David Brothers’ new installation, Jollies, is at 916 S. Jefferson St. through April 31.

The history of art doesn’t record how many of those it documents have identified with Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra whose pride and cleverness, especially in regards to cheating death, caused Zeus to condemn him to an eternity of struggling to roll a giant boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down when nearly to the top, so forcing him to repeat the futile task forever. In this, Salt Lake multimedia artist David Brothers may be unique, for he describes his work in just such terms: as “Sisyphean … building, crushing, and rebuilding.”

Perplexing as that may be, Brothers doesn’t stop there, but takes a step further. Surely most artists, regardless of medium, would argue that their work deals on some level with Truth, even in the face of Plato’s verdict that copies of the natural world are necessarily ever-less accurate attempts to duplicate the divine, ideal originals of all things. In other words, movement in entirely the wrong direction. Yet Brothers adds a crucial qualifier, a confession even, to his formula. His building, crushing, and rebuilding is, to use his word, “inauthentic.”

To be sure, “inauthentic” in Brothers’ description doesn’t mean dishonest. While many attempts to reproduce the real world strive to make it at least look better than it is, Brothers displays a determination to capture its grittier qualities. To that end, he uses a lot of discarded and found materials.

Any good installation interacts with its environment, usually an interior space. Brothers prefers the larger possibilities he finds outdoors, as he did in his most recent work at the county landfill, a “rebuilding” adroitly described by 15 Bytes founding editor Shawn Rossiter.

View from within the installation.

In fact, Jollies collaborates with an entire Salt Lake City district, the Central 9th neighborhood formed when the offramp from I-15 to West Temple Street cut through a pre-existing location of homes, parks, and small businesses, creating dead-end streets and distressing the entire quarter. To their credit, the authorities have made extensive efforts to reinvigorate the damaged area, upgrading the streets to encourage foot traffic on wide, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and street-centered parking that connects with the 9th South Trax station. Yet while old businesses are recovering and shiny new ones have risen from the ashes, evidence of the past remains in the form of shuttered buildings and incompletely renovated housing. Brothers’ installation, with its reclaimed materials and mixture of historical references and temporary fabrication, perfectly suits this feeling of a work-in-progress.

Jollies also fits perfectly in an alley between two handsome eateries that encourage alfresco dining on outdoor tables set apart from the sidewalk. Basically six large, hanging panels of recovered and repainted canvas, the installation features mock-architectural facades in front and back that enclose six expansive, painted scenes—three on each side—and three stepped, wooden platforms that create islands from which the six artworks can be comfortably viewed and better seen.

It’s important to Brothers that his work dispenses with narration, thereby permitting not only incidental exposure to those who discover it, but allowing them free rein to find their own interpretations. For example, these paintings depict football scrimmages, but do so in a manner adopted from History Paintings of battle scenes in which men grapple with each other to a variety of ends. To some in the audience, these smoky visions may suggest souls struggling in hell, while others may find simpler reference to Sunday TV engagement. Anyone who may have pondered a homoerotic quality in such violence may find it here as well. Brothers may be amenable to the viewer’s basic freedom of interpretation, but he does not lack his own expansive point of view.

Two details that comment on the larger subject include one on the inside of the canvas the outside of which forms the facade of the whole work. Apparently a cannon projecting through a painted gap in an ironic trompe-l’oeil rendering on a curtain of a curtain, it suggests anticipation and a potential for violence to follow, or perhaps a hint that the viewer might not be welcome to leave. Meanwhile, at the other end of the enclosure a painted balloon dangles a stick of dynamite, its fuse burning, on which appear the numbers 801—among other things, the identifying area code of Salt Lake City and much of Utah. Those who wish to may draw their own conclusions.

It must be said that the flaming skies and graphic violence of the painted scenes strongly contrast with ever-present decorative elements, all in blue-and-white, like so many Delft tiles or Tole paintings, which begin on the canvas facade and multiply on the three viewing bridges that are the only free-standing elements within. This mixture of moods is visually striking and creates a free-wheeling parallel to the way even the most excessive—and arguably “inauthentic”—cultural self-expressions are likely to be enclosed, whether by gilded wooden frames in the museum or by the TV console in a homely household setting, and so neutralized and domesticated for everyday consumption.   

David Brothers: Jollies, 916 S. Jefferson St., Salt Lake City, through April 31.

All images courtesy of the author.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.