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Art Papers May/June, 1999
“Beyond the Visible” Don Soker Gallery, San Francisco, California November 3 – December 5, 1999
In his most recent book, What Painting Is, James Elkins discusses painting using the language of alchemy. According to Elkins, “the painter, like the alchemist, seeks to transform and be transformed by the medium.” His lush analogy between studio and laboratory explores the evident parallels between alchemical investigation and creative experimentation, both of which attempt to achieve enlightenment, or the proverbial philosopher’s stone.
It is precisely this relationship that Christel Dillbohner examines in “Beyond the Visible” (Don Soker Gallery, San Francisco, November 3 – December 5), an expansive installation comprised of walls covered with beeswax encrusted mulberry paper that serve as a golden background for weathered, wooden boxes containing hermetic objects, tied scrolls, and other fragile specimens. These esoteric items extend out onto the gallery floor where woven sifters filled with crumbling charcoal rest next to scarred animal bones. Most of these objects look as if they have been excavated from an ancient site; their meaning or usefulness is no longer evident. In this respect, Dillbohner’s methods are remarkably similar to the alchemists’, who often buried, burned, doused, and abused their substances to achieve the desired effect.
Dillbohner juxtaposes her anthropologic artifacts and the broken discards that are so abundant in our society, with raw materials from nature: pods, seeds, vines and beeswax. This relationship contrasts the fecundity of nature with the transience of mankind. The fragility of these objects emphasizes their inevitable disintegration and how nature reclaims man-made materials through rust and decay.
Dillbohner has transposed many of these relics from her studio to the gallery in order to give the viewer an insight into her process and materials. She displays blackened boxes, vessels caked with earthy sediments, and translucent jars filled with unrecognizable organic matter. The vague familiarity of these objects evokes an intuitive response in the same way that an odor will trigger a fragment of memory. By integrating this elusive element into her work, Dillbohner reaches the interior space that is implied by the title of her installation.
Every element in “Beyond the Visible” speaks of either physical or psychological lightness. There is the apparent luminosity of the beeswax medium that covers all of the walls and many of the objects. The burnt quality of many of the objects echoes the encaustic method of melting and applying hot wax. There is also a fragile lightness to the organic paper sculptures and altered materials from nature. Finally, there is the enlightenment that the artist is both trying to achieve and express through this work. In painting, as perhaps in alchemy, it is more often the activity of searching and experimenting that makes this relentless cycle worthwhile.
The encaustic paintings and assemblages in this exhibition are tactile examples of this impure method of digging through the primordial muck in order to transmute the ordinary into the valuable. Many of the paintings are inscribed with text and symbols using the rather violent act of scraping and gouging into the panels. An untitled triptych is layered with a tarry surface and abstract images resembling roots. Recent Days (1998) is a wooden box acting as a container for a fragile waxed vessel that resembles a boat. Dillbohner accentuates the liquidity of the paint and the flux of the molten wax by grinding pigment and medium into the surface to enhance the texture. Undertow V (1998) is painted with blood-colored wax in strong horizontal lines that suggest murky depths and overwhelming currents.
In our society we often look to science to solve our mysteries, to heal our illnesses, and to delineate our world. We have few rituals that genuinely express the meaning of our lives. “Beyond the Visible” is a study in the temporal quality of making art; each object serves as a marker for the moment spent in the studio, influenced by mood, weather, physical well-being, and countless other elements. That many of the objects here are in the process of disintegrating, coagulating, or slowly decaying, further emphasizes the passage of time. In the context of this installation, these objects reflect on the quality of time spent, rather than the final product. By provoking a visceral response to her work, Dillbohner invites this kind of speculation about our existence, and our own transformations, physical and philosophical, that define our lives.
Cheryl Coon San Francisco |