{"id":28653,"date":"2015-04-17T07:19:34","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T13:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28653"},"modified":"2018-10-10T10:43:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:43:08","slug":"true-false-true-claire-wilson-and-nancy-vorm-present-mixed-media-collages-and-reliefs-at-the-dibble-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/true-false-true-claire-wilson-and-nancy-vorm-present-mixed-media-collages-and-reliefs-at-the-dibble-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018. . . true \/ false \/ true . . .\u2019 Claire Wilson and Nancy Vorm present mixed media collages and reliefs at the Dibble Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Diagonal<\/a>

Diagonal Object by Claire Wilson<\/p><\/div>\n

Other than as categories, art terms like \u2018representational\u2019 and \u2018realistic\u2019 aren\u2019t very helpful. The weightlessly floating, elongated figures of Byzantine mosaics \u2018realistically represented\u2019 the spiritual truth so important to those who lived in the dark age that followed the fall of Rome, that souls and eternity mattered more than the here and now . . . or the there and then. Similarly, the floating, diaphanous figures, the fiddler on the roof or the flying barnyard animals, so beloved by fans of Marc Chagall represented\u2014no matter their metaphoric extension\u2014the tenuous, fragile nature of life for Jews in Central Europe, in the century before Hitler wiped them off the face of the earth. Most art \u2018re-presents\u2019 something seen or experienced in another form or medium, usually pretty obviously, and the more important question is what is being presented<\/em> by the representation. In other words, what content is contained in the subject matter. Two bodies of work by two familiar, if not yet widely known, local figures, being shown this month in the Dibble Gallery, demonstrate the contrasting sides of this aesthetic divide. Both have shown recently in the non\u2013commercial (or at any rate, less commercial) galleries that are vital to Salt Lake and Utah having such a vibrant art scene: Wilson at the City Library, Vorm at Finch Lane. While neither artist\u2019s works require arcane knowledge to appreciate, both offer the satisfaction that rewards both contemplation and the kind of familiarity that comes from living with art.<\/p>\n

Claire Wilson challenges viewers to make the most basic distinction: to tell the artwork from the materials it\u2019s made of\u2014not unlike the late Art Danto\u2019s comparison of an artist\u2019s red painting and an identical red rectangle sawn off the side of a barn. Danto\u2019s choice of an architectural example proves particularly apt in Wilson\u2019s case. Wilson\u2019s objects, which she likes to keep as close as possible to the ever-shrinking borderline between sculpture and painting, hang on walls but could otherwise be confused with the builders\u2019 discards that accumulate around construction\u2014or demolition\u2014sites. To say that seeing them for the first time, on the Library\u2019s gallery walls, was intensely exciting, or to add that the intensity hasn\u2019t diminished, is to acknowledge that Wilson has picked up on a neglected subject matter and a raw source of formal activity that combines deliberate and stochastic creativity, in ways both lively and unlikely. Here we find deliberate fashioning of visual and tactile qualities that seem only to come about by accident, heightened and elevated by deliberate manipulation. The accumulation of layers and the juxtaposition of contrasts are among her topics, to which end she has brought more color into ensembles that are less tightly rectangular than what she showed last time. Anyone who\u2019s ever smashed an old box flat to fit in the trash and stopped, seized by the expressive power of the resulting detritus, should immediately grasp the point of these meticulously-fabricated, deceptively crude-looking fragments. They\u2019re probably not for feint-hearted or lightweight appreciation, though someone with no art training at all might find them easier to get\u2014or be gotten by. That said, the sheer sophistication of their visual appeal will combine with the ironic humor of their references to keep them warm and welcome long after more accessible and more easily liked works have lost their appeal. That tickle might well be enough, but for those of a more philosophical bent, or those who marvel at the interplay of seemingly deliberate design and accidental fabrication that marks all of \u2018creation,\u2019 one of these talismans promises to offer an inexhaustible starting point for further thought.<\/p>\n

Consider this: biologists\u2019 best guess is that many of our species\u2019 most important features, like vision or the upright posture that makes our hands useful, evolved initially for other purposes, only to turn out accidentally to have far more wide-ranging effects. One part of the resonance of Wilson\u2019s work is the sense that there is something right about this\u2014that a construction made for a functional, if unknown purpose, can come to be recognized as interesting in its own right, even useful in a completely unexpected way. Of course this is only one possible analogy to her artworks. Another viewer might look at, say, either of the Diagonal Objects<\/em>, and after trying to conjure the missing extensions beyond these joints, think about how what is present can tell us about what is absent. Those two works boast linear patterns of holes, but several that share the title \u201cCoded\u201d alternate nails and what the viewer assumes are nail holes without the nails. According to the artist, all of them come about in sequence, each a response to the preceding, and each undergoes a material transformation, starting with a hands-on exploration of wood, putty, plaster, metal, and other materials that begin as themselves, become representations\u2014sometimes of themselves and sometimes of something else\u2014and then return to themselves. Or, as she calls it, \u201ctrue \/ false \/ true,\u201d a pendulum process that can begin and end at any point.<\/p>\n