rachel harrison

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Rachel Harrison : Museum With Walls is published on the occasion of the exhibitions "Rachel Harrison: Consider the Lobster" presented at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, June 27-December 20, 2009; "HAYCATION" at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, November 28, 2009- January 17, 201 0; and "Conquest of the Useless" at Whitechapel Gallery, London, April 30-June 20, 2010.

Published by the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York ; Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited, London ; and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main.

Editorial Director Sarah Valdez

Editor Eric Banks

Design Markus Weisbeck, Surface

The artist would like to thank, in no particular order: Pocahontas & Zarathustra art movers, Carol Greene, Annie Ochmanek, Jay Sanders, John Richey, Tim Eastman, Martha Fleming-lves, Alisha Kerlin , Cliff Borress, Patricia Baga, Jason Mandella, Dan Walsh, Halsey Rodman, Jim Kanter, Werner Herzog, Donald Mouton, Nayland Blake, Allen Ruppersberg , Harry Dodge, Tom Burr, Alix Lambert, Andrea Zittel , Tom Eccles, Marcia Acita, Jaime Baird, Fionn Meade, Pete Mauney, Mercato, lwona Blazwick, Candy Stobbs, Chris Aldgate, Daniel Birnbaum, Melanie Ohnemus, Julia Jung, David Joselit, Jack Bankowsky, Steven Stern, Allan McCollum, Amy Sillman, Lucy Raven, Paul Chan, John Kelsey, Addie, Shaun Regan, Christian Meyer, Renate Kainer, Saskia Draxler, Christian Nagel, Ann Goldstein, Elisabeth Sussman, Alexandra Tuttle for above and beyond, Sarah Valdez for expertly piloting the enterprise, Markus Weisbeck for intrepid design/humor, and Eric Banks, who once again provided suitable reading material for title selections.

Distribution in Europe by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig Ehrenstrasse 4 50672 Cologne, Germany T +49 (0)221 20 59 6-53 F. +49 (0)221 20 59 6-60 E .. verlag@buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de

Printed in Germany by Dr. Cantz'sche Druckerei, Ostfildern

© 2010 Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main.

All rights reserved . No part of this publication may be reproduced , stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic , mechanical , photocopying, recording , or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright holder.

ISBN 978-1-936192-03-8

All works © Rachel Harrison

Photography Credits 226, Tom Altany ; 228- 230, 234- 235, Gil Blank; 142, 232- 233, Bernd Borchardt ; 224- 225, A. Burger ; 138, Alan Dimmeck; 13, 107- 109, 221 , 223,227- 230, 239, Luca Campigotto ; 101 - 102, 104- 105, 138, 200, 222- 223, 224- 225 , 232- 233, 258, Rachel Harrison; 8, 10, 15, 64- 65, 88- 89, 193, Chris Kendall ; 228- 229, 237, Larry Lamay; 11 , Paul Laster; 4, 17- 55, 58- 99, 113- 127, 130- 134, 148- 158, 162- 185, 189- 190, 201 - 214, 218, 230- 233, Jason Mandella; 110, Scott Massey; 136, 140, 228- 229, 233, 235, A. Morin; Insert , Katrin Schilling ; 7, 143- 145, 147, 198, 224- 225, 226- 230, 236- 237, Oren Slor; 186- 187, 222, 230- 231 , 234- 237, Jean Vong ; 110- 111 , Joshua White ; 230, 233, 235, Wolfgang Woessner

Comparative Images Cover Andre Malraux, Museum Without Walls , originally published in the UK by Editions Gallimard in 1965; first US edition [pictured here) © 1967 by Martin Seeker & Warburg , Limited (Now Harvill Seeker, a division of Random House UK). Library of Congress no. 67-15679. Courtesy Random House Co. UK.

8 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, film still from Lobsters , 1936. © 2010 Artists Rights Society, New York (ARS) I VG Bild-Kunst , Bonn.

15 Sigmar Polke, Bufo-Tenin. 1984. Silver, silver brom1de, and natural resin on canvas . 117 % x 82 y, x 1% in (298.8 x 224.8 x 4.1 em) . © Copyright the artist.

42 Pier Paolo Passolini , "Observations on the Long Take, " from vol. 13 of October, summer 1980.

58 Malraux, 8- 9.

76 Robert Hanley, "Believers Crowd the Street, Seeking the Face of Mary." From The New York Times,© September 27, 2000 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing , copying , redistribution , or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.

86 Gertrude Stein, "Composition as Explanation" from A Stein Reader. Courtesy Northwestern University Press and the Estate of Gertrude Stein, through its literary executor, Mr. Sanford Gann, Jr of Levin & Gann, PA. Text originally published by Leonard and Virgina Woolf, Hogarth Press, London , 1926.

