Art Lies, Volume 8, August-September 1995 Page: 29
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Reviews
Arlington
Evocative Object at Arlington Museum of ArtIs the medium the message? It can
be, and also it may not be. If there
is an opposition between artists who
follow this doctrine and those who
don't, it as an opposition between
those who subscribe to it and those
who simply recognize it.
In terms of media, most of the works
included in this exhibition are wo-
ven or sewn together. Weaving is
often a communal activity, with a
strong tradition of anonymous au-
thorship, and every member of soci-ety has some contact with woven
products. Conceptually, these works
deal with the individual in society,
playing on the deep connection be-
tween the art of weaving and the
idea of community that resides in the
connecting of small units to create a
whole which is decidedly different
than the parts. Many, though not all,
of the works in "The Evocative Ob-
ject" tightly interweave materiality
and content, medium and message.
Many of these
artists, such as
Joseph Havel,
use found wo-
ven objects,
items with
which the
viewer has had
some type of
interaction.
Havel con-
structs Spine
out of torn and
discarded
white shirt col-
lars, which he
ties together
with filament
and hangs
from the
gallery's ceil-
ing to convey a
sense of per-
verted com-
munity. Each
of the collars
has a grace to
it, operatinglike a white calligraphic character.
However, the elements lose their
own subtle characters as they be-
come fully coopted into the whole,
a rigid column of white set from the
gallery ceiling - a vastly different
formal entity. The most remarkable
aspect of the work is that both its
separate elements and the whole are
breathtakingly beautiful.
Lynn Koble also uses found materi-
als to depict the conflict between
individuality and community in her
Cloaking, a section of three walls on
which the artist has hung a long
black curtain. The cloak reads as a
judge's robe. The work is suspended
from twenty wooden hangers, alter-
nately labeled "brother" and "sister."
These labels create an eerie authori-
tative element. Each hanger be-
comes a member of a community the
viewer is outside of. Koble's com-
munity overwhelms the individual to
the point of a single gender descrip-
tion. Through this narrative, her work
becomes a visual articulation of
Emerson's axiom, "Society stands in
conspiracy against the manhood of
every one of its members."
Jill Bedgood carries this progression
one step further in her work Touch
Me: Aids, a box of surgery gloves
with "touch me" repeatedly written
in red ink on each glove. It may be
more dependant on its medium than
any other work included in the ex-
hibition but it contradicts one of the
- 35upstream, rate reIfey,
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Allen, Mark; Carroll, Donald & Huerta, Benito. Art Lies, Volume 8, August-September 1995, periodical, August 1995; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228040/m1/29/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .