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MATT CALDERWOOD / DAVID JABLONOWSKINEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, UK / GATESHEAD, UKThe BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (BALTIC) is aprominent, well-funded museum with internationalreach that has been host to both the British Art Show 6and Turner Prize 2011 exhibitions. Visually dominatingthe formerly depressed south bank of the River Tyne inGateshead, BALTIC is a celebrated regeneration projectand major tourist attraction. In 2012, the institutionopened BALTIC 39, a mixed-use space across the riveron Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s hip, central High Bridge. Acollaborative venture with Northumbria University,BALTIC 39 comprises classrooms, city council subsidizedartist studios, a sponsored professorship (held byBritish conceptual artist Christine Borland), and aBALTIC-programmed, top-floor project space. The proximityand practices of the two BALTIC galleries bothsupport and challenge each other.BALTIC 39’s position within a merged educationaland professional setting distinguishes it from localcollege galleries such as Newcastle University’s HattonGallery and low-rent studio-cum-exhibition venues suchas the Biscuit Factory in Tyneside’s post-industrialOuseburn Valley. Its combined energy fosters the bestcharacteristics of a scholarly and more business-likeenvironment, and as a meeting place of curatorial experimentation.In practice the BALTIC 39 project space hasso far worked in two ways: as a supplementary gallery forBALTIC’s large-scale exhibitions and as a site forprocess-based works that aspire to the type of openendedinvestigation that the context calls for.Paper Over the Cracks [BALTIC 39; March 15–June23, 2013] is the third exhibition to explore this emblematicvein and the first UK solo show for Northern Irelandbasedartist Matt Calderwood, known for his performances,video, and sculpture works. Calderwood’sprevious installations have included precariouslybalanced—yet controlled, static—structures. Paper Overthe Cracks explores the implications of this formula’sbreakdown by using similarly composed systems ofobjects. Six modular, isometrical sculptures made ofuntreated steel and rubber occupy the gallery’s screeningroom and the building’s exposed rooftop terrace.Throughout the exhibition we see Calderwood’s reconfigurationsof his Exposure Sculptures (2013): theirflypaper-covered blocks sag and rust outdoors, and thenare changed indoors as he peels back the paper toreveal the structure’s eroded surfaces.Because of its physical proximity to BALTIC and theprecedent set by the deliberate conversation betweenthe two galleries for Jim Shaw’s simultaneous exhibitions[The Rinse Cycle at BALTIC and You think you own yourstuff but your stuff owns you at BALTIC 39, bothNovember 9, 2012–February 17, 2013], Paper Over theCracks and Tools and Orientations [BALTIC; February1–June 2, 2013] by German artist David Jablonowski,who shares Calderwood’s physical and conceptualconcern with systems and their transformation, concurrentlyenter into dialogue with one another. Calderwoodand Jablonowski each present cohesive installations ofsculptural, wall-based, and video works; thinking aboutthem in parallel kindles a connection in the critical readingsof both exhibitions.The wall-based works in both exhibitions demandattention in their spatial and conceptual framing of eachshow. At BALTIC 39, Calderwood’s show features bold,monochromatic images on paper—printed using someof the exhibited modular blocks as rubber stamps—thatdepict orderly systems of linear shapes. Indexical (likephotographs), they are ghosts of the sculptures’ smoothsurfaces, which eventually erode during the exhibitionand transition like the careful geometric compositionsthat Calderwood has rearranged from individuallyspaced objects into disorderly heaps in the gallery. InJablonowski’s Volume (2012) three massive Styrofoamblocks that look like scaled-up biblical stones—orcontemporary flat-screen tablets—are arranged into aspiral path that leads around the exhibition. Along theperimeter of the BALTIC gallery there are fairly flat, wallmountedassemblages of historically disparate communicationmaterials and accessories: clay, wood, photographicfilm, printing plates, and acetate iPad screenprotectors. Like Calderwood, Jablonowski has takenapart and reorganized the basic elements of a system,abstracting the works and