128- 129 Francis fonge, Soap , Stanford University Press, 1998. Courtesy Gallimard, France; Ecco / Random House, UK; and Stanford University Press.

139 Marcel Duchamp, Air de Paris , 1919/1939. Glass miniature ampule "filled " with the air of Paris. 1 y, x 1 3/a x 1 3/a in (4 x 2.5 x 2.5 em). Collection David Fleiss, Paris. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS) , New York I ADAGP, Paris I Succession Marcel Duchamp. Image Courtesy Galerie 190Q-2000, Paris .

141 I sa Genzken, Oil. Installation, German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2007. Photo : Jan Bitter Courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz , Cologne/ Berlin .

146 Jean-Luc Godard , film still from Sympathy for the Devil, 1968. Courtesy Cupid Productions Ltd .

160- 161 Scan of pages 18-19 from Conquest ofthe Useless. Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog . Copyright © 2004 Carl Hanser Verlag Munchen Wien. Copyright © 2009 Werner Herzog ; English translation copyright © by Krishna Winston . Reprinted by Permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

188 Left : Bruce Conner, film still from Crossroads, 1976. Courtesy Michael Kohn Gallery and the Conner Family Trust ; Right Louise Lawler, Who Are You Close To? (Red) , 1984/1990. Cibachrome print, 39 y, x 61 3/• x 2 in (98.4 x 153 x 5.1 em) . Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art , Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson , New York, R1992.137. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures.

193 Philip Guston, Solitary II , 1978. Oil on canvas , 68 x 80 in (172.7 x 203.2 em) . Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

196 Installation view, Mike Kelley and Michael Smith, "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery, " September 13-November 30, 2009, SculptureCenter, New York. © 2009 SculptureCenter and the artists . Photo : Jason Mandella.

230 Grouping curated by Rachel Harrison for "Collection in Context" at the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, October 26- January 7, 2007 .

John Chamberlain , S, 1959. Metal , 171 /4 x 21 1/2 x 12 5/8 in (43.8 x 54.6 x 32.1 em)/ Hirsh horn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966.

Attributed to Honore-Victorin Daumier, The Listener (Le Bourgeo1s en attente) , (ca. 1840-1862) (cast ca . 1951-1957). Bronze 6 1/4 x 2 3/4 x 3 in (15.9 x 7 x 7.6 em). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , Smithsonian Institution , Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966.

Attributed to Honore-Victorin Daumier, The Strolling Bourgeois , (1840-1845) (cast 1951 -1962). Bronze figures , 2 1/4 x 7 1/4 x 3 1/4 in (5 .7 x 18.4 x 8.3 ern) ; base, 1 x 3 1/2 x 3 '12 in (2.6 x 8.9 x 8.9cm) . Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution , Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn , 1966.

231 Pablo Picasso, At the Lapin Agile , 1905 . Oil on canvas , 39 x 39 1/2 in . (99.1 x 100.3 em). © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso I Artists Rights Society (ARS) , New York. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art I Art Resource, NY

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Ill <:<:S BJ-'1~1) Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 wwwbard edu/ccs

Exhibition curated by Tom Eccles

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition , education, and research center dedicated to the study of art and curatorial practices from the 1960s to the present day. In addition lo the CCS Bard Galleries and the Hessel Museum of Art , the Center houses the Marieluise Hessel Collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works , as well as an extensive library and curatorial archive that are accessible to the public . The Center's two-year MA program in curatorial studies is specifically designed to deepen students ' understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating contemporary art. Exhibitions are presented year-round in the CCS Bard Galleries and the Hessel Museum of Art , providing students and the public with opportunities to engage with world-renowned artists and curators . The exhibition program and the collection also serve as the basis for a wide range of public programs and activities exploring art and its role in contemporary society

Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies Marc S Lipschultz , Chairman + Leon Botstein Lori Chemla Martin Eisenberg Carla Emil Maneluise Hessel, Founding Chairman Marguerite Hoffman Maja Hoffmann Audrey lrmas Adam Lindemann Melissa Schiff Soros Richard W Wortham Ill

+ ex officio

Rachel Harrison: Museum with Walls and the exhibition "Rachel Harrison: Consider the Lobster" at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts , the Audrey and Sydney lrmas Charitable Foundation, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation , Greene Naftali Gallery, Alexander S C. Rower, Shaun Caley Regen , the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the Center's Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

CCS Bard Staff: Tom Eccles, Executive Director Maria lind , Director of the Graduate Program Jaime Baird, Assistant Director of Administration and Development Marcia Acita , Assistant Director of the Museum Ann E. Butler, Director of Library and Archives Letitia Smith, Graduate Program Administrator Ramona Rosenberg , Administrative and Communications Coordinator Mark DeLura, Preparator Rachel von Wettberg , Registrar Katie Carey, Administrative Assistant Peter Amentas, Security Manager

Installation Team: Peter Acheson Chris Albert David Aron Lauren Bailey Henrik Haaland Albert Shahinian Will Walker

Security Team: Michael Burke Paul Giannuzzi Martin Knuffke Bob Stier William Willie

Whitechapel Gallery

Whitechapel Gallery is the imprint of Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited .

