For Dessert: Pressing at Tephra ICA
don't step on the (dirt) rug
On view until May 19: Pressing at Tephra ICA features work by Rena Detrixhe and Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann.
While the exhibition title points to the urgent need to address environmental consequences and accountability, it also refers to the gesture of a hand pressing, a deliberate touch, that as exemplified by these artists can have great significance.
Each of the works in this exhibition is a landscape—a vision of a place formed through careful observation and mark making. And each artist’s departure from traditional modes of landscape painting offers a lesson in how to reconfigure our perception of the natural environment.1
I managed to slip into the last half of the artist talk at the opening reception on March 16th. Here are a few notes:
Repeated descriptors: chaos/contamination/joy
Tszu-Lan Mann kept building connections between these words and their presence in her work. The collage wall pieces were large, layered, and assembled in the space. In one, elements of the work tumbled to the floor. These stunning compositions are for feasting. Small nails held the layers in place. Initial compositions were created in her studio and then reassembled on-site with variations.
Regarding the process of creating: navigating when to control, when to release
That process of re-assembling the work on site would make an artist negotiate between what was practiced and how the materials respond to a new environment. This contextual responsiveness is exciting. How do materials behave differently in unfamiliar and temporary spaces? How can an artist converse with the materials and space?
A challenge: should the work change? A response: Is no one else tired of stagnant work? Give me something alive. The layered forms move as people walk by. The work is thoughtfully arranged in this particular space, for this particular time. It’s almost like every moment is fleeting.
Detrixhe’s dirt, installed and imprinted, has sparing, measured designs. What was negotiated in those placements?
I found Tzu-Lan Mann’s work to be energetic and contemplative. Detrixhe observed that Tzu-Lan Mann’s pieces could be seen as detritus from a future world, a contrast to the materials, some of which were sourced from Tzu-Lan Mann’s childhood.
I sat to watch how people navigated Detrixhe’s work. Maybe I’m sick, but I was delighted to see someone had stepped in and tracked red dirt at one corner of the installation. I missed the beginning of the talk, but I hope these “interventions” are considered a part of the work. (I don’t know why the work is a rug or even rectangular.) The smudged borders and red footprints indicate that the land (the dirt) can and does mark us.
My favorite part of the work was where the structural column protruded straight through turning into a monolith.2
Watching the work, and people edge around it, reminded me of a grandmother’s formal dining room with the expensive plush rug and no-shoe policy. Stepping on that rug felt like luxury. This red dirt rug doesn’t speak to the thick softness found in untouched sitting rooms. Its worn flatness and occasional faded designs conjure an experience more desolate, a suffocating life on Mars.
I’m continually surprised and energized by the work I get to experience at Tephra ICA.
On the menu…
April 6th is that girl
MEND SALON RSVP
April 2 | 6:30 - 8:30 PM
A GOOD RECLUSE IS HARD TO FIND
April 6 | 1 - 2 PM | Opening Reception at Transformer
FEELS LIKE HEAVEN
April 6 | 12 - 3 PM | Opening Reception at vonammonco
MONTY HALL - RSVP Here
April 6 | 6 - 8 PM | Opening Reception at Cultural DC
JAZZ & BLOSSOMS PARK JAM Feat: DIGABLE PLANETS, SUN RA ARKESTRA
April 7 | 12 - 7 PM | RSVP in link above
WORDPLAY AT HONFLEUR GALLERY
April 8 | 7 PM
Open studios at The Fillmore Studios
April 21 | 1 - 4 PM
Open studios at Off the Beaten Track
April 28th | 12-5 PM
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery of Art
REVOLUTIONS: ART FROM THE HIRSHHORN COLLECTION, 1860–1960
Sew to Speak: The Studio Art Quilt Associates Tri-Regional Exhibition
Read the first half of this post Swallowed: 'Bucolia' at Transformer.
The work could be placed in conversation with Dana Awartaniʼs 2017 mixed media installation, I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered Iʼd Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming. The work is precisely arranged sand in a geometric pattern. The meticulous work borders on optical illusion, appearing unreal or like vinyl. Above the installation is a video projection. From the artist’s website: “It shows her destroying the artwork by sweeping up the sand tiles as a symbolic commentary on the modern-day destruction of our cultural identity and heritage, which has been a result of a careless and an obsessive need for a more modernized and industrial society without the conscious awareness of what we are leaving behind. With this final gesture, the artist aims to highlight the importance of preserving and cherishing what in essence is a crucial part of the collective identity in the region, not as an attack on modernization, but rather pointing out the importance of the old and new co-existing and living together side by side.” Watch an artist talk with Awartani here.