The Arts Beacon
  • Home
  • The Big Arts Calendar
    • FIRST AND THIRD: FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
  • Gallery Reviews
    • In Case You Missed
    • The Cycle
    • RAW Program
    • The Answer
  • Art Talk
  • Link List
    • VALLEY ARTIST DIRECTORY
  • Calls For Art
  • Contact
  • Donate

CLARITA LULIC AT THE NIGHT GALLERY

4/28/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Clarita Lulić, Burn, Ink Jet Print, 24 by 36 inches, 2015.
Clarita Lulić and Inter-­‐Relational Aesthetics: Intimacy, Inquiry and the Interpersonal Refrain.   
 
"The purpose here is not to celebrate a certain notion of incoherence, but only to point out that our 'incoherence' establishes the way in which we are constituted in relationality: implicated, beholden, derived, sustained by a social world that is beyond us and before us."
Judith Butler
 
Following the 'relational turn' in art practice, we find that the works of Clarita Lulić confront us with a rather timely question, which is whether or not we can conceive of a more conflicted tradition of performative works that might be thought of as an 'inter-­‐relational aesthetics'. While the handful of projects that have been grouped under the moniker  of relational aesthetics was supposed to present us with a radical alternative to the image of the modern  artist as an isolated  genius  -­‐ or what Nicolas Bourriaud calls an alter-­‐modern perspective -­‐ there may in fact be a more subversive genealogy of inter-­‐relational practices that is often neglected by today's art critics.  

This other tradition  finds its footing in Yvonne Rainer's early pieces with the Judson Dance Theater of the 60s, or works that were  inspired by Womenhouse in the 70s, and which continue to gain a wider  audience  still with the canonization of artists like Sophie Calle, Gillian Wearing  and Tracey Emin. It is from within this other trajectory about 'relationality' that we can better place the works of Lulić, who's pieces reach beyond the contemporary obsession with relational propositions by attempting to bridge the gap between the personal,  the probable  and the predicative.

But in order to understand the dialectic conflicts that drive Lulić's oeuvre, which has moved from charting  interactions, to creating  cartographies of activity, and finally to capturing the concrete aspects of inter-­‐relational acts, we must begin by thinking about the overall  trajectory of her art practice  as a hermeneutic problematic of sorts. Thus, we can say that Lulić's first works are not entirely  unlike the early work of Sophie Calle, whose  first public piece was "The Sleepers". This particular intervention in the social sphere, or rather, the politics of public display, consisted of inviting passer-­‐byers to occupy Calle's bed while she photographed them, served them food, and played host to the impromptu interactions of pillow-­‐talk. Of course, the obvious forerunner to this work  was Yvonne Rainer's "Two People on a Bed/Table", which told the story of a love relationship through a myriad  of mediums, affective  techniques of the body, and which also 'played' to a live audience.

Mining a similar vein of interests predicated on investigating the constructed nature of the private/public dyad, Lulić's first performative intervention was a work  called "Pretend  Boyfriends". The conceptual  basis  of the project, given as an improbable program of sorts, consisted  of the following  instructions when entering  into the interpersonal refrain:

1. Approach a stranger in the street  whom you could possibly  form a relationship with (anyone really).
2. Ask stranger politely if he wouldn't mind being in a photograph with you (smile lots, it helps).
3. Approach another  stranger and ask them politely to take a photograph of myself and stranger number  one using my compact camera.
4. When posing for shot ask first stranger if they could pretend  to be my boyfriend.
5. Try to act normal and smile more.
6. Thank everyone and leave.
7. Repeat.