A catalogue record for this book 1s available from the British Library.

Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited

77-82 Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX VNVW.whitechapelgallery.org

Exhibition curated by lwona Blazwick Organized by Chris Aldgate and Candy Stobbs

Exhibition supported by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York and the Cranford Collection, London

Whitechapel Gallery Exhibition Circle Connie Caplan ; Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna; Renee and Mark Rockefeller ; Chara Schreyer; and those that wish to remain anonymous. The Whitechapel Gallery is grateful for the ongoing support of its Exhibition Patrons, Patrons, Associates, and Members.

The Whitechapel Gallery is an educational charity funded by the Arts Council of England , through donations from Trusts, Foundations, and individuals and through its revenues .

Director lwona Blazwick OBE

Chairman of the Trustees Robert Taylor

Trustees Duncan Ackery Ed Eisler Ann Gallagher Runa Islam Cllr Denise Jones Michael Keith Keir McGuinness Farshid Moussavi John Newbigin Dominic Palfreyman Atul Patel Catherine Petitgas Alice Rawsthorn Andrea Rose OBE Sukhdev Sandhu Nitin Sawhney Alasdhair Willis

Company Secretary Tom Wilcox

.._'-> coli.,_(' Supported by

: ~ ARTS COUNCIL '•G""o ENGLAND

Whitechapel Staff Chris Aldgate Sarah Barrett Achim Borchardt-Hume Jussi Brightmore Beth Chaplin Tom Clarke Emily Daw Michael De Guzman Sue Evans Elizabeth Flanagan Michele Fletcher Annette Graham James Greene Gary Haines Katherine Hart Clare Hawkins Sophie Hayles Quay Hoang Caro Howell Richard Johnson Chris Larner Jon-Ross Le Haye Patrick Lears Rachel Mapplebeck Zoe Mcleod Jo Melvin Patrick Millner Cassandra Needham Maggie Nightingale Kirsty Ogg Rebecca Page Dominic Peach Faheza Peerboccus Chris Potts Cookie Rameder Sherine Robin Shamita Sharmacharja Nicola Sim Maija Siren Sarah Smillie Marijke Steedman Candy Stobbs Andrea Tarsia Hannah Vaughan Sarah Walsh Tom Wilcox Nayia Yiakoumaki

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PORT!KUS PORTIKUS Alte Brucke 2/ Maininsel D-60594 Frankfurt am Main TEL: +49 69 962 4454-0 FAX + 49 69 962 4454-24 info@portikus.de www.portikus.de

Director Daniel Birnbaum

Curator Melanie Ohnemus

Organization Julia Jung

Press Lena Henke

Installation crew Oliver Heinzenberger, Yasuaki Kitagawa, Ruairiadh O'Connell

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie ; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

Portikus wants to thank the Hessische Kulturstiftung and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York for supporting the exhibition.

hessische kultur

stiftung

A/Gore 2007

Touch to Begin ... David Jose/it

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From Here to There When a sculpture carries a proper name, one expects it to bear some resemblance to the person

it 's named after. But Rachel Harrison 's AI Gore (2007) doesn't. It is a blocky form slightly over sev­

en feet tall (just over life size) dressed in concrete frosting and painted in patches of green, deep

red , and pink in a manner that brings to mind Impressionism without falling into camp reenact­

ment. By calling this abstract monolith AI Gore , Harrison evokes the absurdity of pet names (think

Side order of facts.

Tiger Woods 2006 (detail)

Haim Steinbach side order of facts 1988

of a poodle named Mr. Jangles)-and indeed the work shares some of the domesticated anthro­

pomorphism of a house pet or a stuffed animal. Two of its vertical sides are left largely unpainted ,

faced in white-colored cement, and thus lighter than the others, suggesting a play of shadow that,

when combined with the curious sensation of contrapposto in this and other of Harrison's upright

works, brings it alive-an impression affirmed by AI Gore 's "wearing " a Honeywell T87 thermostat

at the level of "his" chest (if he had one) just like a medal, or a dog tag .

