July 5 to September 6, 2008

What do we do when the experience of nature itself is changing to a point where climatic conditions have grown both bizarre and dangerous? Curated by gallerist Elga Wimmer, “Nature Interrupted” begins with a troubling notion, namely, that our treatment of the external world has created a toxic environment that cannot be rescued. Indeed, some of the art is heavily apocalyptic, being inspired by natural events that are not imagined but very real: the flooding of New Orleans, caused by a hurricane; and the tsunami that overwhelmed Southeast Asia, causing the deaths of more than 200,000 people. While it is sometimes hard to peg the art being shown to an actual event, the message is clear: we are destroying our environment in ways that are resulting in permanent change. Coming from several different countries, the twelve artists* in the exhibition have been at pains to express both the beauty of nature and the sometimes sublime attributes of its devastation. Because many of these images are magically transcendent in their expression, even when they document environmental atrocities, one could easily downplay the damage that has been done. But that would undo the premise of the show, which is to demonstrate just how much injury has been done, much of it apparently irreparable.

Nature, which furnishes our imagination with metaphors, what we call figurative language, is on the edge of disaster. Global warming is already here, no longer a distant reality. Artists, like everyone else in the world, are worried about the consequences of global warming in the natural world; moreover, they realize that the damage is psychic and imaginative as well as terribly real. We look to nature for a nearly limitless repository of metaphor, using its imagery to invigorate our prose and poetry. Destruction of our natural resources thus becomes a matter affecting not only physical reality but also the imagination, central to artists’ inner lives. In this sense, “Nature Interrupted” constitutes a warning to its viewers of the threat to our survival we ourselves have brought about, as well as a valiant attempt to maintain high standards of creativity in an increasingly diminished world. Wimmer’s choice of artists helps us navigate the disturbed terrain of our situation, which day by day grows more insistently troubled. Her show demands that we look at work suggestive of a reality that is hard to bear and even harder to honestly contemplate.

Joan Backes offered a carpet of leaves taken from places all over the world. Large and set down flat on the ground, the carpet reminds us of the remarkable beauty of fallen leaves—from trees whose survival may well be threatened. Backes also contributed a series of small paintings that render the bark of different trees that also are in danger of dying as a species. Backes’s technical skill, evident in her small panels, poignantly reminds of the beauty we will be missing in a short time; her work documents the diversity that is being taken away from us. The artist’s thoughtful works are well deserving of scrutiny; they highlight the ongoing destruction of nature by being highly specific renderings of a landscape that will most likely change permanently within our lifetime. Alexis Rockman contributed one painting to the show: Capitol Hill (2005). The work, a smallish acrylic on canvas, points out the effects of nature taking over the Capitol, which is covered by a kind of green moss. Rocks, yellow flowers, trees, and foliage make up half the painting in the foreground. Nature is out of control, ironically swamping Capitol Hill, the site of much inaction and indifference regarding the fate of our environment.

Helen Brough’s pencil drawings on vellum are so beautifully rendered the viewer almost forgets the destruction accompanying the phenomena she depicts. In Deluge #1 (2007), she has drawn a long wave erupting into foam after peaking in height; the view of the long curl of the breaking wave tends to distance the viewer from what is happening. But, one hopes, distance is not the same as indifference; as the wave falls upon shallow water, we remember just how powerful the sea is—and how unresponsive it is to those caught in its grips. Here nature is an untamable force. Osmo Rauhala’s video projection of a flock of birds beginning to rise as a swarm above fields lingers in mind as a collective portrait of group behavior, although one wonders whether we will continue to see such sights as time goes on. Jon Elliott’s painting, entitled Plague of Excess (2006) presents his audience with a reddish sunset that is quite menacing and also quite beautiful. In the center of the composition we see televisions falling into the water, whose red color suggests lava or radioactivity. This is an image not of impending but of actual apocalypse, expressed by a resonant color scheme.

All the artists in “Nature Interrupted” contribute to a greater environmental awareness. It seems, however, that nature remains fecund, capable of extraordinary beauty, even when its vulnerability is being emphasized. The show’s imagery occupies a wide range, including such desolate images as Katie Holten’s desolate sculpture, The Black Tree (2005), made with cardboard and black gaffer’s tape; and Chus Garcia-Fraile’s Protected Zone (2007), a photographic print in which an escalator leading nowhere has been placed among the dark greens of forest foliage. These images are meant to warn, but they inadvertently seduce with their beauty as well. Wimmer’s point, that nature cannot stand up to our destructive activities, remains true, although oddly the attractiveness of the work tells a different story, one of affirmation and even hope. Even in decline, the natural world is glorious.

