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| Fahrenheit 451 San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery September 12 – October 25, 1997 Bay Area Reporter Steven Jenkins October 2, 1997 pp. 42 – 43 Wonder Words: ‘Fahrenheit 451’ revels in verbal prolixity “Book lovers never go to bed lonely,” reads the slogan on a T-shirt for sale at the local car-wash gift shop. Pondering this as I pay for my Super Scrub Special, I concur that books do make splendid companions between the sheets, as any passionate reader will attest. Moreover, as vessels for life-altering words and ideas, and as beautiful objects in their own right, books provide myriad enticements and rewards, what French lexicologist Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text.” Naturally, we’re horrified when those pleasures are threatened, when books are censored, their wisdom and delight kept from us by the thugs of moral propriety, or when it looks increasingly like the predominance of the digital universe is leading to book obliteration. Fahrenheit 451, a dynamic, linguistically rich exhibition on view at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, dispels all fears of books being banished to paper-strewn gulags. Borrowing its title from Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel in which all books are banned and burned (their pages torching up at a toasty 451 degrees), this group show features book-related works by nearly three dozen Bay Area artists who brandish words as weapons, puzzles, or prayers. Brilliantly curated by Cheryl Coon with an eye towards stylistic diversity, Fahrenheit 451 is a heady exploration of the thrills and hazards of ink on paper. As with any good book, there are too many profound musings, plot twists, and semiotic challenges in the exhibition to absorb in one reading. Upon entering the gallery you hear the sound of a typewriter, the source of which is Jim Campbell’s installation consisting of a glass pane painted to resemble a blank sheet of paper, beneath which is a box containing a computer chip that arranges and “types” the 7,344 characters contained in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Gazing at the blank sheet, knowing that it can be covered with such inspiring words, the viewer is powerfully reminded that language, both written and spoken, can change the world. Campbell’s piece is an ideal set-up for much of the work on display. Books come in all formats, shapes, and sizes in the exhibition. Their unusual materials include carved acrylic and neon (Vincent Koloski’s modern primitive Petrobook), embossed leather (Cathy Feiss’ Constructing a Text II), cotton handkerchiefs (Nan Robarge’s Sedum Spec Book), and even cow guts. (Lisa Kokin’s fascinating but odorously repellent Inventory was inspired by a trip to Buchenwald concentration camp and consists of hundreds of found objects – buttons and fragments of Hebrew texts – encased in fowl-smelling bovine innards.) Several pieces take the form of more traditional books with cloth covers and paper pages. In Robert’s Postcards, Michael Light presents a gorgeous and haunting collection of photos sequenced to trace a universal narrative of warfare, loss, and memory. April Gertler employs found photographs and handmade paper to tell an ambiguous tale of passion and violence in the Breaking Point, while Brian Janusiak artfully tears pages and photos to reconstruct mythology in Icarus Takes a Wife. All of these books invite perusal, yet others on display make their point with a look-but-don’t-touch strategy, their contents investigated only at the risk of danger. Hundreds of pins stick out from the goatskin pages of Coriander Reisbord’s Resentment, and K. Ruby covers her volume of new-clippings with a nasty-looking metal rat-trap. Andy McKee qualifies the title of his exquisitely dangerous glass book Small Things That May Hurt You with words like “matches,” “electrical outlets,” and “promises.” Many artists here favor direct narratives with clear-cut messages – or do they? In The Truth is Quite Simple, Prentiss Cole layers slippery truisms such as “Do or Die” and “With Meaning Exists Absurdity” on cheesecloth, acrylic resin, and polyester film. In Card Catalog, Diane Jacobs catalogues responses to a Rorscharch ink blot under categories including “hostility,” “bodily preoccupation,” and “sadomasochistic orientation.” Narrative ambiguity strikes in Seth Kroeck’s McCarty Street Matches and in a similar piece by Kirsten Cole. Both artists imprint ambiguous works and phrases, such as “four generations of nervous feet” and “erotic” on wooden matches. For Spiritual Sense, John Muse has constructed a delicate jumble of fabric squares, suspended in a wire and thread hammock, covered with words like, “almost,” “Babel,” “book,” and “infallible.” Donna Leigh Schumacher’s ambitious mixed-media piece The Kiss blends photo-collages and layers of text. From a jumble of words jump random phrases – “She sleeps in pink on red satin sheets,” “killed when in drag,” “you fucked your sister” – that suggest an epic narrative of misdirected desire and gender confusion. In contrast, Sharon Siskin’s Sinking, a book made from metal, mirror, wood and bone, consists of a single, unmistakable sentence: “AIDS kills some of the most magnificent human beings I’ve known.” Among the exhibition’s more playful entries is Indigo Som’s The Aeronautics of Love, featuring two paper airplanes suspended from the ceiling and covered with ruminations on long-distance relationships. Also lovely is Andrea Brewster’s Oh Pioneers, a quilted piece incorporating digitized photographs of women trailblazers and disordered pages from Willa Cather novels. One of the lingering pleasures of Fahrenheit 451 – easily the best group show I’ve seen this year – is that it gets you thinking about your own favorite novels and poems, love letters, and dangling participles. All week I’ve had lines from André Breton and Kafka swirling in my head, their words making me giddy and dizzy. The splendid work in this clever exhibition – much of which I don’t have the space to mention – has the same effect. I could write a book about it. more reviews
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