The Honeywell T87 is a joke- a dumb joke, of course, but a canny one. The thermostat offers

an alibi for the work's title by giving it the perfect attribute for a man who won the Nobel Peace

Prize for fighting global warming . Paralleling the ostensible disconnect between AI Gore's title and

its form , the Honeywell T87 is itself doubly disconnected-functionally and physically-from

the trunk of the sculpture. Thermostats establish a user interface for complex heating and cooling

systems that remain behind the scenes in everyday life- consequently, they function as "symp­

toms" of what might be called an infrastructural unconscious. (Think of all the phones, computers ,

automobiles, and so forth that surround us every day, and then think of how overwhelming it would

be if we had to understand how they work.) Our technological tools require that we forget what

lies behind the interface. As with the thermostat, we only interact with the surfaces of machines,

psychically disconnected from their impossibly complex internal mechanisms. Harrison often hints

at the infrastructural unconscious by choosing to leave tangles of electrical cords visible in her

sculptures and by cutting views into their digital guts such as DVD players and monitors inserted

into pedestals. In AI Gore she takes a different tack by divorcing the Honeywell T87 from the

machines it is intended to govern and grafting it uselessly onto a sculpture.

This functional disconnect is matched by a physical disconnect. The thermostat's flat

manufactured surface marries awkwardly to the uneven handmade skin of the sculpture. It is held

precariously to the work rather than securely plugged in, as though grasped against its trunk.

To grasp is to reach out, to attempt to retain, or to succeed in holding either an object in the

hand or a concept in the mind (such as, for instance, the connection between AI Gore and a parti­

colored column) . But before considering the conceptual utility of this term, I want to assert

the formal ubiquity of "grasping" as a mode of composition in Harrison 's art. In many sculptures,

ranging from earlier ones that function like biomorphic shelves such as Nigel (1997) to the

delirious androgynous figure of Alexander the Great (2007) , where an interpretation of the epony­

mous hero is cupped in the concave surface of its calcified "half shell ," a framed photograph

or costumed mannequin is held at the tip of sculptural fingers, as though in the course of being

caught-or dropped . A seemingly minor but telling detail confirms this predilection in AI Gore . To the right of the thermostat a small protrusion in the column's surface rises like a thumb to press

the lip of the device. The thermostat is grasped by AI Gore .

187

Bruce Conner Crossroads 1976

LOUISe Lawler Who Are You Close To? (Red) 1984 /1990

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Harrison has expressed her desire to keep readymades untransformed in her works.1

She wishes not to recode these things (or to critique their point of origin in the manner of post­

modernist appropriation) but rather to preserve their singularity by giving them new life in a

new location-in effect she marks their transit from one place to another without claiming that art

can or should redeem ordinary commodities or condemn them. What art can do is grasp them: 2

I was at a gas station deli and I saw a can of iced green tea; at first glance, the guy whose

picture was on it looked like [George W.] Bush. What was also interesting about the can

was that it had some writing in Chinese characters. This seemed incongruent with the

picture-it was actually Arnold Palmer, the golf pro. So I made the sculpture Tiger Woods.

I wanted to have the same initial involvement with the can, but since it was no longer at the

gas station, this was not possible. My art is not representational, so I had to create an en­

tirely different experience for the can to be present in the world. 3

This passage touches on three important dimensions of Harrison 's art. First, as I have suggested

with regard to AI Gore , her aesthetic emerges from a ground of physical , functional , and semiotic

disconnect-in this case between iced tea, George Bush , Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, and

Chinese characters . Second, Harrison 's goal is to forestall transformation-to make the can of

iced tea (or the Honeywell T87 thermostat) remain independent of the sculpture that incorporates

it. And finally, perhaps paradoxically, in order to keep the readymade "present in the world" once

it moves from a gas station deli to an art gallery, she requires a completely different setting-and

that setting is the sculpture. In many ways Harrison's point of view is opposed to the conventional

wisdom about readymades, which locates their meaning in the artist's choice and inscription of

commodities (through appending a title or adding a signature) . Choosing and inscribing are thereby

credited with the capacity to transform things conceptually-if not materially. But transformation

is precisely the consequence that Harrison explicitly rejects . Rather than introduce readymades into

new compositional or semiotic patterns, Harrison hosts them on new sculptural platforms.

