at an undergraduate and NPR level and I should probably read more poetry before I start having opinions. Also, you鈥檝e made some clear statements about poetry that will inform any study I do in the future. But, that鈥檚 how a blunt and obnoxious question can be useful.
Yeah, it is something about negotiating the monumental, and the epic quest, that compelled me to respond to Turrell in this context. The museum certainly didn鈥檛 ask me to. I must be something of a believer, since it really sets me off. Part of what upsets me might be the dissonance between what I consider important (artistic, poetic) work and populism. I really don鈥檛 have any significant complaints about the art objects Turrell produces, but I did have a few of those simultaneous jaw-dropping/cringing moments watching the recently produced videos about his work. The Indian chanting, sped-up flying clouds, and endless desert footage鈥攖alk about conjuring poignancy! Blechh!
Maybe these cheap signifiers were used because you can鈥檛 really get the Turrell artwork, which happens in real time and space, in the format of video. So who needs a video?
Recently, I realized that the greatest punk rock band, with the most purely expressed ethos, is a completely unknown band, because promotion of any sort would destroy the project. I鈥檓 sure that the greatest nihilist philosopher is also unknown. It also occurs to me that most of the people I have heard of and admire are probably megalomaniacal self-promoters who fall asleep planning their next career move.
Maybe this sets up an old-fashioned bohemian and romantic dialectic that participating in the world compromises the art or the person. I think this might be true. It is possible to harness the energy of populism to do something interesting, (Paul Verhoeven is my personal symbol for this form) but, in my lifetime, in my world, it mostly diminishes everything.
I am lately coming to the idea of keeping things secret. Not giving it away.
Scarcity creates value. This is not just an economic rule. Beyond a doubt, Richard Serra is an interesting artist, but now that every new, oversized museum must present a Serra brand object prominently to establish pedigree, the work doesn鈥檛 interest me.
You and I share an interest in lesser-known artists. Should we be telling people about them?
I鈥檓 really worried about what will happen to Ree Morton鈥檚 work as it is re-discovered by the art world. I鈥檓 afraid all of its loose ends and non-hierarchies are going to get tied up and put into order. The work will be summarized in a few paragraphs, which will be repeated until they cut deep channels for a few certain meanings. It鈥檚 going to take so much away from the work.
BH: Are you sure you鈥檙e not Justin Timberlake, because we鈥檙e very 鈥楴 SYNC.
Verhoeven is a genius: I don鈥檛 say that lightly. He really gets at the perversity of populism, perhaps its sadism as well. Funny: The Fourth Man was really important to me as a young faggot because it was advertised, in its day, as a gay movie, when explicit gay films were, well, unusual. The film came out the year I graduated from high school. It鈥檚 thrilling that Verhoeven鈥檚 mainstreaming should grow out of or channel that raunchy energy. I remember very little of The Fourth Man, but Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers, crucified and whipped, the delicious CGI slashes of his flesh, bleeding鈥攖hat鈥檚 still one of the most perverse scenes in any Hollywood movie.
But I鈥檓 losing track of our, um, topic. Which is? Secrets, scarcity, and how to communicate?
As I teacher, I feel responsible for making students aware of alternatives to the dominant modes of art history and of making. I guess I feel it鈥檚 my job to tell them some secrets. I completely understand how popularity and the market can bend things out of shape鈥攂eyond recognition. It would be sad if Morton鈥檚 loose ends and non-hierarchies were tied-up and put in order, but there is another possibility: if Morton (and Lee Lozano and Paul Thek and Christopher D鈥橝rcangelo and Leslie Thornton and George Kuchar and many others) were insisted upon, her loose ends and non-hierarchies might fuck up the gears of the current system.
What if no one wrote or talked about or responded to Murakami? Didn鈥檛 say it was bad (it鈥檚 beyond bad), didn鈥檛 say it was great (it isn鈥檛), and didn鈥檛 say it was important because Warholian (I don鈥檛 think so): just ignored it. I wonder if it all (the show, the artist, the works, the curator, the publicity machine) would fade away. That鈥檚 my hope. The cranky and brilliant Dorothy Dean (she insisted on not being called a fag hag but instead a fruit fly) would say something along the lines: 鈥淪ave your gay pennies,鈥 meaning, know what to spend your money (and thinking) on and where not to spend it. The great Ethyl Eichelberger had a similar expression: 鈥淒on鈥檛 cross the street for that.鈥 He told me once that he saw a poster for a kind of drag show that he found not only demeaning to drag but to women and men and homosexuality鈥攁nd he wouldn鈥檛 cross the street for it.
