COLUMBUS DIY

What's left in is what's left out: The Spring 2008 Wexner Show.

Putting Jeff Smith's original pages for his young adult adventure epic "Bone" on a wall in a gallery is akin to showing architectural mock ups and trying to see a building in it. Unlike recent comic exhibitions like Robert Crumb's lovingly treated show at the Frye Museum in Seattle, Bone and Beyond doesn't successfully open any new avenues of sight on the work. Crumb's larger originals deserve to be seen, he's a consummate draftsman and his drawing is the star component of his comics. In contrast, Smith's drawings are mainly compositional bubbles ready for point and click coloring. Crumb's work is episodic, often quite short with many stories being self contained on a singular page. Smith's work is a 1,300 page epic that isn't serviced well by isolated pages on a twenty foot white wall. At best the show is reminiscent of the supplementary material on DVDS. As an exhibition choice it stinks of safety. As usual the Wexner is about 15 years behind actually being relevant or innovative as seen with the 2008 Wexner Prize recipient, Spike Lee; a decade and a half after he had been a lighting rod in the nation's discussion of everything. It would have meant something then, now it is just consensus. Similarly, comics have recently been dubbed "OK" as exhibition material, probably due to The New York Times adopting the cause of graphic novels causing thousands of unprepared "intellectuals" to have to pretend they care about comics. Choosing Jeff Smith for "the comics show" makes sense on one hand since he is from Columbus but is pretty innoucous considering Jeff Smith is Dave Sim sans misogyny for middle school students and Dave Sim isn't even that great. That the exhibition is underwritten by Scholastic is just tacky; it is a strange feeling being able to walk inside a commercial. It's not exactly a conflict of interest as much as a confluence of monied interests. Scholastic gets to say their cash cow has been recognized by an "internationally acclaimed contemporary arts center" while the curatorial team at the Wexner gets to be perceived as "hip" as well as having something be paid for. The question here is would the curators have rather had another show? Is Jeff Smith exactly what was wanted? Or is his show there because the funding was available?

Next to the light hearted adventure comics is a memorial for fallen American soliders made by Jane Hammond. Ah, the disjunctions of a contemporary arts center. Walking through the eyelet of stairs is the best way to approach this piece, as it appears in the distance and seems to extend to unnatural lengths, much like everyone's favorite imperial occupation. the piece consists of ink-jet printed leaves of bright and garish, naturalish colors. Each leaf has the name of a U.S solider who has died written on it and Hammond visits the gallery weekly to add names as more pass on. Apparently Hammond had to scale the work back from including everyone who had died in the unprovoked invasion due to space issues, either that or iraqi citizens aren't worth a leaf even after we kill them. That they aren't present speaks volumes about our narcissitic preoccupations that even dirty our actions that are supposed to let everyone know we care. Again this exhibit would have been important, say in 2003 or 2004. In 2008 with seventy percent of Americans against the war in Iraq it just belies the unobtrusive nature of Wexner curating. Several questions plague one with this piece; would Hammond continue it if it wasn't in a gallery? What does that say about the nature of our empathy? Do we only care as a show for others? An art piece in a public arena is exactly that, a show, and one wonders considering the fluctuating opinions on the war if anyone actually has substantive morals about such a thing or if everyone is gauging everyone else's opinions and basing theirs on that. I would have almost preferred if Hammond used real leaves in the piece so we could have seen them crinkle, roll up and become brittle like the reserve of emotion we can really invest in past events.

Hammond's piece neighbors the large Mary Heilmann retrospective which continues the Wexner's apparent belief that important painting only occurred in the 60's and 70's. I'm pretty sure it is a CONTEMPORARY arts center, not a space for reviewing time periods curators are more comfortable with since they have already been footnoted and shrinkwrapped. Would this show still occur if the artist was not still alive? And what exactly is the argument that justifies showing old artwork if the artist is alive but not showing it if they are dead? Heilmann's paintings are occasionally thrilling as they force observers to interrogate the process and temporal steps in the paintings' creation. She breaks with standard ideas of figure and ground and does so in a palette that is consistently pleasing. Some of the pieces go nowhere and are too self explanatory such as "Horizon" where, you guessed it, a piece in split in two by a horizon line with the bottom section being blue, possibly the ocean. Too much of her work, which is obstinately abstract, is highly representational or barring that, referential. Obviously it is near impossible to do straight painting anymore and many academics, I'm sure, are making a path towards tenure right now arguing over the inability of a painting to simply exist as a painting anymore. But some of these paintings are almost Pop in a way, and it just makes you sick not being able to enjoy ideas without thinking of the detritus of 20th century art. The last room marks a break in the coloring of Heilmann's paintings and suddenly opens up to all sorts of high-lighter greens and oranges, recalling the Nickolodeon color scheme employed in Ryan Trecatin's film currently playing in Wexner's blackbox. Besides that seemingly incidental connection the last room doesn't offer much more than the first. The colors turn annoying and the pictures still deal with the same questions that have been at painter's heels for the last half century or more. By the by Heilmann will only sign her monograph if it is the special edition being sold for 150.00. If you have any questions about the sanctity of art in an age of commodification and mechanical reproduction direct them her way, I surely can't answer your questions.