Since World War II American art has invented two strategies for integrating readymades into

works of art. The first was developed in the 1950s, and it is associated with such diverse figures as

Robert Rauschenberg , Jasper Johns, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Conner, Betye Saar, Louise Nevel­

son, and Louise Bourgeois . In different ways , these artists pictorialize readymades by absorbing

them into the plane of painting, sometimes by projecting its two-dimensional logic into three, as in

the tableaux vivants of Kienholz and Bourgeois, and sometimes by folding two-dimensional planes

into three-dimensional volumes, as in Rauschenberg 's "Combines." With the rise of postmodernism

in the 1980s a second , "post-readymade" tactic emerged in the work of such figures as Haim

Steinbach, Jeff Koons , Louise Lawler, and Sherrie Levine, all of whom applied the noncom posi­

tional strategies of Minimalism to a wide range of objects drawn from malls , flea markets, and

Nigel 1997 (detail)

even art galleries. In these works commodities were recoded through their combination , repetition ,

or transformation : either in Steinbach's shelved rebuses composed of commercial non sequitors ,

Levine's serial rephotography or recastings , or Koons 's translation of ephemeral objects such as

blow-up toys into lasting materials like stainless steel. As distinct as the pictorial and postmodern

strategies are , they each sought to confront the readymade 's greatest vulnerability: its easy re­

absorption into the traditional values of art-a problem, incidentally, that Duchamp himself was

well aware of, and which he took measures to address 4 In other words in both the pictorial and

the postmodern approaches, it was considered not only possible but necessary for art to offer

a new semantics for commodities-a perspective that belongs to the great tradition of twentieth­

century avant-garde assaults on capitalism.

To grasp readymades, on the other hand , as Harrison 's sculptures do, is neither to absorb

them into a composition (as in the pictorial strategy) nor to revise their grammar (as in the post­

modern strategy)- but to host them in a liminal state where association is both promiscuous and

obscure. Instead of offering a new semantics for a thermostat or a can of iced tea, Harrison sus­

pends these things in a field of alternate "interfaces ." She establishes their mobility in two comple­

mentary ways . First, by giving objects a new habitat in the uneven surfaces and organic recesses

of her sculpture , she obscures a thing 's point of origin so that it seems to appear out of nowhere.

This magical appearance is balanced by the more prosaic laws of gravity : placed precariously at

angles and on edges, Harrison 's readymades seem always about to slip or fall. In her usage, then ,

commodities are subject to sudden changes in position-changes in state that arise not from

semantic recoding but rather from potential or simulated motion. In Harrison's sculptures, the

dynamics of things lead rather than follow their semiotics .

Labyrinth to Landscape A different sort of grasping is manifest in a series of photographs included in Perth Amboy, a

four-part installation first exhibited in 2001 . Inspired by an article in the New York Times about a

woman named Ramona Collado who claimed to see a multihued image of the Madonna in one

of her apartment's windows, Harrison photographed some of the hundreds of pilgrims drawn to

Collado's home in Perth Amboy, NJ. These visitors paid tribute to the miraculous image through

touch . In some of her pictures, taken from across the street with a zoom lens, a hand pressed

flat against the Madonna's silhouette from inside the apartment is visible through the window, but

perhaps because Collado perceived the changing colors only on the exterior of the glass, several

photographs record a disembodied arm and hand, sometimes two , reaching from the interior

of the apartment through the open window to touch the outer pane with their palms, as though

grasping the fugitive vision to their chest. As in Harrison's treatment of readymades , the Perth Amboy photographs mark an encounter between magical appearance (the Madonna) and physi­

cal impediment (the awkwardly grasping hands and arms) staged around a fleeting image hosted

by an ordinary surface (the window) . But, in these photographs of pilgrimage, such conditions of

appearing , grasping , and hosting are explicitly tied to the vagaries of spectatorship.

One might say that Perth Amboy as a whole, of which the photographic series is only one

component, offers a catalogue of spectator styles. The work's second component is a large and

complex labyrinth built from tall upright cardboard sheets , often folded into "L's" or zigzags , which

stands in the center of the room . It creates an obstacle course for viewers who, in the course of

their wanderings , come upon a third type of objects hidden within : a series of small tableaux set

on pede~tals (or in one case on a shelf) . Diminutive human surrogates like dolls , figurines, and

even one illustrated canned-food label gaze intently at an image (a Native American bust faces a

photograph of a sunset framed and placed on a miniature easel, 5 or a Chinese figurine looks at a

scholar's rock) . The fourth component of the work is a spill of colored straws placed at the exit of

the installation like the effluvium of a drainpipe. Each of these four components links spectatorship

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to a particular signature of movement. The photographs, installed in a series around the gallery's

circumference, generate a circular motion that surrounds the labyrinth 's jagged, multidirectional

pathways. By contrast, the intense focus projected by the surrogates onto the objects of their

gaze establishes a short straight vector, and finally the motion of the straws is a quasi-scatological

release from the highly concentrated and largely self-contained dynamic signatures of the other

three elements (the endless circle of the photographs; the navigational frustration of the 1abyrinth;

and the unidirectional attention of its little inmates).