It鈥檚 important to let the young ones know what, perhaps, they shouldn鈥檛 spend their gay pennies on and what they shouldn鈥檛 cross the street for. Let them know that there are other things, other ways of seeing, in the world.
Videos of a Turrell piece, the 鈥渕aking of鈥 a Turrell piece: I鈥檒l save my gay pennies. I can imagine the 鈥減oignancy鈥 factor鈥攁nd the sped-up clouds. I don鈥檛 spend a lot of time thinking about Turrell, but I have seen pieces I thought were compelling. One at Barbara Gladstone in which he somehow gave light the texture of Wedgwood. I don鈥檛 know if I鈥檇 be so impressed today, especially now that Olafur Eliasson has Blockbustered that kind of moody special f/x. But something that struck me this summer, wandering through the Serra petting zoo at MoMA (I thought the point of his stacks and leaning pieces is that they might fall down. How could any sculptor sanction those Lucite corrals?) was that perhaps the popularity of that show was not a bad thing. Lots and lots of people were happy seeing his big works; he鈥檇 gone from being a sculptor for the cognoscenti to one who pleased almost anyone at all. Good for him. While it鈥檚 absurd that an internationally important museum with an astounding collection should manage its multimillion-dollar expansion so that it suits the needs of an egomaniac, Serra pleased the people.
While I wish other things, other art, and artists, could be given a similar imprimatur, I doubt that鈥檚 going to happen. And it is in this situation that I believe in secrets, in being off the beaten path. I hope that there are places that will support the outr茅 and eccentric, but I worry about a Wal-Mart effect: the equivalent of one-stop shopping doesn鈥檛 allow for much difference or luxury鈥攁nd too many become addicted to the convenience. I would hope that museums and certainly more galleries would resist this effect, but I鈥檓 not so certain that they will or do.
EH: Thinking about what you wrote about Serra at MOMA, I was looking for some appropriate summary line from Gertrude Stein鈥檚 鈥淐omposition As Explanation.鈥 She addresses this topic of recognition and popularity and its affect on the lives of artworks. But her long sentences and long thoughts refuse to be cheaply distilled (which is a lesson in itself in how to craft resistance). I鈥檓 sure you know the section I鈥檓 referring to, but just to be thorough, I鈥檒l quote a little:
鈥淔or a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling. Now the only difficulty with the volte-face concerning the arts is this. When the acceptance comes, by that acceptance the thing created becomes a classic. It is a natural phenomena a rather extraordinary natural phenomena that a thing accepted becomes a classic. And what is the characteristic quality of a classic. The characteristic quality of a classic is that it is beautiful. Now of course it is perfectly true that a more or less first rate work of art is beautiful but the trouble is that when that first rate work of art becomes a classic because it is accepted the only thing that is important from then on to the majority of the acceptors the enormous majority, the most intelligent majority of the acceptors is that it is so wonderfully beautiful. Of course it is wonderfully beautiful, only when it is a thing irritating annoying stimulating then all quality of beauty is denied to it.
Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it so much more difficult to realise its beauty when the work is being refused and prevents every one from realizing that they were convinced that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with the acceptance of the time-sense comes the recognition of the beauty and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails any one.鈥
In thinking about the famous baby-boomer artists, I often use a 鈥渃lassic rock鈥 analogy. Zeppelin was amazing when it was new. Now all those riffs have been repeated and heard a thousand times, and referenced and copied so many times, that it doesn鈥檛 have any life at all. Continuing to listen to it is like living only in the past and it鈥檚 a little sad.
Enter anti-establishment aesthetics. This will not happen to Big Black. And, based upon what I鈥檝e looked up about Ethyl Eichenberger, he doesn鈥檛 stand much risk of being mainstreamed either. So one can keep one鈥檚 work alive longer, by effectively building resistance into it. This is the equivalent of burying it in the desert. The public has a corrosive quality, it was the many many years that the wonders of the world were inaccessible that has kept them preserved, now that it鈥檚 all available to adventure tourists, their longevity is threatened.
Okay, I鈥檝e had enough of my terrible analogies. A work of art is like a rock song by a famous band, a work of art is like a tourist site that is hard to get to, I really should just get to the point and stop it with the parables.
