Jan 26th, 2021 • 8 minute read
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Curations with Jordan Holms: I Contain Multitudes
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Song of Myself, 51
Walt Whitman, 1819-1892
The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
In section 51 of his epic poem, Song of Myself, American poet Walt Whitman writes:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I am almost always contradicting myself, in taste, aesthetics, values, and otherwise. This passage from Whitman’s poem suggests that rather than a flaw or frailty, being contradictory in nature allows us to recognize our own fallibility. Whitman asserts that a person who is resolute in their contradiction engenders complexity. This implies that one who fails to seize their own contradictions is not yet critically engaged with themselves or the world around them, and is therefore limited in their capacity for growth.
My propensity for contrarianism is echoed in my relationship to art: my own practice, the work I gravitate towards, the work I look at, write about, and surround myself with. How can I ever distill the art that I’m interested in, or perhaps more importantly, the art that I believe in, into a tidy package? The work in this week’s curation is a reflection of the futility of that chore. They champion the contrary, in my arrangement, but also in their forms and concepts. This is simply a call to abandon our enduring consistency and yield to contradiction.
Puzzled
Quarantine No. 58 (Hidden Figures) by Caroline Burdett reminds me of a completed puzzle. There is a satisfaction in its wholeness, each piece in its rightful place. An animalistic figure on all fours, (an apt representation of the quarantine experience in my opinion) comes together in the candied colors. The puzzle pattern is very topical; relevant to everyone’s sudden and alarming obsession with puzzles under pandemic rule. Why is it that when life deviates from the norm, we urgently seek out simple distractions; things we can contain (control). It is not as if we suddenly found ourselves without wifi and were forced to turn to pre-internet hobbies, but we acted that way anyhow, as if preparing for something worse. At best, puzzles make us feel accomplished, while they mark the passage of time.
Legibility
The textural contradictions are initially what draw me into this painting, titled Wilma, by Jeffrey Morabito. The muddied cerulean sky pushes like flesh against the electric green fencing. Impossibly, the figure appears to exist in the same space of the wire fence, not just behind it or in front of it, but both at once. This creates an optical illusion that further complicates the figure’s characteristics, is it animal, foliage, or some amalgamation of the two?
Morabito writes that his work is about “playing with the legibility of objects in painting. Recognizable figures are put in unrecognizable picture planes, or sometimes the reverse. The associations made by the viewer determine the legibility of the object.”
Reality
I find this work, titled VR, by artists Julio Austria incredibly funny. Rendered in thick impasto, a person sits on a non-descript object, absorbed in a virtual reality experience. Their visible surroundings are illegible, forcing the viewer to wonder even more intensely what kind of visual experience is occurring behind the lens of the VR headset. The figure is incomplete, partially transparent, as if they’re existence is fleeting, mutable - in between this reality and the other. This painting is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the stronghold that VR currently has on the global art community. But it is also an earnest representation of painting’s uncertain contemporary relevance and its relationship to digital mediums like VR.
Austria states that his work “mainly focuses on urbanization and migration, which provides a visual portrayal of his profound life experiences and narratives based on his observations and absorption of the environment he is in.”
Mythology
In this painting, titled Head Up, by artist Yuliya Yasenetska, a regal-looking flamingo supports a small, yet ornate community on it’s back. This acrylic on wood painting reminds me of the story of the “World Turtle” (also known as the “Cosmic Turtle”) about a giant turtle that carries the world on its back. This story takes different forms and re-occurs across various regions, with iterations that are often referenced in Hindu, Chinese and Indigenous mythologies. Yasenetska’s painting offers a whimsical interpretation of this cross-cultural folktale.
About the work, Yasenetska writes, “It doesn’t matter if you stand on one leg or both. It doesn’t matter if you wear pink, blue or black. Just be yourself and you’ll always stand out as long as you keep your head up.”