Though it is only one of several structures Harrison uses to distribute images in space, the lab­

yrinth may stand for a whole class of her sculptures. This is because labyrinths render spectator­

ship as a form of searching. Clusters of hollow or seemingly hollow boxes in such works as Indig­

enous Parts and Trees for the Forest (2007) repay the viewer's circumnavigation with the discovery

of half-hidden paintings or an unexpected cache of objects 6 In the Bard College installation of

Indigenous Parts , for instance, such surprises were secreted away inside the cavities of podiums,

upright, on their sides, or eaten away by voids : they were hosted or "grasped" by Harrison's

sculptures, not fully absorbed into them. This disconnect is precisely the precondition for labyrin­

thine spectatorship since it is only when things are divorced from their customary associations but

left untransformed by their new setting that they can genuinely be searched for. And searching, it

hardly needs saying, is what sustains one of the primary recreational , educational, and political

structures of our time: digital networks. Digital searches operate through logarithms, causing the

results produced when, for example, one types ''AI Gore" or "Perth Amboy" into Google, to

lack the shape of conventional human logic or narrative, just as the chance-derived Dada poetry

of Tristan Tzara juxtaposed phrases in ways that, while plausible , didn 't follow any semantic

orthodoxy. 7

Harrison 's labyrinths might thus be understood as three-dimensional interpretations of the

logarithmic architecture of search engines. In this regard the four dynamic signatures that consti­

tute Perth Amboy acquire an additional layer of meaning : the circumferential , the labyrinthine (in its

narrow sense) , the unidirectional , and the evacuative modes of spectatorship are all styles that are

familiar from online searching. Circular motion is characteristic of the feedback loop from one link

to another to another; clicking tens of times to locate a desired piece of information may seem like

being lost in a labyrinth; the unidirectional allure of the mesmerizing screen constitutes the online

primal scene; and finally there is the sublime thrill (or terror) of the data dump. In short, Harrison

translates virtual rhetorics of search into physical forms of spatial navigation. But unlike fantasies

of unencumbered surfing, the network Harrison envisions is one composed as much of noise

as of communication , where information flows, like their geological analogues, create singular

topologies of stalactites or stalagmites, viscous pours and coagulated masses. In other words, the

network behaves like a landscape.

There has been a widespread tendency in sculpture of the 1990s and the first decade of the

twenty-first century to turn two-dimensional objects (primarily digital photography and video) into

three-dimensional worlds like Harrison 's labyrinths. This strategy is defined by two poles : cool

immersive video projections on the one hand , which envelop entire darkened spaces in massive

screens of moving images (relevant artists include Catherine Sullivan and Stan Douglas) , and on

the other hand , overheated landscapes molded or derived from found pictures (think of Thomas

Hirschhorn or Mike Kelley). Together these artists establish a new habitat for digital information,

delimited by the screen and the landscape. Harrison 's art spans these poles by demonstrating

that photographs are both hosted in space (moved through it via labyrinthine networks) and them­

selves the hosts of new images, new material singularities . I have discussed the former relation at

some length already. Harrison creates supporting walls , exploded podiums, eccentric plinths, and

elaborate environments for pictures or video to take up new lives in various ways . But equally

important has been her tendency to treat photographs themselves as generators of new images.

L__----------~- -~- .

Pink Stool 2005

Philip Guston Solitary II 1978

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-I I I I I I I I I I

Mike Kelley and Michael Smith "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery," 2009

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Without explicitly claiming to do so, Harrison has systematically surveyed photography's mate­

rial unconscious by heightening four aspects of a photo's life cycle: its entry into an archive, the

photographer's presence behind the camera (which constitutes one threshold of documentary

truth), the length of exposure, and additionally the processing of the photograph. In both versions

of Voyage of the Beagle (2007 and 2008) , each an extended series of identically sized photo­

graphs of what is essentially the "same" subject matter (man-made faces ranging from primitive

menhirs to flamboyant mannequins) , a delirious chain of resemblances is established. The title 's

reference to Darwin 's historic expedition encourages an evolutionary reading of a particular form

or type-the face- but ultimately (and intentionally) Harrison 's juxtapositions follow no teleological

pattern , implying instead that the presumed unity of any classification , including the photographic

survey or archive, rests on an unstable ground of infinite singularity. In Snake in the Grass (1997) ,

Harrison turned her attention to the camera's capacity to bear witness . In this work her pictures

of tourists posing to be photographed at the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, the site of John F. Kennedy's

assassination , are juxtaposed with others she took of the photographic souvenirs hawked there.

