2nd Annual Curators' Incubator Program
August 11, 2004
Triple Threat
MAP’s Current Collection of Shows Hits the Trifecta
By J. Bowers
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a tie. A three-way tie, to be precise—faced with 20-odd particularly compelling show proposals, the panel responsible for selecting a fresh, up-and-coming curator to take on Maryland Art Place’s second annual Curators’ Incubator exhibit decided to fuse three independent visions into one interrelated experience. The lucky trio—In This City, curated by Jennifer Selden; All Four Corners, curated by Chela co-founder Jackie Milad; and On The Line: Machines, Maps, and Memory, co-curated by Kerry Kessler and Pat Goslee—combines to form a surprisingly successful, undeniably fresh triple threat of group shows that together address line-drawing, mapmaking, and the urban experience.
In This City fills the front of MAP’s three-room space with pieces by six young mixed-media artists who create work that is organically rooted in physical aspects of Baltimore’s identity. Visually, it is the weakest of the three shows, presenting work that favors high concept over high style. Maryland Institute College of Art graduate Michael Cataldi’s “Flower-Pot-Holes” and “Tire Swings” projects, presented here as digital photographs of the artist’s on-site installations, transform potholes around Baltimore into impromptu flowerbeds and create tire swings wherever abandoned tires are found. Both of Cataldi’s pieces whimsically embrace the notion of urban decay, while MICA cohort Jared Paolini’s “Putting Stars Back in the Night Sky” wistfully rails against it. His video installation documents Paolini and a group of giggling friends as they launch bottle rockets arranged to mimic constellations into Baltimore’s starless, light-polluted sky. It’s a sweet, childlike concept, and it far outshines Paolini’s series of C-prints, which document the city’s many murals with bland straightforwardness.
Amanda Matles, another MICA alum, takes a political stab at one of the Inner Harbor’s most recognizable nighttime sights with “Okay,” an illuminated acrylic parody of the Domino Sugar sign. Matles’ sculpture is accompanied by a cheeky mix CD of tunes featuring the word “sugar,” with sleeve notes that reference the exploitative nature of the sugar industry and provide invaluable context for a piece that otherwise presents itself as clever Pop Art.
Chuck Miller’s “2652 Maryland Ave./Leakin Park” is an impressive feat of obsessive-compulsive mapmaking—a “moveable kiosk” of charts, photographs, and lists that document Miller’s efforts to locate and map every building seen from his Maryland Avenue rooftop and, conversely, every tree seen from a carefully chosen point in Leakin Park. Again, the idea outweighs the aesthetics, but In This City’s shortcomings are balanced out by All Four Corners, a show that explores linear composition and installation art with eerie, airy charm.
Seong Chun’s hanging “Cities,” eight paper “pods” printed with text lifted from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, simultaneously evokes space-age architecture and the natural geometry of wasps’ paper nests. Local filmmaker-cum-visual artist Catherine Pancake uses submersible microphones, fish-tank equipment, and three inches of water to create “Hydro,” a piece that forces viewers to contemplate cause and effect as they listen to the ambient sound created by bubbles moving through water and trace the paths created by tangles of air tubes and electrical wire. Shannon Young’s “Falling” delicately stretches hair-thin fibers of peach-colored isomalt sugar substitute between metal pins and the gallery’s exposed ceiling beams, creating a unique, translucent web of shadows.
Opposite, “The pleasures of you. (and other transitional aspects.)” by San Francisco’s Amy Rathbone seems to sprout out of the wall it’s mounted on, combining stiff shanks of black and green wire with deliberate, arresting fluorescent lines to convey a wordless sense of tension and release. The real highlight here comes courtesy of Minna Philips, however: “Cluster” claims a corner of the gallery utterly, using threads, thinly painted lines, and MAP’s exposed water pipes to create optical illusions and uncertain angles.
On The Line: Machines, Maps, and Memory brings the Curators’ Incubator full circle, with a spare, tautly conceived selection of artists who use line to map their memories and imaginations. Andrew Krieger’s obsessively detailed mixed-media drawings and constructions combine Seussian whimsy and an architect’s precision to conjure up the imaginary world of Deep Ellum, where inhabitants lecture from the “Poetry Kiosk” and visit “Smambers Store,” named after Krieger’s sister’s imaginary childhood friend. Philadelphia resident Perry Steindel mines similarly playful territory; with a knack for bird’s eye perspective, he’s been creating meticulously detailed pen and ink maps of nonexistent places since 1956, when he was in third grade. Two of Steindel’s early compositions are displayed alongside more recent work, a curatorial choice that gives viewers a real feel for his single-minded vision.
Andy Holtin’s mechanized sculpture echoes Pancake’s work. “A Simple Piece about touch, distance and sound” features two wall-mounted aluminum rods that undulate hypnotically atop a hollow wooden box, producing creepy theremin/submarine noises that can only be heard with a doctor’s stethoscope. On a much more personal note, transgendered artist Dylan Scholinski, nee Daphne Scholinski, strikes serious nerves with his “Home Sweet Home” series, a collection of blueprint-style sketches of his childhood home, the mental hospital where he spent his teen years, and other significant locations. Each room is labeled with a memory, penned in Scholinski’s urgent hand—“I used to punch the walls until my arm was swelled up to my elbow,” for instance. An arrow points to the outline of a love seat, with the legend “no love.” It’s the most emotionally raw work in the gallery, a fine finish to this gutsy group of shows.