giving them new meaning andperspective in situ.BALTIC and BALTIC 39 provide different didacticmaterials for these exhibitions. There are no physical walllabels offering a description of Paper Over the Cracks;instead BALTIC 39’s website supplies a video in whichthe artist, filmed in his studio, talks informally about hiswork. In contrast, BALTIC’s Tools and Orientations isequipped with wall labels, vinyl introductory text, and aninformed gallery assistant, which help orient the viewerquite differently in each gallery. These differences extricatesomewhat divergent readings of the two exhibitions.The overwhelming amount of information provided alongsideJablonowski’s show suggests that knowledge is keyto appreciating his work. The artist’s choice to combinefragile, beautifully composed materials that elicit asensual response yet deny inexpert interpretationsuggests that his work engages in a power play: withoutthe right sort of knowledge, the seductive artworkremains mute and inaccessible. In contrast, Calderwood’sostensibly destructive processes, his continual,hands-on redevelopment of the work feels intimatedespite there being very little didactic material providedby the gallery. Calderwood’s interventions reveal a senseof productiveness in taking apart and manipulatingsomething that has been painstakingly constructed. Instaging a studio-like space—focused on process andtherefore free from the fixed, textual descriptions (titles,dates) that accompany finished work—BALTIC 39creates a more forgiving environment for thinking aboutthe work on display.Indeed, the critical exchanges in difference to theBALTIC and BALTIC 39 spaces lends to the institution’sposition as a powerful regeneration project with aims todemocratize contemporary art and might itself be aninnovator in the subject of contemporary art museum andproject spaces uniting under the same institution.—Becky Huff HunterABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Matt Calderwood, installation view of Paper Over the Cracks at BALTIC 39, 2013; David Jablonowski, installation view of Volume at BALTIC, 2013 [images courtesyof the artists and BALTIC 39/BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art]60 ART PAPERS Future Anterior
RYAN TRAVIS CHRISTIANRALEIGH, NCRyan Travis Christian’s Well, Here We Aren’t Again, at theContemporary Art Museum Raleigh [February 22–June17, 2013], features several excellent examples of theartist’s signature comics-style works on paper. The maindraw, however, is his installation Guess You Had to BeThere, which transforms the lower level of the buildingand gives new context to his drawings. Using newsprinttones and the graphic properties of lines, Christiancreates an experiential version of the disorienting andobfuscating world of his drawings.For the installation Guess You Had to Be There,Christian employed the planes of the room as panels ofa comic strip, using the walls and floor as platforms forhis cartoonish imagery. Wielding long strips of whitetape, Christian transformed the gray concrete floor of thegallery into a disorienting scape of diagonal stripes andchevrons. The stripes don’t merge with the floor,however; the discolorations of the concrete establishthem as a separate layer, which reinforces the op artqualities of the striped strata and gives the illusion ofunstable ground. Styrofoam blocks camouflaged toresemble the lined concrete of the building emerge atpoints where the stripes converge, like mountainsformed at tectonic points. These blocks are anthropomorphizedwith the large, lidless eyes and wide, vacuoussmiles of cartoon characters. Innocuous objects—abottle, a book, and a stone—placed on these heads reinforcetheir 3-D status but also mark them as intermediariesbetween the 2-D world of the drawings and the realspace of the gallery. The merging of 2-D with 3-Dthrough the use of distinct layers is at the heart ofChristian’s work.A 31-foot-long drawing that dominates one wall is thecrowning work of Guess You Had to Be There. Createdover the course of three weeks for this exhibition, thedrawing features a decapitated snake of ridiculouslength. Its body stretches back and forth across thework, not unlike the classic arcade game Snake, inwhich a long, thin creature travels a perimeter and picksup food while the player tries to avoid having it hit itself.The composition is multilayered: square placards bearingcartoon images and graphic shapes peer out frombehind the snake