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The Venn diagram uses circles to schematically represent the relationship between two or more groups or sets. It is employed in situations where members from two distinct sets create a third set based on some third, shared characteristic, which, schematically, looks like an overlap or a blending of the two circles. It represents subtle distinctions and demonstrates that a binary distinction is not sufficient for deeper understanding. This form of diagram is a logic device with origins in the Age of Enlightenment , the period in Western thought when scientific, philosophical and political thought began to bloom without precedence. Calculus, the periodic table of elements, Kant’s exhaustive diagramming of reason that still factors in so heavily in contemporary thought, Locke’s and Rousseau’s discussion of the individual’s relation to the state which fed into the formulation of the United States’ Constitution– these are all accomplishments of Enlightenment thinkers.
The group show Venn Diagram, which consists of drawings, paintings, video and interactive works is currently on view on the fifth floor of the Copy Cat building. Several of the works in the show convey a preoccupation with the Eastern spirituality.
A persistent concern with Eastern spirituality has been in evidence in Baltimore art for a couple years. See Jimmy Joe Roche dressed up like a yogi, his zany performance antics green-screened onto a background of psychedelic pattern or mirrored scenic vistas. Seth Adlesberger’s previous works should be mentioned, too. Brightly colored fictitious temples, like the sacred structures of a distant civilization, which are apparently inspired by video games he used to play as a kid.
We might say this art primarily refers to the psychedelic era, not to religion. But the psychedelic era took Eastern culture as an escape from western rationality, in attempt to find a new way to understand the world, in an effort to find a peaceful alternative to the violence and suffering of the Vietnam era. Elements of Eastern religion brought to Western consciousness by the beats showed up loosely interpreted in the clothing, the music, the drug taking and the values of the hippy era.
Francesca Gavin talks about neo-psychedelic art in her article “Freak Out! – Psych Art” (Dazed & Confused Magazine, Vol. II, Issue 78, October 2009, pp. 154. available in Jimmy John Roche’s press kit:
Imagine a technological stew. In this big bubbling cauldron are piles of images, jpegs and mpegs of Super Mario Bros, Thundercats and Care Bears, strangely scratched 80s TV adverts, fractals left over from early-rave culture, old computer game animations and lots of other odd and seemingly random found snippets. Imagine this neon-colored pool constantly moving and morphing like a garish cheap Flash animation. This pool forms the basis of some of the most interesting contemporary artworks to emerge from this decade – art that is all around, and all over the internet. Art that is about the overload of imagery in the modern world. Art that is about how technology has infused our everyday lives and is slowly dissolving our identities. Psychedelic art.
Gavin reads neo-phsychedelia as an angsty reaction to image inundation. In her scenario the artist is in crisis, in a chaos of images. Finally the artist mirrors this chaos; force fed with empty noise he finally hands it back, mashed up and doubly insane.
The spiritual has a funny relationship to visual culture. Spiritual belief or practice is made known through visible signs – religious garments, religious tokens, religious architecture. At the same time, the visible is constantly in conflict with the unseen. The material corrupts the spiritual, and the spiritual becomes a pose, yoga and meditation become fashion. That’s where, according to Gavin, Roche picks it up, once the trappings of Eastern sects become part of trash culture.
Let me use symmetry as a trope employed by both Roche and Adelsberger to link their work with the works in Venn Diagram. Symmetry talks about coherence, balance, perfection. To isolate and present the image of the symmetrical is to contemplate an ordered and complete universe.
Jordan Bernier printed a beautiful poster for the show, a large composition that employs the typical Venn diagram format. He’s embroidered concentric patterns on the circles so that instead of signifying categories, they are two mandalas juxtaposed in a simple and balanced composition. Bernier’s design suggests a monumental planetary eclipse or the birth of two cells through mitosis.
Sal Farina has several pieces in the exhibition that mine similar territory. Starting with source material that was recognizable, like photos of nature, his process of repeated superimposition and mirroring created a field that although visually hectic, is organized around axes of symmetry: chaos ruled by an overarching principle.
Alex Ebstein, who also presents work in Venn Diagram, had previously employed symmetry in her work. See the drawings she presented last year at the Theater Project’s John Fonda Gallery, in the show Natural Remedies. They combined letters and pattern into a compact and stylized space, like a coat of arms or a clothing company logo. If Ebstein was concerned with the spiritual in those drawings, it was a Gnostic spirituality, a relationship to the divine that is bound up in arcane knowledge; the truth is encrypted.
Caitlin Cunningham’s work also alludes to the hippy era. She showed along side Ebstein in Natural Remedies where she presented immaculate pen and ink drawings colored with gouache. Floral vignettes, like the kind you might see pictured on oven mitts or hot plates in the 1970s when the style of the psychedelic era had been harnessed and brought into the domestic space.
Cunningham presents the only figurative piece in Venn Diagram. “David the Bubble Boy” is a mosaic in flower petals to commemorate David Vetter, the boy from Texas who was born with severe combined immune deficiency syndrome and spent his entire life in a small plastic room, until he died of Burkitt’s lymphoma at age 12. The face is rendered in white flowers, with blue petals for the shadows. Cunningham uses a black matte board as a ground and leaves the eyes blank. Around the head, like a halo– the composition recalls icon paintings of saints- Cunningham has spelled out “long gone” in pale purple flowers. The flowers, the pale colors, and the empty eyes all refer to death. It’s a funerary piece, a shrine, melancholy and sweet. Flowers preserved beneath glass, we have to say, as David was momentarily preserved in his sterile environment. Melancholy also for the bygone cultural signs– the flower child lettering, the Star Wars t-shirt, and David himself, who became a cultural icon.
Undeniably it is a sad story, and it could be argued that the hubris of Western medicine is to blame for David’s pain; allegations were made that David’s doctors were more concerned with their careers than with David’s well-being. In a recent documentary of David’s case, David’s mother says she doesn’t regret her decisions concerning David, and I suppose she means she doesn’t regret trying preserve him in a bubble and then letting him go when his time came.
But I am not prepared to make assertions about the ethical questions of David’s case. In the first place, I don’t know enough about it. I was only five years old when David died, and most of what I know about David Vetter I learned from wikipedia. Art criticism has to stick with the facts, to an extent. It can poeticize, but it has to constantly check back in with its source material to maintain plausibility. Does the same hold true for artists’ created images?
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