This Land is My Land

Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
273 E. Erie Street, Milwaukee, WI
www.miad.edu

Through March 22.


Posted February 19, 2008.        One would think that with a title like This Land is
My Land, this exhibition might include art work that deals with our relationship to
the land or our physical place on earth. It’s certainly a politically loaded
contemporary issue, perhaps the most important one we face. But this is not the
case. The exhibition, instead, crafts the notion of land and personal space as a
psychological construct and the seven artists in the show stake out very
individualized notions of their place in the world.

Most of the artists represent marginalized groups and deal with how a person’s
ethnicity or sexual preference shapes their landscape as much or more than
whether they live in Omaha or San Francisco. How we see and interact with the
world comes from our perspectives which are formed by heredity, culture and
personal choice. With that said, the artist in this very thoughtful group show who
addresses these broad issues but also brings them down to “earth” most
effectively is Bill Basquin of San Francisco.  

Basquin’s series of photographs called Soiled presents images of plants he grew
in his urban garden one season. We get the idea that this was Basquin’s first
attempt at growing anything and he straddled the task like a new parent armed
with Dr. Spock in his fist and emotional abandon in his heart. Basquin neatly
charts the practical information of species, health properties, and other scientific
data on a wall panel, objectifying his foray into gardening like a good science fair
participant. But when it comes to photographing the plants, the veil of objectivity
and distanced study vanish and he is a gushing new parent, admiring each
magical development as it springs from the soil.  “Here is the first asparagus
stalk as it pokes out of the ground.” “Here are the most tender leaves of lettuce.”
It all seems like a miracle to Basquin and indeed it is, to any new gardener or
maybe even seasoned ones. While it would be extremely easy to sexualize the
images, especially from his vantage as a gay man, fortunately, he doesn’t. The
images are not metaphorical, nor are they overly formal in the manner of Edward
Weston. Instead, in their simplicity, the pictures tell us how far we’ve drifted from
common sense and the ability to take care of ourselves. As Basquin shares an
image of a bunch of potatoes, he easily communicates his fascination with the
exoticness of these common tubers, but he keeps the relationship neutral. He
doesn’t use the framing properties of photography to turn the vegetables into
anything beyond his own fascination in the moment of connection.
Full Moon Edition No. 5  02.20.08
Copyright 2008  Art History Chicks LLC
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Bill Basquin, Potato Starts, chromagenic print.
Article images: www.miad.edu
Of all the artists in the show (and most of them speak of how “private” issues
shape their public spaces), Basquin’s simple project is the most touching
because beyond the narrative of ‘urbanite is mesmerized over wonders of
nature,’ is a subtext about vulnerability, about the essential tenderness of
Basquin’s own wonderment, which brings with it the broader context of how brutal
and crude so much of our daily existence is when we unknowingly buy into the
mainstream packaged, commoditized and scientifically brewed food stuffs of our
Pick n Saves.
The other artists in the exhibition seem to be
more self-conscious about the fact that they
are making art and try much harder to make
their work look important, which deadens its
impact to some extent because it speaks from
the packaged vantage point that Basquin so
nicely avoids.  Amy Chaloupka of Sheboygan
uses very sharp scissors or razor blades to
cut out a very large map and drape it like a
cobweb in the center of the gallery. It hangs
tentatively and casts nice foggy shadows of
places traveled and imagined. Adam Davis of
Pasadena, California, presents a small-
monitor video of two men face to face
chewing gum and exchanging bubbles. If this
is about “land” even in an allegorical sense, I
suppose it’s about the confinement and
boundaries of gay culture. Douglas
Rosenberg of Madison has a series of x-rays
of his spine each overlaid  with a line of text
that questions some aspect of his being such
as “Where is My Jewish.” Very ho-hum stuff,
however, his three videos in the far room of
the gallery are stunning. Each is a dance
sequence filmed out  of doors. The videos
project on three walls and they effectively do
something very difficult, which is combine
choreographed dance with nature. When
dance comes off the stage, it usually ends up
looking cheesy and forced. But Rosenberg
handles it beautifully, zooming in on delicate
moments of visible breath when the air is
cold, using the fall leaves to bury dancers,
adding a horse or some apples for color and
texture but not quite allowing a narrative to interrupt the visual abundance. The
other artists in the show include Tom Jones’ photographs of American Indian
motifs in the Wisconsin Dells and Jenny Price’s investigation of the sex worker
culture.

Curated by MIAD faculty member Cedar Marie, This Land is My Land runs
through March 22 in the Frederick Layton Gallery at the Milwaukee Institute of
Art and Design.


- Debra Brehmer

Debra Brehmer is a Milwaukee-based art historian who currently teaches at
MIAD, and is co-publisher of Susceptible to Images.
Amy Chaloupka, Vanishing Point, Room Installation, hand-cut maps.
Left: Douglas Rosenberg, Where is my Jewish, digital print.
Middle: Adam Davis, PAL, video still.
Right: Tom Jones, Native Commodity Series, digital prints.