Contributed by Anna Gregor / The anxiety of being unable to distinguish artifice from nature has haunted art since the Ancient Greeks. No one wants to be the prisoner who mistakes the shadow on the cave wall for Truth, or, more embarrassingly, the bird who tries to eat the grapes in Zeuxis’s trompe l’oeil still life. But today, as human-made technology permeates all aspects of life, the difference between what is artificial and what is real is not so clear. This ambiguity is most apparent in the city, where nature manifests itself as a force of decomposition and aggregation that acts on all objects indiscriminately, whether “natural” or human-made. Here, art and nature are indistinguishable. This relation of artifice and nature in the city is the driving force behind “Aggregate,” now up at Studio 9D. Through subject matter and material processes, the three artists in the show mimic the force of decay and aggregation, each expressing his own view of the relation between art and life, past and present, and destruction and creation.
James Bertucci’s sculptural paintings revive the classical notion of art as the imitation of nature. But he does not use paint to transform the picture plane into a transparent window pane, beyond which lies a luscious still life or landscape. Rather, he focuses on the obstacles that block such views: fences, steel diamond plates pristine or rusting, concrete traffic barriers, and sewer grates. Composed wholly of paint, simulating surfaces of construction materials with carefully sculpted impastos, the paintings remind us that paint is a three-dimensional building material. If not for the canvas weave that shows through in certain areas, it would be difficult to tell the difference between a real piece of OSB and the painted OSB (I). Bertucci emulates nature as a force that marks the passage of time on surfaces, turning once-pristine surfaces into an index of actions visible on the surface in the peeling paint, rust, and scratches.
Sammy Bennett’s fabric installations, too, seek to capture the force of nature. But unlike Bertucci, who continues a mimetic painting tradition, Bennett draws on photography, the invention of which produced a crisis for representational painters. Bennett’s work, however, acknowledges that photography, insofar as it freezes images, does not fully depict experience. In his work, photographs are transformed into dye sublimation prints on synthetic fabric and then collaged, recreating the subjective experience of being in a particular site in the city. Last Wash, an installation of prints on fabric and found objects, depicts a city that we wear like clothing. Hard objects, like building façades and barbed wire, become soft and flaccid. They yearn to droop, to fold into a pile on the ground, yet they remain upright, humorous, lonely, and precariously whole. Bennett’s phenomenological approach closes the gap between the inhabitants of the city and its unyielding infrastructure, creating a mediated realm of human experience softened by memory.
Bradley Milligan’s architectural sculpture embodies the precarious growth of the city. Each sculpture is made without fasteners – no nail or screw assists in its fight against gravity. The result is a provisional structure that balances and strains against itself in search of a stable geometry. Looking at Scrimmage, a fragile lattice of wood scraps that draws attention to the grid of window panes behind it and the water tower visible on a neighboring building’s roof, one becomes very aware of being nine stories above the street level, and of the miracle of standing despite the force of gravity exerted on the building and our bodies. Mulligan combines found materials – wood, beer cans, sandpaper – compressing them within polished plaster in a consciously absurd attempt to form a whole from scraps. The resulting works have the appearance of found objects trying to submit themselves to the conventions of art, creations that acknowledge that they themselves are subject to nature’s dual force of decay and generation. Together, the works of all three artists are a testament to the hope of creation, of standing, and the worry of falling— too heavy, too fragile to bear our own weight.
“Aggregate: Sammy Bennett, James Bertucci, Bradley Milligan,” Studio 9D, 508 West 26th Street, 9D, New York, NY. Through November 24, 2024.
About the author: Anna Gregor is a painter pursuing her MFA at CUNY Hunter College.
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