art, review

Manuf®actured Delivers In More Ways Than One

As the Museum of Contemporary Craft moved from its Lair Hill location to its new Baja Pearl location, it was going through more than a physical move. The institution went through an intense self-examination resulting in a redefinition of itself and its mission. Most critically (in all senses of the word) the word “craft” was both retained in the name of the institution as others, notably the Museum of Art and Design, dropped it, and at the same time redefined. “Craft” would no longer just be defined as material, method, object, or historical movement.

Clearly the curatorial leadership wanted some room to maneuver in the creation of contemporary exhibitions. And that’s to be applauded. But that left us with the troubling thought that if we remove every one of the ways that we typically think of craft, or rather define something as craft vs. visual art, and make exhibitions that do the same, then aren’t we arguing for the abolition of the craft museum if the same work and exhibitions, as so defined, might well be hosted by a fine arts institution?

It’s important to understand that the 70-year-old institution had a lot of history to drag behind it even as it stayed true to the word “contemporary” in its title. It addressed a bit of this rich history in the beautiful publication Unpacking the Collection, Written by curator Namita Gupta Wiggers and designed by Katherine Bovee. But if we go back before the most recent move, the word “contemporary” was at one point embraced, which likely set the institution on its current course to wrest the idea of craft into its present and its future.

But at the same time this publication was being released, honoring the work in the collection, two exhibitions in the space wrestled over the future of the institution and indeed its relevance.

One was a survey of influential ceramicist Ken Shores, whose work in a traditional “craft” vein, takes the familiar medium of ceramics and crafts from it objects that in their time (over his long career) have been innovative, and surely to some, shocking.

The other, one might have expected, would be a contemporary exhibition or installation by an emerging craft artist that would provide an alternative view of craft than the one offered by Shores. And if one had those expectations, one would have been half right. The conceptual installation piece employed a craft medium, glass, in a distinctly non-craft way. We have said before that Melissa Dyne’s “Glass” was the largest readymade the city had ever seen. We would perhaps have embraced the work if shown in the APEX gallery at the Portland Art Museum; it had a great deal of potential in examining its own means while also providing a slo-mo performance, more dramatic tension than any other installation we’ve ever seen (even as we quibbled with its serious lack of attention, as installed, to its site). Plus, it was formally beautiful (more so if you were over 5’9″), appealing to our inner minimalist. But it proved a Bridge to Nowhere for the Museum of Contemporary Craft, and the “wall text” or essay by Reed prof Robert Slifkin in the brochure, could not Stretch Armstrong itself into a justification for, “Why here?”

Here was an artist who did not consider herself a craft artist (an online bio: “Melissa Dyne is a visual artist who constructs mechanical, musical and optical instruments. Through the use of simple mechanics, photography, and early (often obsolete) technologies”) making a visual art installation. Only the imagination of the curator who had issued the invitation could make this piece, as much as we may have appreciated it, make sense in this space.

More troubling, if we embrace this piece in this Museum, the Museum is talking itself out of its raison d’être…to exhibit contemporary craft. Certainly there is conceptual craft and very contemporary craft that this Museum should be and could be embracing. But this piece was not it.

Fortunately, the Museum’s current exhibition offers a Third Way, delivering truly contemporary (and often conceptual) craft: work that makes sense in a craft context while making conceptual statements as strong or stronger as any found currently in a visual arts institution. So we can now look back on the Big Glass as a ritualistic clearing of the ground. We have seen the precipice, says the institution, and rather than jumping, have begun to construct a vision on the edge.

Manuf®actured is the exhibition that delivers on the Museum’s redefined notions about contemporary craft and indeed feels like the show curator Namita Gupta Wiggers has always wanted to see in this institution. A show that raises myriad issues, myriad questions, and thinks them through piece by piece, addressing the culture at large, here consumerism, as well as craft culture and thought.

This is, for the most part, high caliber work full of surprise, well crafted work that questions every assumption about craft (material, process, product, context.

All of this is in the context of the consumer good-made-art (Sonya Clark’s comb sculptures) or craft-made-consumer good (Marcel Wanders’ resin-dipped crocheted cube for Moooi available here for £1,202.00 ) or work that has it both ways…Dominic Wilcox’s “bowls” made of melted army men on display here as other of his melted figure works are used by Nike to house pairs of shoes. Other work is some variation on the theme–styrofoam packing blocks become installation (which really, as beautiful as it may be, is not craft no matter how you define it and would better be part of another exhibition) or “vessels” made of metal street signs, or better: Regis Mayot using vessel as material rather than producing vessel (still one wonders if Mayot considers himself a craft artist or if this is curatorial intention as opposed to artist intention). There is a lot of good work to talk about here, much of it conceptual: Laura Splan’s machine-made doilies model viruses while Boym Partner’s “Salvation ceramics” has Fluxus overtones in its instruction nature. And some of it is brilliantly perceptual…call me a sucker for formal beauty+visual surprise+inside joke, but Devorah Sperber’s Chuck Close-ian “After Warhol” was so good: hanging columns of spools of colored thread that can be viewed through a crystal ball was surprising in the best way. I would have loved it without the view through the ball, loved it more with. And what did it do but take a traditional craft medium, thread, and say, “Now, for something completely different.”

The exhibition also takes in traditional craft processes, Livia Marin’s piece was among the strongest works, this time employing turning wood on a lathe to model the tiny sculptures she meticulously carved out of something like 1,000 lipsticks…the non-craft material acted upon with a very craft hand. Here you get technical prowess+beauty+address of feminine brand of consumer culture. The piece does a lot of lifting in its delicate glossy beauty in shades of flower, leaf, and dirt.

Manuf®actured, among its many agendas, reminds us of craft’s origins in creating utilitarian vessel, garment, structure, and tool; the path through industrialization and mass production that sidelined much craft into esoteric realms; and the periodic reinvestigation and embrace of craft…of which the Right Now is a high point…that reinvigorates it.

POSTED: October 12th, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art, review | TAGS: art, craft, manuf®actured, museum of contemporary craft | No Comments »

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