Picture
Clarita Lulić, Pretend Boyfriends, 4 by 6 inches, Digital C Print, 2008.
While the resulting pictures vary from being clearly  uncomfortable to seemingly spontaneous, they do carry  the charge  of a mis-­‐registered act, or a sense  of déjà vu, or even a touch of the uncanny. And it is this same sense  of motivated misdirection which is transformed in Lulic's later works into playful allegories of entrapment, or really, into something  of a passion play about inter-­‐subjective acts and reactions.  And yet, with the appearance of her latest works, which include a group of pieces  that operate  in the round, we find that Lulić's drive to make the singular quality of snap-­‐shots into figures  frozen in time is informed  in no small measure by these earlier pieces.

Following from "Pretend  Boyfriends", which shows  us how personal experiences can, and often do, act as a stand-­‐in  for inter-­‐personal connections, is a group of photographic works that have been brought together  under the notion of a "Limerent  Reaction". In this small body of work  Lulić has taken the time to reconstruct her own personal history  of relationships gone awry  through a variety of photographic restoration techniques. Permeated by longing and a fixation with the past, we see a touch of this in her newer  pieces with regard  to the use of art historical references. Foregrounded in works like "Cupid", which not only hint at the paradoxes of love's  designs, but which actively  conflate a traditional allegory of 'inspired' love with pictorial  illusions  to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian or Saint Thaddeus, we cannot help but be reminded of the many ways  in which love can be seen as a type of enchantment and a sacrificial yearning throughout the ages.

Picture
Clarita Lulić, Limerent Reaction, Installation Shot, 2008.
Other small bodies of work, like "Cast Off", which consists of having documented  a returned scarf from a past lover, and "Ultimate Grand Supreme", which acts as a commentary on the wholly unnatural aesthetic of the pageantry circuit, point to errant expectations in the realm of inter-­‐relationality. Both pieces speak  to the dialectic play of loss and idealization that accompanies the hyperbolic dance of desire and distance, projection  and erasure, false image and real outcome. Of course, these themes  continue to hold an abiding presence in Lulić's imagery from "Pretend Boyfriends" up to, and including, her present body of work, albeit with a different use of proxy props and interim subjects.
Picture
Clarita Lulić, Ultimate Grand Supreme, digital ink jet print, 13 by 17 inches, 2012.
An yet, perhaps Lulić's most comprehensive body of work, for which she was awarded a National Media Museum Photography Grant, is the three part series "Seven Short One Long". This expeditionary art venture produced  an inventory of images  that reveal  the rhetorical gestures of fantasy and frivolity  aboard  a cruise ship, as well as the constructed sets and the day-­‐to-­‐day  life of the working crew who support  the 'vacation experience'. Something of an exposé  of class distinctions, manufactured memories and the unfortunate aftermath of breaking down and cleaning  up after shoots, "Seven Short One Long" invites  another  kind of looking than what is culturally prescribed. While providing us with a thorough  catalog of familial  imagery caught at the crossroads of the anthropological, the commercial and the personal, the most compelling  series of images  from this project is probably Lulić's second grouping  of photographs. In these pictures Lulić takes  the time to place herself  in and among the fantasy settings  of her subjects, each time, dawning a new hairdo and a different  sense  of scale with regard  to the placement of props and backdrops. Here, Lulić acts out a dual role by providing us with direct access  to the figure of artistic-­‐reportage as well as being the undercover autobiographer of her own journey  as an esthetician of intensive labor-­‐aesthetic experiences. In this way, "Seven Short One Long" acts as an incisive  commentary on the circumspect nature of the inter-­‐relational imaginary as well as the not so subtle wish fulfillment  of the artist  to abandon  ship.

Picture
Clarita Lulić, Spanish Light, 16 by 20 inches, Digital ink jet print, 2012.