In the sculpture's installation, Harrison hangs these different types of "evidence" on suspended

walls , the organization of which seems to weigh, like the scales of justice, their elusive truth. While

the postcards sold to pilgrims on the Grassy Knoll are intended to offer something factual to

commemorate the assassination (as well as the tourist 's visit) , Harrison 's own belated pictures

purposely fail to deliver any discernible event whatsoever.

The effect of documentary truth is closely tied to photography's time signature-its instantaneity

convinces us that pictures are reliable indices of what the photographer actually witnessed .

Harrison frustrates this expectation too , by interrupting photography's presumed fidelity to natural ,

continuous time in works such as Contact Sheet (1996) and Foot Stays in the Picture (2007) . In

the former, a sequence of shots exposed on film in a London street is unaccountably interrupted

by three images recording a trip out of town (an illusion accomplished by grafting two contact

sheets into what seems like one) ; in the latter, a single twenty-minute loop recording marathon

runners' feet is projected on the first and fourth monitors in synch and the others on time delay

in what feels like a sequence but is actually an endless repetition-a kind of running in place. In

these pieces photography's time signature is broken, but conversely, in some of Harrison's other

video works ,8 a single instant may expand to unbearable proportions while refusing any cathar­

tic release. In Roman Holiday (2003) , for instance, in which a hapless drunk attempts to work a

cigarette machine outside a restaurant in Rome for nearly ten minutes without success, a single

simple act that should take only an instant is stretched to what feels like an eternity, shattering the

fiction of a "decisive moment. " These assaults on temporal instantaneity are paralleled by Har­

rison 's introduction of material opacity in the ostensibly automatic or transparent translation of a

photographic exposure into a print. In two sequences of pictures dating from the mid- '90s-one

in Snake in the Grass, where a single negative was printed in six different shades of green, and

the other, 5 x 7's (1996) , where one negative of an anthill was sent out to ten different labs to make

ten different five-by-seven prints , each, in the end , varying significantly in color-a single exposure

generates a multitude of differences.

By thwarting our assumptions of what a photograph possesses-its capacity to survey and

classify, its documentary veracity, its temporal instantaneity, and its technical transparency-Harri­

son loses the camera's truth effects in a rich material labyrinth. But photographs may also behave

like landscapes, if we define a landscape as the embodiment of absolute singularity, always ex­

ceeding or eluding human geometries-a kind of "optical unconscious." 9 1n Sunset Series (2000) ,

Harrison projects such an unconscious from a found photo of a sunset that she re-photographed

over and over while shining a flashlight onto its surface or bending it to create a wide range of

visual effects. The image of a natural sunset thus served to fashion a series of sunsets that were

quite literally culturally derived, given photography's standard procedure of admitting and eclips­

ing light through a lens as though a sun were setting every time the shutter closes. Such accretion

of material variations in and through photographs is really no different from the three-dimensional

accretions that populate Harrison 's art, like the brightly colored tabletop sculptures placed on ped­

estals in Indigenous Parts . She has said that she hopes such forms will defy both memory and de­

scriptionw And indeed they do-by allowing the singularity and infinite variation of the landscape

to surge into her labyrinths.

Letting Slip Harrison makes facing into a verb-or more accurately, she literalizes the action implicit in the ger­

und. To face is a common enough expression in English, denoting an encounter or confrontation

between persons (she faced me on the train) , between persons and things (my chair faced the

screen), or between a person and a physical, cognitive , or emotional challenge (I faced my fear

of flying) . Instances of each of these types of facing occur in Harrison 's work, but she pushes fac­

ing further. While it's possible to "lose face, " it sounds wrong to "give" it, but this is what Harrison

does: she gives face to her sculptures. A push and pull plays across their surfaces in a Punch and

Judy show of dignifying and humiliating, losing and gaining face where deep psychological cur­

rents are triggered by seemingly casual gestures of irreverence. Schmatte with President (2006)

is a good example. The work is composed of a low square plinth supporting an upright monolith

that seems to lean forward in a pliant "body language" that communicates the gentle interrogatory

submission of a servant. This monolith is first afforded a head-a thin piece of wood topped by a

short white sculpture composed of a flat base and an upright bulb, all painted with a loose skein

of colorful drips. This head "wears" the schmatte of the title-a headscarf that gives it face. But as

in several of Harrison's sculptures there isn't just one face: a plastic mask of Abraham Lincoln has

slipped down into a depression in the torso just below its right "shoulder" as though it were held

under an arm like a trophy. There is a final slippage: a contour that resembles Lincoln 's hairline is

painted in black on the low base. The face has slipped to the feet.