I am making this installation at the 麻豆影视 Museum of Art in direct relationship to the other works now on display by James Turrell. Since his works are installations that completely surround the viewer and are based upon sensory phenomena, I thought I should do the same. With the potential viewers of my work primed for this kind of experience, I thought that my usual free-standing sculpture might not be an easy transition and might not leave the impression I would like. Often, in the things I make, I engage very specific perceptual or psychological phenomena, and in doing so it is my hope that the strange tricks our organs and language training play upon us as humans, and as a cultural group, can be built into the work. I want these experiences to induce a mistrust of perception and language as informant to reality. I think I know what I鈥檓 saying when I say that, as a sculptor, I鈥檓 quite engaged with epistemological concerns. It was quite irritating to me that Turrell is often framed within a soft-core, new-age belief system. I always present my work in a context of skepticism. I wanted to highlight these differences.
BH: Those quotations from Stein make my head buzz, like good scotch. I鈥檝e thought about that essay for years, and it doesn鈥檛 lose its punch. The impossible was Stein鈥檚 horizon line. Would that many more artists made it theirs.
Someone told me that your installation might employ (deploy?) moir茅 fabric. I hope that鈥檚 true.
Skepticism, shouldn鈥檛 it be creative bedrock? Something along the lines of Huebler, not wishing to add any more objects to the world: this is a skepticism that yet produces something intriguing. Every time I start to write I don鈥檛 know what I鈥檓 doing. It鈥檚 not the same not-knowing that it was more than a decade ago, when I started writing, but the process remains doubt-ridden and full of questions. I don鈥檛 want to romanticize doubt or gild it (much of what I write is doubtful in the sense of being not-really-interesting), but I鈥檇 rather have doubt as a primary motivator and procedure than rationality or certainty. I don鈥檛 trust when an artist or writer seamlessly or rigorously can explain every move made. Perception should trick us鈥攐ur own perception most of all. The shimmer of moir茅, perhaps it can be a sign for the wavering, alluring possibility of doubt.
Perhaps this allows me to boomerang back to Fran莽ois Sagat and his homemade video routines: while they might seem mild-mannered to many in the art world, his mesmerizing antics (the fact that he staged them and goes public with them) throw into doubt and/or derange what many think a porn star is or does, what he might think about鈥攁llowing a zone in which a porn star can conjure or embody thinking. The, um, spunk of intellect allows anyone to ask: do I know what this is? Men watch Sagat in his professional videos, thinking that he enacts what turns them on, and that it鈥檚 what turns him on; but by filming himself鈥攃reating a homemade oeuvre that operates in both opposition and apposition to his professional one鈥攚ith various masks and self-styled skimpy outfits, he reveals that it鈥檚, perhaps, only by donning such rhythms and outr茅 costumes that he can approach what a representation of his own desire might look like or how it might appear.
Your epistemological concerns, inducing a mistrust of perception as well as a mistrust of language as informant to reality, invite anyone who cares to become a part of what Avital Ronell has called the community of the question. It is a community at risk, even as it itself questions the relevance or value of community. It is a community I endeavor to be a member of鈥攐r at least have a green card to visit.
EH: When we started this discussion, something about YouTube and my operating system was not agreeing. Now, it鈥檚 working again, so I was able to watch the Sagat videos. I think something of their context is lost on me, but I also think I know why this is a reference here, a collision between expectations, public and private and 鈥済eniuses鈥 and creative fun, and insiders and outsiders and pleasure and business. As Sagat鈥檚 better known public product occupies the same space as his body, his homemade videos do seem relevant to discussions about how talent and irresistible appeal could put one in a bind regarding one鈥檚 own authenticity.
And, speaking of self-styled skimpy outfits, I don鈥檛 know that I do myself any favors by publicly displaying my ignorance of poetry, my crankiness, and my contradictions. I鈥檝e referred to myself in the above text as both a believer and a skeptic. And I鈥檓 sure I鈥檓 going to be plenty embarrassed by this publication in the future. When I lived in Tacoma I learned by watching Dale Chihuly鈥檚 public persona that a big part of being an artist is constructing the illusion of genius. This is really what gets one鈥檚 place anchored with the public. And all presented public information should support the illusion/thesis/brand. I鈥檓 always in a fight with this idea, so I publicly show doubt and contradiction and ignorance. And then, again contradicting myself, I鈥檓 so proud of myself for opposing the big boys with my humility. What a twisted stance.
As a way of getting out of all of this, and as a sort of summary and battle cry and special reference for the cognoscenti, I am right now going to shout ORTHOGRAPHY!
BH: Well, nausea and embarrassment remain this writer鈥檚 staples, the milk (slightly soured) and bread (a little moldy) on the breakfast table. Your skimpy outfit becomes you. Me? I鈥檓 mulling over a muumuu phase.
Bruce Hainley is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. A contributing editor of ArtForum, he has published two books: Foul Mouth (2nd Cannons) and, with John Waters, Art鈥擜 Sex Book (Thames & Hudson).