Yet it is with the body of work  entitled "Beholden" that Lulić makes  a substantial contribution  to what might be termed  inter-­‐relational aesthetics, and which marks the developmental of her work  as a strong contribution  on the 'other scene'  of relational inquires in artistic  practice. Going beyond the re-­‐presentation of documentary motifs in a structuralist format, as well as developing the language of performative negotiation, "Beholden" presents us with a series of photos in which Lulić's husband is dowsed  with modernist motifs, like dripping  paint and pigmented powders. Taken in a more anonymous register, we find in the same works, a male subject made into an odalisque of sorts, adorned  with a large bow that serves to denature the cultural  expectations of 'pictured' masculinity. In such images, we are confronted  with a recasting of the male figure for naked consumption vis-­‐à-­‐vis a twenty-­‐first century  twist on rococo inspired commercialism. Or, from a more modest and playful perspective, we could say that "Stephen  with Bow" provides us with a simple but elegant sensualism that hints at the possibility of a privileged feminine  gaze set over an against  a subject-­‐made-­‐demure and perhaps, even a touch emasculated.
Picture
Clarita Lulić, Stephen with Bow, Ink Jet Print, 24 by 36 inches, 2014.
Other pieces in the same series suggest  acts, like kissing,  slapping,  getting one's mouth washed out with soap or even being tested to eat the least desirable of foodstuffs, all of which allude to the hidden economy of contest and contestation in the sphere  of domestic  relations. Of course, what differentiates these works from those engaged  in 'relational art practices' is that Lulić's project is not abjured  from the question  of feminine power  or patriarchy, even when it takes  up a program of propositions that might be inscribed under the rather  powerful and pervasive idea of what we are willing to do 'in the name of love'. And it is in this sense  that the relational quality of Lulić's pieces move from her earlier practice  of cultivating a 'relatable aesthetics' based on interventionism, to a committed project that is decidedly  inter-­‐relational and socio-­‐political.

Such a perspective stands  in sharp  contrast  to the artists under Bourriaud's banner of 'relational aesthetics' which valorizes the idea of getting the art going public to connect with detourned programs of artistic  production  that invite transversal forms of play and open-­‐ended  experimentation. By contrast, Lulić's methodology is almost the opposite, which is to say, she tests the most intimate  bounds between photographer and sitter, as well as the bonds between husband and wife, artist  and subject, suggestion and retort. In other words, Lulić uses those objects which are a part of the everyday economy of domestic  exchange such as trash  bags, silly string, party masks, and ribbons  for wrapping presents, all of which act in service of developing a pictorial  vernacular of participation. Of course, all of these pictured scenarios highlight not just how we relate, but how the constitutive vocabulary of domestic  rituals and gendered expectations makes  relationality into a largely unconscious and culturally prescribed set of routines. This unique approach to the sphere  of mundane  interactions mixed with the sparse play of aesthetic conventions -­‐ which even boarder on being essentialist at times by highlighting  the act of relation  stripped bare of all its regular accoutrements -­‐ is the defining motif that drives Lulić's more recent pieces. Of course, it is through this directness, or rather, directedness, that Lulić's serendipitous set-­‐ups  allow the viewer to reflect on the conditions  of social, gendered and domestic  exchange that permeate our daily lives.

Picture
Clarita Lulić, Bin Bag, Ink jet print, 24 by 36 inches, 2014.
"Complete Offer", a subsequent body of work, is just as poignant  for picturing  the artist  both nude and robed, which are two of the most common economies  of cohabitation wherein we can just 'be ourselves'. Only here, there appears to be something  of a stoic and stalwart attitude  on the part of the sitter toward  the enduring  silence regarding the position of gendered inequality in the home. This is underscored by the series title, Extension  I, II, etc., which points to the liminal presence of a second maternal figure, who not only blends into the fabric print background of a domestic  interior  but who hides her face and presence in the hair extensions of the artist. Of course, this is a nod not only to the troubled  place that women hold in a world where  patriarchal expectations still dominate  the space of domestic  life, but it also points to the feminine  subject as one who receives little more than the general  inheritance of a generationally reinforced subject position that is concordant  with decoration  and/or being an object of beautification. It is in this sense  that the obscured figure of the mother in the Extensions series acts as Lacan's definition of a vanishing mediator for the presentation of the self in an economy of presentment. Thus, the artist  confronts  us most directly  in these images with the gaze, which, while being seated  on a pedestal that does not necessarily avoid the implications of idealization, still hints at a reserve of resistance regarding the persistence of a certain  kind of invisibility that is often imposed  on the 'fairer' sex as an unfair trade of sorts.