These procedures of facing exemplify the ineffable tone of Harrison's sculptures, spanning

the contradictory moods of exuberant defacement (like putting a wig on a Franz West sculpture),

Sunset Series 2000

197

5 x 7's (A & R Quality Photo, Aurora, Duggal, Emulsion, Foto Print, Image Studio, Pro Photo, R&B Color Labs, US Color, Victoria Photo) 1996

198

searing social satire (having a figure that may well impersonate a slave woman with her schmatte­

fied do-rag carry the head of Abraham Lincoln under her arm) , and the most profound of philo­

sophical questions (what makes a lump of matter into consciousness ; what gives us face). This

proliferation of rhetorical tones is the necessary complement of the different signatures of motion

to which Harrison subjects images and commodities-their labyrinthine circulation and their

balkanization as landscapes. Like words , images have the capacity to hurt once they're set in

motion-really hurt, and to dignify too, and to give pleasure. They have forms of agency, even

today, that resemble the apotropaic powers of the evil eye or the anticipatory violence of a voodoo

doll. Harrison extracts the social skin from bodies, externalizing it in masks, wigs, or garments,

and then lets it slip, exposing an embarrassing nakedness-something we don't wish to see, like

a fleshy pink sculpture with a ratty hairpiece in the scatologically titled Pink Stool (2005) .11 It is

easy to forget that the image worlds we live in , including our digital networks, aren't neutral , aren 't

private , and aren't safe . They presume an ethics that Harrison 's art brings out into the open .

' In conversation with the author, August 6, 2009. 2 George Baker has made a very effective related argument, suggesting that Harrison's sculpture operates on a principle of propping

(in both the physical and psychoanalytic senses): "But such sculpture will also be, in every sense of the term, a 'support sculpture'-a sculpture holding up other objects, other forms , a sculpture of attachment, of juxtaposition, of connection. Propping , here, can be taken as both confession and conceit, strength emerging from a condition of utter weakness: infinite construction , infinite excess. Sculpture-in our time, in Rachel Harrison's work- has become an anaclitic form. " From "Mind the Gap," Parkett 82 (2008) , 148. John Kelsey has also called attention to the condition I'm calling "grasping": "Rachel Harrison does not cast or carve but, in several senses, set up (sic] her works: erect, of course, but also establish, plan, and maybe even trick them into situations where they will be caught or blamed." From "Sculpture in the Abandoned Field, " in Rachel Harrison: If I Did It [exhibition catalogue] (Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2007), 120.

' "Rachel Harrison & Nayland Blake" (conversation] , Bomb 105 (fall 2008) , 49. • Duchamp understood how fleeting the "shock" or defamiliarization effect is of the readymades, and he compensated for this not only

by limiting their exhibition but also by recontextualizing and reauthorizing them at various junctions. The best recounting of these tactics is in William A. Camfield, Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (Houston : Menil Collection, 1989).

5 In fact this photograph is one of the series of Harrison 's own Sunset Series , which I discuss below. • At the time of this writing , Indigenous Parts has had four iterations, and its procedures of both relating to its site and transforming

itself in time is part of what makes it a particularly good example of Harrison 's manipulation of time and motion signatures. The versions are as follows: Indigenous Parts (1995) in "High Anxiety, " curated by Kenny Schachter, 66 Crosby Street, New York; Indigenous Parts II (1996) in "Facing the Millenium: The Song Remains the Same," curated by Kenny Schachter, Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, Texas; Indigenous Parts Ill (2003) in "The Structure of Survival, " curated by Carlos Basualdo, 50th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale; and Indigenous Parts IV (2009) , in "Rachel Harrison: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays," curated by Tom Eccles, Hessel Museum of Art & CCS Galleries, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York .

7 To my knowledge Matthew Jesse Jackson is the only person to have suggested a link between Harrison 's sculpture and search : "These works exude an overpowering sense of construction and capriciousness, as if Harrison 's objects evolved from idiosyncratic Internet searches. " Matthew Jesse Jackson, "New Work: Rachel Harrison," CAA.Reviews (April 26, 2005) , < http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/741 /> .

• Harrison's videos are typically developed to be included in sculptures, but she sometimes exhibits them independently or in contexts different from their original placement.

• Rosalind Krauss elaborates such a concept in modern art in The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). 10 In conversation with the author, September 2, 2009. 11 John Kelsey writes eloquently of the "embarrassment" in Harrison 's sculpture in "Rachel Harrison; Green Naftali Gallery,"

Artforum (November 2004) , 225.