ARTFORUM: Critic's Picks
"Mystic River"
SOUTHFIRST
60 North 6th Street
May 05–June 18, 2006
Stephen Shore's 1979 photograph Merced River inspires "Mystic River,"
an exhibition of works attentive to the everyday and the American
landscape. Noah Sheldon, who curated the show, presents Merced River
(adapted from Stephen Shore), 2006, which serves as a starting point. A
small monitor displays a video literally made of fragments of Shore's
picture of Yosemite National Park: Panning over the initial image, the
camera inspects detail after detail, outlining a unique territory made
of hundreds of distinct images. This analytic approach turns the
original landscape into a series of microcosms in which humanity and
nature find a trembling and strangely mysterious balance. A similar
atmosphere suffuses other works, such as Ian Hundley's South River,
2006, a fabric quilted into a flood of abstract waves, and the S shape
of Martha Friedman's Rope, 2003, made from a thick mooring cord set
atop a sinuous glass stand. Functioning on a more abstract level, other
pieces stand out, like two little cutouts by Matt Keegan, and Paul
Wagner's old-fashioned drawings depicting haircuts. The work that best
summarizes the inspirational tone is Heather Rowe's If the Sun Never
Set, 2006, a large-scale sculpture made out of industrially produced
modular materials, such as two-by-fours. Standing like a precarious
threshold or the raw skeleton of an existing wall, Rowe's piece is a
membrane that conflates inside and outside, through which the viewer
can pass. The sculpture's interstitial spaces are embellished with
mirror fragments that craft a bewitching labyrinth of sight lines and
vanishing points. Rowe also adds a round lamp that hovers nearby, an
everlasting sun illuminating this desolate constellation.
—Cecilia Alemani