References
Initially, it’s not an easy task to parse out what’s going on in this painting by Dario Salvatore Bucheli. The acrylic on paper piece features a central image of an inflatable Titanic replica in an unknown industrial location. This image is on some kind of draped fabric, pinned to a wall. Framing this image are a series of visual indicators that the artist is referencing a digital image of another artist’s work, removing it even further from the original source material. Historically, sinking ships were a popular subject in painting, so Bucheli puts his work in conversation with other contemporary artists, as well as artists of the past.
Bucheli explains that “this work is part of the “Embodied Perception” series. This body of work consists of paintings of pictures of paintings (by other artists who I admire) as they were found on the internet. It allows the viewer to consider the differences in experience of looking at photographs of paintings, as opposed to seeing them in person. It also allows me to reflect on the constituent aspects of the psychological process of perception.”
Grandure
What strikes me about Mollie Douthit’s work is how easily she makes innocuous things seem very grand. In this painting, Saving Jane, the artist trains her observant eye on baked goods, the artist favors rich colors and textures that makes her subject feel opulent, and genuinely edible. Each of Douthit’s paintings has a specific memory about everyday encounters attached to it, about this particular work she writes:
“I had made a batch of cookies as a thank you for the mechanics who worked on my car. My car’s name is Jane and the mechanics saved me about $800.00 by finding a refurbished part online. I wanted to remember this moment. Painting the cookies cooling didn’t feel right, neither did the cookies placed in the container to give the mechanics, nor the one I sampled with a bite taken out of it. After delivering the cookies I came home and placed one on the counter. I knew then that was it. With only three colors and slight variations of those colors I felt the cookie under my brush, and when I feel as if I am touching the thing with my brush I have chosen to paint I know there is a possibility that I have discovered a truth in work.”
Weighty
Water Dogs by artist Suzanne Unrein is captivating because of its lushness. I feel the dew, the wetness, on my skin when I look at it. Though the paint application is thin, the damp quality of the work makes it appear remarkably weighty. There are many moments of quiet across this work, but it is also filled with energy in its mark-making and bursts of color. Loosely referencing the staining techniques of color-field painter Helen Frankenthaler, this painting is environmental; it is immersive and all-encompassing.
The artist writes that she “grew up among swamps, alligators, mossy oaks and hundreds of varieties of birds in the coastal towns of Florida.” This upbringing is clearly represented in much of her work.
Uncontainable
This small painting by Carly Bodnar, titled Frame, has a larger than life presence. A contorted, powerful body fills the composition, nearly kissing the edges of the frame. Thick, muscular legs overwhelm the foreground. The treatment of light and shadow in this work, also referred to as chiaroscuro, harkens back to renaissance paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi or Caravaggio. This stylistic tendency is underscored by the androgynous exaggerated musculature of the figure, unabashed in their power.
In this case, the body appears nearly uncontainable. Bodnar writes that she “is a painter of flesh and the figure. Her recent work explores the way the natural body intersects with the conflicting demands of society.” I’m drawn to this painting because it is quite literally a visual embodiment of Whitman’s assertion: I am large, I contain multitudes.
Pulling It All Together
This week’s curation is an exercise in embracing the inconsistency and unreliability of my own taste. This selection of works demonstrate that we can permit ourselves space to be adaptable to change; to examine our resolve in light of new information; to be versatile in our thinking; pliable and plastic in our disposition; to do away with unwavering principles. Be unafraid of nuance and steadfast only in our multiplicity.
About Jordan Holms
Jordan Holms is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting, sculpture, and textiles. Her work examines how space is materialized, organized, and made to mean. She has exhibited internationally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada and her work is held in multiple private collections. In addition to a solo exhibition at Marrow Gallery, her paintings have been included in a group show at SFMoMA Artists Gallery, a number of MFA survey exhibitions, featured at BAMPFA, and in Adidas’s San Francisco Market Street storefront. Most recently, Holms was a recipient of the Vermont Studio Center Artist Grant, where she was an artist-in-residence in February 2020. She is also a 2016-2019 recipient of the San Francisco Art Institute’s Graduate Fellowship Award. She earned a Master of Fine Arts and Master of Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2019, where she graduated with honors. Holms lives and works in San Francisco, California.