“Order” is just ink and paper, but Youngsmith manages to
create an eerie parallel world in just a few strokes of her brush. The piece is
fantastical: a young girl sits casually in the mouth of a disgusting wrinkled
creature, which has a massive head balanced precariously on spindly legs, a
goatee, a hairy mole on its nose, and a cane to help it walk. A frog with large
webbed feet and a crown on his head sits idly atop the monster. He holds a
fishing pole with a star dangling at the end in front of the girl’s face.
Another star is tied around the monster’s nose and hangs in front of her, but
she doesn’t seem to see either one. Seemingly unconscious of her absurd
location, she stares out at us with a touch of disdain and a hint of sadness.
Youngsmith seems to hint toward the meaning of her piece
with the title “Order,” suggesting that the unearthly creatures and their
strange connections have a systematic significance. The spherical and almost
planetary head of the monster becomes a world unto itself. The crowned frog, a
play on the fairy tale frog prince, appears to be trying to lure the girl out
of her comfortable seat in the monster’s mouth with the star as bait.
The creatures, distorted and oddly anthropomorphic, seem
malicious. Their intent is unclear and yet the girl’s indifference to their
existence is unsettling. Perhaps we all sit unknowing in the jaws of the world,
calm in our t-shirts and tennis shoes, unaware that the stars are meant to lure
us into complacency.
The rough quality of Youngsmith’s brushstrokes mirrors the
painting’s terrifying subject matter. With loose and unfinished lines, the
creature stands on open air and the paper, ripped, stained, and wrinkled along
the edges, adds to the painting’s instability, its deep questioning of the
status quo, and the ultimately horrifying prospect of this fantasy life, where
fairy tale becomes nightmare and we all remain ignorant of an absurdist reality.
HOME AND GRAIN ELEVATOR - RICHARD MISRACH
Richard Misrach’s photograph “Home and Grain Elevator”
comments on the devastating reality of life in Cancer Alley, the industrial
wasteland between Baton Rouge and New Orleans so called because of the large
percentage of residents afflicted by cancer.
Part of Cantor’s exhibition “Revisiting the South: Richard
Misrach’s Cancer Alley,” this photograph is hung on the back wall. By the time
I reached it, I had already become aware of the devastation to the natural
world caused by the area’s petrochemical industry. However, “Home and Grain
Elevator” has a different message.
The photograph simply depicts a small trailer-esque house
that sits at the base of a massive grain elevator. Framed to create straight
lines, the elevator bisects the photograph, creating a strong center of gravity
that lands squarely on the front porch of the house. The normalcy of the house,
complete with patio furniture, shrubs, and mailbox, is at odds with the
concrete behemoth that seems to rise up to heaven behind it.
The house’s location becomes even more desolate when placed
in the context of the area, where communities are primarily poor and black. This
is the American dream—well-watered front lawns and white patio furniture—distorted
by industrial might. Dreams of betterment are dwarfed by the massive weight
of the cement grain elevator.
The photograph’s angularity, with harshly slanted walkways, the
house’s peaked roof, and the geometric shape of the elevator, evoke a sense of
clarity and straightforward necessity. But amid the tone of resignation is a
tinge of hope. Alongside the photos of polluted wetland, cemeteries haunted
by factories, and abandoned shopping carts in empty parking lots, “Home and
Grain Elevator” becomes a representation of resilience. While the residents of
the house aren’t pictured, they rear up in my imagination, becoming a symbol of
human adaptability and desire for normalcy amid the rush of change and the
polluting forces of industry.
SEQUENCE - RICHARD SERRA
At first you are confused. What is it? Why is it here? And
then you touch it, lean on it, feel its warmth in the California sun. You
explore it slowly, savoring the feel of oxidized steel against your fingertips,
the coppery color that makes it seem organic even though its made from
industrial materials. You walk around its edges and when you tilt your head it
appears to rotate, the curved edges creating an artificial horizon line.
This is “Sequence,” a monumental sculpture by Richard Serra
that is currently housed in the courtyard behind the Cantor Arts Center, where
it will stay until moving to SF MoMA in 2016 to join the permanent collection.
The structure weighs 235 tons and is installed on top of a specially designed
concrete pad strong enough to land aircraft on.
From an aerial view, it looks like two infinity signs
nestled within each other, creating two large foci and a winding path around
them. The experience of the sculpture is disorienting, inducing a kind of
vertigo simply through the manipulation of curves. As you walk through, the copper-colored walls
undulate. You can’t walk in a straight line because the curved walls and their
shadows seem to close in on you, making you feel like you are falling over.
Serra called the shapes “torqued ellipses,” shapes that
“haven’t been made before.” After examining his models, engineers didn’t think
the shapes would stand.
This is the first time it has been installed outside, which
is difficult to believe. The steel basks in the sun, and its shadows, which
swoop and carve up the concrete, seem part of the art itself. Lying on your
back in the middle of one of the foci turns the sky into an oval, a real life
fish-eye lens. When you drop your pencil, the ping of wood against concrete
echoes.
You experience the sculpture sequentially, moving from piece
to piece, from inner to outer, from beginning to end. Space exists out of time
and reminds you of the limitations of perspective because you cannot see the
entire thing while you experience it. This art is both physically and mentally
disorienting, pushing you to find the peace within immensity and serenity
between its interlocking infinities.
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