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January 21 – March 14, 2004

The evolution of the singular and determined vision of the Spanish master Gerardo Rueda (1926-1996) is clearly presented in a rare exhibition of his work here in the US at the Chelsea Art Museum. Rueda is often considered to be the only Spanish constructivist. This presentation does well in establishing this relationship, but it also shows a unique connection to Art Informel, Arte Povera and Minimalism, while at the same time allowing Rueda to be experienced as a passionate master of subtlety. This survey includes work beginning in the mid-1950’s and continuing through 1996, the year of his untimely death of a brain hemorrhage.

From the moment the exhibition begins there is an absolute sense of entering the world of Rueda. Each work is reduced and controlled to the point where even the frame or framing device becomes an integral element. Many of the works are either monochromatic or consist of just a few colors or a few carefully placed elements. The form of the work includes paintings, painted constructions on canvas and wood, found object constructions, and sculptures. Within these works Rueda carefully uses many found objects including: cigarette and match boxes, a washboard, stretcher bars, blocks of wood, architectural moldings and even a portion of a worm eaten old wooden structure with rusted metal handles.

Rueda’s greatest gift is perhaps his ability to understand the abstraction inherent in cubism and to realize it in terms of volume both literal and implied. In his hands form is not flattened to the surface of the picture plane. Instead he sees form as an idea, as something that exists simultaneously with space and image. This can be clearly understood by first examining the earlier works and then seeing how he extends and develops these ideas in later works.

Four well-chosen early paintings all from the 1950’s hung together as a group and presented the foundation for the formal language of abstraction that would occupy Rueda for the rest of his life. The earliest work in the group, “Landscape (Carabanchel),” (1955), reduces the visible word into four rectangular volumetric forms. Even though this image still retains a quality of illusionistic space as a result of the use of perspective in combination with a remarkably sensitive depiction of natural light it is also already characteristically impenetrable and depopulated exerting its primacy of existence as a thing in the world over any specific incident that occurs within its four edges. In an elongated horizontal work from just the following year, “Untitled,” (1956), this idea is developed to the next stage. Here Rueda presents a combination of perspectival forms merging seamlessly with the triangular geometry that defines the entire picture. Barbara Rose, in her catalog essay, clearly articulates this important aspect of Rueda’s project: “Perspective drawing is often reduced into interpenetrating triangular projections that are intended not to fool the eye but to stimulate it into recognizing that pictorial space is an illusion that the artist a priori defines as such without denying himself the pleasure of playing with it.”

In “The Window,” (1971) Rueda presents six white blocks on a white surface surrounded by a white frame within a frame. Not only does the visible frame expose the typical structural support of a canvas it also plays with the idea that the image of painting is something seen through a window. Although here ironically all we see is white. In addition, he continues his slight of hand by turning upside down the furthest left block of the six blocks in the center of the otherwise bi-laterally symmetrical composition. It is this simple act that creates all of the tension and results in an enigmatic object. This work as well as earlier works like “Pink Painting,” (1965) and “Sky Blue Painting,” (1966) in the “Bastidores” series (Bastidores is the Spanish word for the rectangular wooden supports on which canvas is stretched) are closely related to the work of Alighiero Boetti, in particular Boetti’s stunning piece “Nothing to See, Nothing to Hide,” (1969) and Giulio Paolini’s works from the early 60’s, both of whom are associated with Arte Povera.

In later works like “Great Calligraphy,” (1992), Rueda is in complete control of his formal vocabulary. In this piece we see a shallow large square box with three horizontal bands. The middle one is two and one half times the height of the top and bottom, which are the same size. The color of each is a different rich earth tone. The top, a beautiful yellow ochre, is the strongest, and the frame itself, a sienna, adds a fourth color darker than the other three having the effect of holding in the other hues in perfect balance. This in itself is breathtaking, but there is more. The bottom of the three bands is comprised of wood like the others, but it does not fill the space. Below it inserted into the box is another piece of wood. It is not just any piece of wood, but one that Rueda has used in the process of making his work to block up other pieces as they were coated to monochromatic perfection. As a result it has specks and drips of paint, marks, scratches and other evidence of use. It is a remarkable inclusion. Rueda places it here and by doing so tells us that nothing is left out, that every aspect, every act of creating has its place and is important. But still there is more. The bottom band of wood above this block is incised by a saw. These thin kerfs although remarkably casual in their appearance are precise in their location and create a triangular rhythmic motif that activates the entire painting and includes two triangular holes that allow access to the interior of the box construction. This use of the kerf as a drawing element literally cutting into the piece is stunning and has little precedent but it can also been seen in the small wood drawings of the Minimalist Fred Sandback with who’s work this piece would complement.

From his early exploration with a structured cubist vocabulary to his late two-dimensional constructions and sculptures Rueda always maintains a keen awareness of history that rejects nostalgia and sentimentality in a style that is severe, classical, playful, ironic, and without question forward thinking. His body of work, which speaks with so many connections to European art of the second half of the twentieth century, feels uniquely fresh, honest and free of all of the contrived strategies so common in the current state of artistic creation.

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