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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Rivane Neuenschwander @ Walker Art Center
Wednesday 11 September @ 09:46:20 |
 by Mathew Timmons
Can you ever define “post-modern” art in any acceptable way? So much of it seems simply to arouse the senses in a peculiar way. If anyone asked you about the last piece of “post-modern” art you saw, would you describe the materiality of the piece or attempt to narrate the way it worked upon your mind and senses? Rivane Neuenschwander’s first U.S. solo exhibition To/From at the Walker Art Center is sure to leave you with a sense of having experienced something on the front edge of the International Art scene. Rivane is currently based in London, but grew up and spent most of her life in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
She works in the modes of installation, film, drawing, and photography. Much of it has been heavily influenced by the minimalist movement, and draws upon highly formalist notions. What really makes her work interesting is its materiality, or lack thereof. She uses dust, insects, garlic skins, talcum powder, and even the dirt she collects from her kitchen floor to create an experience for the viewer that builds an interior monologue about sensory experience. She refers to this mode as “ephemeral materialism,”a manner of working that by its very nature calls into question the authority of the Art Object. Her work is “not condensed in an ‘art object’ any more, but rather in the perception of each person. Two pieces on view at the Walker exhibit this characteristic. “Andando em Circulos (Walking in Circles)” (2000) only becomes visible as the circles of clear glue adhered to the floor record the dusty tracks of visitors’ movements. For her 14-drawing series “Carta Faminta (Starving Letters)” (2000), the artist coaxed snails to eat through sheets of paper, leaving delicate topographies in their wake. These modest strategies generate an impression by transforming simple everyday things into an almost ritual experience.
It could be easy to mistake Rivane’s work as another example of the current interest in Latin American art on the international scene. For “Love Letters,” her newest piece for this exhibition, she attaches several fragments of a love letter to the tails of goldfish which swim chaotically in front of a camera. Of course this could be mistaken simplistically for “magical realism,” but that would be selling short the poetic comment it makes on the aspect of chance inherent in human relationships as we all float through this world. This type of work is what informs that sense we have of what post-modern is as well as what Latin American art is.
The To/From: Rivane Neuenschwander exhibit continues through Nov. 10 at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Mpls. 612-375-7622.
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