and from atop it. Diagonal lines fillthe snake, and radiating lines traverse the spacebeneath it, but a video documenting the installationreveals there is even more than meets the eye.A time-lapse video documenting the installationprocess reveals a hidden drawing of a reclining manbeneath what is visible. Christian’s decision tocompletely obscure the original image is typical for theartist. His process involves overlaying images and boldlines and erasing large areas to create thick fogs thatprovide “cloud-cover” for figures and images to hidebehind. Although he utilizes the confined space of thecomic strip panel with iconography from earlycartoons, Christian expands the spatial potential of themedium through his heavy layering techniques. Indoing so, he creates multidimensional drawings thatresemble cartoons but extend far below the surface ofthe image.By incorporating hidden elements into his drawings,Christian creates ominous worlds in which everyshadow contains a boogeyman. Take Calisthenics(2012), one of the smaller, framed drawings in thisexhibition. A cartoonish figure bends over backward.Its body is composed of wavering sets of parallel lines,which are broken by the patches of cloud shapescovering the work. As a result, the body appears like avertiginous mountain of strange topographies. Eyesappear among the clouds, like the reflection of theoriginal figure or a new, hidden person. It’s possiblethat no rational, concrete figure is intended; thoughwe may perceive this jumble of two hands, feet, andeyes is a body, we cannot prove this is true. A row ofstage lights at the top of the image reminds us that weare viewing an illusion. Christian breaks all the rules ofcartoon space and reason and, by doing so, upsetsthe basic assumptions we use when viewing images.—Lilly LampeMARIAH GARNETTSAN FRANCISCOIn Mariah Garnett’s sculptural 16 mm film installationEncounters I May Or May Not Have Had With PeterBerlin at 2nd Floor Projects [February 16-March 26,2013], a film was projected onto a disco ball hangingfrom the ceiling of the darkened interior, reflecting akaleidoscope of small images onto the gallery walls. Theimages from the film were bounced off the surface of themirrored ball, allowing illuminated glimpses, in miniature,of the filmmaker posing in various outfits as the1970s gay sex icon Peter Berlin. Each frame of the filmwas hand-painted by Garnett, creating a textural andcolorfully saturated effect. This immersive display looped100 feet of film, offering an activated and engaged viewingexperience rather than the traditional or morepassive way in which a film usually is viewed. Inspired byan interaction with Berlin, Garnett’s carefully renderedinstallation was not a conceptual disco but instead a selfreflexiverumination and recasting of identity politicsinvolving a fleeting interaction with a persona that existsexclusively in the artist’s own photographs.Encounters is a project that sheds light on the myriadways, both conscious and unconscious, in which we canmanifest our personal heroes in our own bodies,gestures, and identities. Garnett’s total project involvesmultiple components that have evolved over a period ofthree years and have been exhibited in various formats.The most recent iteration was as a three-part, singlechannel,16 mm film that was screened in San Franciscoat SFMoMA as part of the Dirty Looks series, a programoffering select film screenings from the queer cinemadiscourse. In the film version of the project, complexrelationships between domestic and public space areexplored, especially as they pertain to queer history.Filmed primarily in Berlin’s San Francisco apartment,the film’s three parts shuttle the viewer between ruminationson the public and the private: the recognizablepersonas and outfits of a gay sex icon made “public”through his photographs and delicately recapturedthrough personal interviews and conversations withGarnett. The film narrative commences with Garnett’sadoption of Berlin’s persona in a spirited way by utilizingABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Ryan Travis Christian, installation view of Well, Here We Aren't Again, 2013 [courtesy of CAM Raleigh]; Mariah Garnett, film still from Encounters I May Or May NotHave Had With Peter Berlin, 2010, 16 mm installation [courtesy of the artist and ltd los angeles]an index to contemporary culture’s imminent historyARTPAPERS.ORG 61
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