KEADYVILLE

30 x 23 x 28”

A critique by
Leonard Folgarait
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History of Art and Architecture
Vanderbilt University
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This object presents itself as autobiography. Not of the artist but of itself. It tells its own story in a non-linear, seemingly incoherent and unresolved fashion, but is insistent that that life story it tells is truly its own and must be accepted as such. Normal rules don’t apply.

The wood seems to come from some manufactured state, perhaps pieces of discarded furniture, remnants of a former life, but also at times seems like wood in a raw state only partially worked and perhaps discarded before finding a home in finished woodwork. All the individual pieces of wood are in a state of abjection, rejection, homelessness. That anxiety of rootlessness has brought them together into some makeshift semblance of connection, of belonging, the pieces barely joined, but joined by some unnamed impulse toward the collective. This collective exists despite seemingly disparate states of origin of the individual pieces, different colors and textures, and states of finish.

The autobiography so far seems to be about origins of displacement and trauma, but now joined in some state of mutual support. But how did this story start?

Do the pieces that look most raw suggest that they existed first, before others that look painted or stained? Some pieces have white paint that is either starting to be applied or has worn off through use. Do the ones that offer jagged and perhaps burned edges suggest the end of a lifespan, now barely hanging on? And yet all these suggestions of occupying separate periods of time and existence all now co-exist, insist on occupying the same time.

And why shaped as they are, standing on three points, suggesting a vertical orientation? But surely the entire structure can be tipped to stand on other points, in a handful of other possibilities of standing. This particular position therefore seems arbitrary, not in a confused sense, but in a sense of opening up other options of standing, of being.

As for the colors, we seem to have raw wood, some painted in parts, some painted all blue or all brown. Let’s look at the all-blue parts for a second and realize that they might not be made of wood at all, that they might be made, indeed, of the color blue itself, blue not as applied pigment but as the only material present, blue from inside out, shaped like but actually not wood. The same phenomenon applies to the brown parts, not wood but just brown. Are these materials of pure pigment natural or not, as strong or weaker than wood, younger or older in age, formed by humans or by their own will?

The central suggestion of these remarks is that as abstract and non-linear and incoherent as some contemporary art seems to be, that it seems intent upon confusing and confounding its viewers, this object actually works toward real and human meaning by insinuating openings into the creative process such that the viewer may accept these invitations to ponder how our human condition, even in its social and political dimensions, might be grasped more convincingly by abstract rather than by realistic art. Realistic art tells us what to think; abstract art welcomes us to ponder how we think.

In pondering the how of human thought, we realize that we need not accept the world of binary oppositions imposed upon us by conventional society, that we do not need to accept either only male or female, only black or white, poor or rich, democrat or republican. By accepting the challenges of this object on the apparent non-linear narrative that it tells about itself, that normal up and down do not matter, that what seems to be wood might actually be blue, that a discarded status might end up as the conceptual glue that holds this grouping of materials together, that weakness leads to strength, we might realize voices of salvation and success might come from the most unlikely places, and that we need to see and hear possibilities of resolution and recovery from the most unexpected voices, from sticks of material coming together to insist that there are viable alternatives after all.

Finally, this as autobiography means that it is ultimately up to each of us to decide what terms of our life are worth telling and sharing and how to tell that story. We can decide what is up and down in this object, what is left and right, what is wood and what is not, what is the logic that works against worn-out rules, and how the simple act of placing this in our living spaces can change the quality of life itself.

Disparate and separated elements and episodes can be brought together by autobiographic memory, as we recall both trivial and profound moments and people of our past in a non-linear and sometimes discordant manner, seeking some harmonic resonance, even if barely connected by willfulness. As tree limbs, driftwood, debris of furniture, and human skeletons can be disassembled, so can they be reassembled, but not in any fully reconstructed manner, only an approximation of one. However, the will and need to reassemble, to reconnect, to recover, cannot be denied, and sometimes the attempt is enough, and the object of such an attempt will trigger our deeper imagination to complete the repair, to our full satisfaction.

—Leonard Folgarait

Keadyville, 2023 by Yarrott Benz

Leonard Folgarait