Nov

13

Lacanic Room

Filed Under Art Fart 

Liza Lou Security Fence

I first discovered artist Liza Lou in 1999, Grand Central Station, New York. A beaded oasis amongst the bustle of businessmen and little brown bags just after rush hour. I will never forget it.

Backyard, was a massive installation in Vanderbilt Hall. Lou, and a team of volunteers, had beaded a human-scale tableau of a yard with tiny, colourful glass beads. The result was an extraordinary artwork completed by hand.

The brilliance of Backyard grows out from the centred picnic scene, which unlike the rest of the installation, appeared to have been recently disturbed. Lou included many markers (signifiers) to indicate an outdoor get-together, unfulfilled. Objects successful in supporting the idea included crushed cans of Bud, salad servers at the ready for scooping salad, and a laundry basket filled with dishtowels. (The ultimate glorification; beaded rags!) Others, not so successful, were cobs of corn imitating cheap Pier 1 imports relics, and flowers that stood so tall and straight as embellished stand-ins of the plastic floral pinwheels people erect in their gardens.

Lou’s colourful Backyard concoction stresses the absence of things. It serves as an index to the missing human element the tableau permits, almost as a dare to the common accepted idea of nature: man’s intervention is beauty’s demise. It’s as though Lou’s version of the adage suggests a variant to be true: man’s intervention brings beauty to life. The irony of Lou’s utilization of a very tactile, man-made technique, only challenges the viewer further to consider this unpopular point of view.

But that was then, and this is now. Lou no longer seems to be making works about the objective, but the subjective. It is about the presence of things. Her work now is an exaggeration of her own making that has come full circle; actually, enclosed, geometric, subdued, but equally arresting.

On view until this weekend at L & M Arts, New York, is a selection of Lou’s latest musings; still beaded and breathtaking. Works include a Continuous Mile, a beaded, interlaced rope, in a circle formation; Clear, Hold, Build, a beaded relief reminiscent of mosque architecture, prayer carpet, or blueprint, hung on a wall; and Security Fence, a square, fenced enclosing, with spiraling barbed wire surrounding the perimeter overhead. Although all works reserve their own distinct attitude, the Continuous Mile about the process of order; Clear, Hold, Build, about the history of a foundation; and Security Fence about the significance of boundaries, they also collectively attest to man’s mirror of the self, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real, in the most Lacanic way. In fact, there is a great schism in Lou’s work in re-identifying the self, (and this might be more true of an American female, in Lou’s case, than possibly other individuals experiencing the artwork) that only enforces the inner conflict of consciousness Lacan theorized.

Lou’s beaded wonders whisper subconscious signifieds like “chaos,” “order,” “us,” “them,” “defence-ive,” and “offence-ive” respectfully. Works, that in their glittering magnificence, ask you to take sides of ugly situations easier to not think about. Situations easier to stomach, so long as they are not happening in your own backyard.

Running concurrently the L & M show, to the end of the November, is Lou’s, Maximum Security Fence at Lever House, New York. The beaded fence stretching the majority of the building’s lobby can be seen as a hyperbole of the themes at the L & M show, funneled down to one, impressive sculpture. One magnificent, diminutive point. One bead, set, one at a time.

IMAGE | Liza Lou | detail, Security Fence | 2005–2007 | steel and glass beads | 108″ x 120″ | L & M Arts images.

NB: I have only viewed the L & M and Lever House exhibitions online. Anyone with any comments or news about the show, please, please, please, feel free to comment.

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