DIS/FUNCTIONAL
Seven Installations

Why is it that humans need to make their mark on their environment? From the caves of prehistoric Altamira to the tombs of ancient Egypt, from the paintings of the Sistine chapel to graffiti-choked walls of Southeast L.A., we seem compelled to alter the spaces around us.

The reasons for these artistic alterations are as varied and complex as human nature itself. They may arise from some inexplicable primal urge, or perhaps, in the case of ritual environments, an underlying need to worship a higher source. More often than not, they are intended to influence our thinking or behavior.

But who interprets the purpose or meaning of what are, at least to our eyes, essentially aesthetic manifestations? Ordinarily, anthropologists, archaeologists and related experts try to establish rational or scientific explanations for these creative endeavors. Their explanations and extrapolations may then be printed in text books, where they acquire the authority of the written word. Readers of these texts may accept their authority assuming that this knowledge is absolute truth, even though the authors of these texts are themselves human, with the biases, prejudices and preconceptions that plague all humans.

Dis/Functional, an exhibition of installation art, casts the artist, rather than the scientist, in the role of expert authority and aesthetic interpreter. Just as anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists and historians grapple with persistent issues of religion, social and sexual relationships, education, politics and technology, the artists in this exhibition attempt to create a dialogue with the viewer about these subjects. Unlike scientists, however, their work leaves these issues open to individual interpretation, rather than striving to establish any "absolute truth". Though scientific pronouncements may once have been accepted as black and white, and essentially unassailable, current post-modern skepticism now informs our approach to these areas. This exhibition underscores the prevailing skepticism of our time.

What ultimately unites the artists of Dis/Functional is the medium of installation. The seven artists selected alter space to focus their audience visually upon questions of function and purpose. They incite the viewer to creative thought, sparking debate on problematic matters, rather than promoting complacent acceptance of pat answers and generally accepted truisms.

It was around the turn of the century that examination of social and physical space began to take its contemporary roots in the art world. As early as 1913, the Russian Constructivists rejected the flatness of conventional easel painting and the mass of traditional sculpture in favor of constructions using industrial materials that became not just objects in neutral space, but a treatment of space itself as a work of art. Artists aligned with Europe's Dada movement noisily rejected the concept of art having to be embodied in a precious object; they successfully used mixed media and sculpture-based work made from refuse, cast-offs and other unconventional materials to criticize the mores of middle class society. Almost simultaneously, artists of the German Bauhaus movement sought to combine architecture, sculpture, painting and crafts, in an attempt to rethink the age-old boundaries separating these disciplines and to harness art in the cause of functionalism. Later, in the 1960's, "happenings" spawned by Fluxus and Pop Art began to deal with issues of surroundings and created environments; they were the precursors of what is now labelled installation art.

It was not until the 1970's, and the advent of work by such artists as Nam June Paik, Judy Chicago, Chris Burden, Annette Messager, Bill Viola and Robert Irwin, that the contemporary definition of installation became a part of standard art-world vocabulary. An installation originally was defined as a site-specific work in which every element in the space becomes a part of the total object or environment.

Today, with the development of technology and the acknowledgment by artists that work, practically speaking, must have portability to been seen in numerous venues, the definition of installation art has taken on an even broader range of meaning. Artists working in installation form have been forced to address the function of their medium, as well as basic thematic concerns. They have taken more flexible approaches to their creations, making work originally intended to be site-specific adjustable to new locations; conversely, they work smaller in scale, making it easier for a piece to travel or to be acquired by an institution. Installation has been forced into sub-categorization by its very flexibility. It now divides into areas such as mixed media, sculptural-based work, and video installation, making the question of just what installation is more difficult. Is Vernon Fisher's Basutoland traditional installation or sculpture and how would it have been described before 1970? This is one of the main purposes of Dis/Functional: to reassess traditional definitions of this relatively new medium and to bring home the point that, as technologies and societies change, so do definitions.

Vernon Fisher and Dan Collins directly address the advancement of technology and its ramifications. In Basutoland, Fisher examines the modernist notion that it is natural to want to advance and that advancement will bring positive results. However, such technological progress can have a negative flip side. For example, having the newest version of a computer software program may sound great, but not if the software fails to interface with the old version on the computer at work. And being so technologically advanced that one can create a reproduction may not be as good as having the original, an idea forwarded in Collins' (Re)inventing the Wheel. In this installation, Collins confronts a hotly disputed issue in cyberspace: whether going to the source is still the best form of obtaining information or whether digital reproduction and packaging of that information provides more insight.

Technological advancement can create other problems, such as that of power, and its orollary, control. Table for Hegelian Heroes at a Business Lunch; Dining Room Storm Also Applicable to the Domestic Front by Francesc Torres explores issues surrounding war and conflict. Does the individual who makes the rules for the game actually suffer the often devastating consequences of those rules? Essentially the same question is raised in Joyan Saunders' work, Athlete Heart. Saunders' work addresses the question of control within contemporary human relationships and the monumental struggle that can occur in trying to define each partner's role and function within that relationship. A different type of control is investigated in Barbara Penn's A Science -- So the Savants Say. Here, the subject of control is placed in the context of education, with the artist asserting that the teaching/learning experience, a classic control situation, is often devoid of the "heart" critical to real effectiveness.

The nature of religion becomes the focal point of Herb Stratford's Cross Boxes. Through the juxtaposition of traditional religious and superstitious iconography, the artist questions the role of the religious object in our society. Stratford's work looks at the qualities that link an object to divinity and asks the viewer to determine whether an object can be inherently divine or whether mere luck plays a role in imbuing it with sacredness.

Truisms, Jenny Holzer's tiny LED read-out, captures the essence of Dis/Functional. Holzer's piece addresses issues the other artists in the exhibition examine through seven simple, yet profound, statements about society. The artist puts these bold declarations before us in detached technological format., challenging us to draw our own conclusions about them based upon our own individual beliefs and experiences.

Not unlike Holzer's LED and the other work in this exhibition, Dis/Functional seeks to make viewers question their preconceived notions about the environment that surrounds them, even the museum environment in which this exhibition has been mounted. Traditionally, a museum patron might expect the usual images of art hung neatly on walls in symmetrical layouts. Study for a moment the environment of Dis/Functional: large negative spaces, empty major walls, everyday objects placed out of context or used in unforeseen ways. Think about this different approach to the use of space and the new functions assigned to objects incorporated in the art on display. This is what Dis/Functional is all about.

John D. Spiak
Curator of the exhibition
Curatorial Museum Specialist