IMPLODING MEANING at Vassar

IMPLODING MEANING: Tale-less Tales About Absolutely Nothing And Everything In Between

As my work concerns the underpinnings of perception, I was thrilled when Monica Church asked me to participate in IMPLODING MEANING at The Palmer Gallery at Vassar. I am equally honored to have been invited to write my reflections on the exhibition for Art Curious-Contemporary.

by M Pettee Olsen, for Art Curious Contemporary, November 23, 2023

Artists are tasked with “embedding thought in material,” suggests co-chief art critic at the New York Times, Roberta Smith. It seems to me that this embedding of thought should be done with the artist’s sense of the times and the unique lens through which they view the world and make their art. Yet, for some of us, in a world more saturated in shared published opinion than at any time in history, upending meaning has become a concern in our art-making. During this time, when the cacophony of opinion and amygdala-baiting has achieved tremendous and equal volume and reach, and the exchange of truth for falsehood appears acceptable, I approach my work as an artist. It is in this context that I see myself situated in the exhibition IMPLODING MEANING, at Vassar’s Palmer Gallery. 

In 1966, when Frank Stella said, “What you see is what you see,”  he was referring to surfaces, composition, color, and so on — the notion that his works should be seen as objects.  Yet, a few decades later, his statement seems to have stretched well beyond objecthood and increasingly to metaphor, as embodied in his work of the late 80s and early 90s. The Moby Dick Series, in particular, comes to mind. I recall the massive bas-relief project created with layers of lithographed and screen-printed painterly marks and geometries as I had a minor role in assisting with its development.  In Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s epic novel, in which Captain Ahab grapples with the great white whale, a mutable representation of good, evil, moral consequences, and life itself, we, the reader, become witnesses to the terrible result of Ahab’s mad rejection of his own better nature. Clearly, in using such a title, Stella’s notions suggest looking beyond painted surfaces when he created the series.  

Fast-forward roughly thirty years, and our sense of “what you see is what you see” continues to have shifted, or perhaps dissolved altogether. Significantly, WHO is making the work, and WHAT materials they are using, has been fashionable for at least the last few decades. Yet, I turn again, to Melville’s Captain Ahab, “Look ye, man, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features.” Could that ‘reasoning thing’ be you or me? 

In my view, this show is a clarifying lens through which HOW one views is a critical, if not the most critical, way of looking at art today. It both transcends and includes former concerns. 

When, in 2018, at The Tate Britain, during an interview with Charline Von Heyl regarding her Hirshhorn Exhibition, Snake Eyes, the unpinnable painter stated, “Abstraction is not only about no meaning, it’s about imploding meaning.” To me, this suggested an inward collapse of our expressive, free-speech culture, under the weight of discordant voices in our larger human one. Imploding also carries with it notions of what I am after in my work — the nature of perception and therefore the dubious nature of any absolute, or all-encompassing Truth embedded in official histories. For me, the act of questioning the nature of seeing is primary. It takes the place of sketches and storied ideas as I enter the studio. All of this is to say that the changeable nature of HOW we look at art might be a further consideration through which we see or choose not to attach meaning. This self-awareness is something that we artists hope comes after the first eye-grabbing moments of looking. 

Through the main doors of the gallery, a viewer is confronted with Red Turn with Value Scales, by M Pettee Olsen.

Monica Church’s sailcloth works are rectangular and stapled to stretcher bars, emphasizing that they should be read as ‘paintings’. The artist leaves the almost transparent, wide-woven areas of the sail to let the wall they are hanging on become part of the assemblage’s color. This incidental color and shadow cast by the sail are played against the reflective pigments Church surreptitiously uses on select parts of the sailcloth. There are oblique references to the sky in an otherwise hard-geometric work with rounded shapes stitched in at the top of the composition. The work feels formalist until small glints of paint register as the titular ‘silver lining’ yearned for in life when things are often shifting, and difficult. This nubivagant theme runs through her large pieces in the show. Smaller works have a quiet weight and sense of intimacy about them.

Until recently, I believed that non-objective painting was not about nothing and that abstraction explored formal issues like geometry, color, gesture, and surface quality, as well as non-verbal storytelling. I’ve seen that it is not singular but contains a throughline of emboldened openness to interpretation.
In this new work, I move beyond exploring formal issues by interrupting the surface with sail material rather than traditional supports and adhering actual objects to the surface. Through the process of making my work, I succumb to that particular piece’s insistence on having its own architecture and story.

— Monica Church

Twists and Turns with Value Scale came from a body of work that explored the different ways imposed value could be read in a piece. The painting evolved after I returned from a residency at the UCROSS Foundation, where I continued exploring value scales floating above or embedded in the layers of the painting.

Twists and Turns with Value Scale, by M Pettee Olsen

I do not repeat the use of visual devices in the same order for the same function. I am concerned with what to do to achieve a sense of impermanence and the questionable nature of perception.  

— M Pettee Olsen

No Sweets for the Sweating (above center) thematically addresses religion in partnership with economics as social control. Walsh creates stark reimaginings of labor, power, and belief. They carry notions of female identity as being almost religiously fetishized, manipulated, and until now, unseen and under-recognized. On the starkly white walls of the gallery, their presence reads both as confessional and as a declaration.