Picture
Clarita Lulić, Extensions II, Archival ink jet print, 22 by 30 inches, 2014.
Thus it is, that in Lulić's newest body of work, these themes  are granted  a greater degree  of presence by being given to us in the form of sculpture, photos, and mixed media interventions. And while Lulić continues  to use her husband in these recent works as her sole subject, her pieces haven't lost any of their sense  of humor or biting seriousness, which is to say, they have taken on an even greater degree  of dialectic tension. In this way, Lulić's sense  of compassionate conflict brings  us one step closer to the most intimate  critique of inter-­‐subjective relations by hinting at the history  of gendered roles, domestic  discipline  and other 'relational' diatribes. What is particularly prescient about this new body of work, however, is that she achieves this by broadening the scale of her pieces, the depth of her engagement with materials, and the idea of history  writ large.
Picture
Clarita Lulić, Burn, Ink Jet Print, 24 by 36 inches, 2015.
Works like "Burn" hint at some of the worst  kinds of public crimes  carried out against women, while "Peck" and "Soap" rely on a coded language of conflict and constraint, or the feeling of being eaten away  at slowly, over time. These sociological motifs, which depend on the framework of heteronormative conventions,  are also echoed in Lulić's earlier sculpture works,  which all gesture toward a certain  reserve with regard to the notion of living 'happily  ever after'. In this way, we can say that Lulić has created  a sensitive and insightful  oeuvre  that looks at the interpolative roles attributed to domestic  tranquility and/or relational conviviality. Her work does this by offering us a number  of different  ways  into thinking about the signs, symbols  and rituals of inter-­‐subjective relations, or what is known in transactional psychology as participation research into 'the games  people play', only here, relational research takes  on a decidedly  aesthetic turn.

Above all else, the value of such interventions is not only to have passed beyond the reserved distance  of observation that haunts  the work  of artists like Calle, or the anonymity of Wearing's projects, or even the overt sensationalism of Emin's pieces, but instead, to put on display  that which is the most intimate, the most common, and the most identifiable in human experience. We can see that with Lulić's work, what appears most pedestrian is that which is the most political because it provides an opportunity to think critically about what is still taken for granted  in our cultural milieu as inter-­‐relational forms and/or 'partnered' roles.

This is because  what appears to be at first comical and even a bit colloquial in some of Lulić's pieces, is in fact, quite serious at a time when much of the world has not yet consolidated the gains of women's liberation in the form of equal pay or equality with regard  to reproductive rights, not to mention basic legal protections. Consequently, Lulić's work  reminds us of the quieter  voices, of the daily disputes, and of unquestioned social conventions that still dominate  the lives of women in western world, perhaps to the exclusion of a lived equality  of measure, voice and perpetuity in the home. Here we can say that the turn from relational aesthetics to inter-­‐relational modes of expression, strikes a cord within the cultural  problematic of inter-­‐personal communication because  this is where  the greatest gains are yet to be made, i.e., in the implicit and explicit subject positions  attributed to carrying out the 'duties' of everyday living. It is also the place where  Lulić has made a most incisive and timely contribution to how we understand the conflicts that constitute the crucible  of the inter-­‐relational problematic. As such, a show like the "the Good Hurt" gives us an encounter  of what is entreating and challenging about contemporary art, and because of this the art going public is sure to have an ongoing relationship with the works of Clarita Lulić for some time to come.
0 Comments

    Author

    Grant Vetter is the Program Director of Fine Art Complex 1101 in Tempe, a board member of the Foundation for Fine Art Resources (FAR) and the author of The Architecture of Control, from Zero Books.

    Archives

    April 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly
✕