UNINHIBITED

The exhibition “UNINHIBITED” at Ivy Brown Gallery by Federica Patera and Andrea Sbra Perego comprises a sizable walk-in environment capable of holding two or more people. The room-size installation, consisting of the tangled confines of twisting strands of wire, is a sculpture and an environment. The strands of wire are wrapped in a dark fabric that forms letters, often spelling out readable words (some nine hundred of them occur in the environment). These words create a complicated facade meeting the couple’s invention. However anarchically they may be organized, the literary aspect of the couple’s milieu brings an entirely different genre of communication into the plan, which complicates and intensifies our experience of the environment.

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One senses that the original influences shaping “UNINHIBITED” come from a freer, less authoritarian time. The undulating wire and its implications are made more complex by lettering, resulting in an interesting facade; it is almost as if it were a three-dimensional line drawing. The presence of words, made palpable by the installation’s thick line of wire, aggrandizes the visual statement by giving it literary weight. So this wonderful environment is more than just a visual endeavor; its engagement with actual literacy leads to the possibility of a written statement. However the comprehension of the words, beyond their recognition as visual statements, does not result in a genuine excursion of meaning. 

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The possibility of legibility complicates our reading of the environment’s meaningfulness. There is also the intricacy, on a social level, of the piece’s construction: the yarn covering the metal wire is recycled. We would not know this unless we were told, yet our knowledge of the yarn’s recycled material changes our understanding of the work. The couple’s decision to make known the materials the yarn is constructed of involves the installation with a socially determined stance. The visual experience we have of the wire environment cannot be separated from larger social issues regarding ecology and recycling.

 

This is a lot for a visual work to bear–at least in a socially determined sense. Inevitably, fine art conveys larger issues even when those issues are hidden–as happens in “UNINHIBITED.” Looking toward the physical aspect of the installation itself, it becomes clear that the open, cage-like appearance of the wire facade is itself a striking statement, as are the dimensions the work is made of, which are large enough to hold a small number of people.

 

The visual use of words has long been part of contemporary art; one can immediately point to Mainland Chinese artist Xu Bing’s masterwork, The Book from the Sky. Created during the late 1980s, the installation used some four thousand characters to construct scrolls hanging from the ceiling, wall texts, and four volumes of characters. But none of the characters were readable; none existed in reality.

 

While the installation in “UNINHIBITED” does not embrace the experience of illegibility consciously, its message does include the suggestion of deliberate misreading. Often the words are hard to read. Patera and Sbra Perego are unusual in their quiet but genuine pursuit of ecological truths beyond the making of their environment. The idealism of their thinking may well be played out in the work itself. In a formal/historical sense, the wire enclosure is not esthetically new. Similar structures have existed before. Nonetheless, it stands in recognition of the inevitable interaction between object and audience. The couple’s use of words, however confused they may seem visually in the environment may well act as a bridge, physically and metaphorically extending the realism of their imagination.

 

The connection can also be noted not only as a formal exchange but as a political discernment. What is meant by the term? It makes sense to see that the wire is covered by recycled materials pushing our awareness of the material, in particular, and the scope of the work, in general, to a place where a quietly political reading of the art is not inappropriate. It would be a mistake to overemphasize the social implications of the installation, which, after all, is a large, walk-in sculpture first and foremost. But the unspoken social affiliations of the artist couple are nevertheless existent. We are meant to know the recycled content of the yarn covering the wire; we are meant to understand that the recycled material is a choice—a decision in favor of preservation and re-use. While these values do not carry public political recognition, and the change is hardly grand, at the same time the alterations, as well as the intentions of the artists themselves, cannot be marginalized merely as an esthetic statement. Because the couple’s statement is, first and foremost, one of visual intent, reading political meaning into the environment is perhaps over-interpreting the small amount of social involvement we come across.

 

Yet it is also true that the kind of work we see—a large, walk-in space defined by twisting wires, can be linked to environments created in the Sixties, a time of extraordinary change. The political tenor of those times is likely suggested in the artwork we see now. Today, we tend to dismiss the political across of the period as catastrophically naive, but that would forget the spirited opposition put up by cultural workers to such disasters as the Vietnam War. While it is true that it is hard to tie a style in art to a political outlook, the suggestion of an earlier style can connect an artwork to the spirit of the time. The connection is general and atmospheric, rather than specifically meaningful.

 

This installation underscores the gallery’s commitment to autonomous thinking. The spirit of the environment has been lost to the (recent) time’s superficial attitudes. The marvelous environment in the gallery owes its force both to the energies of the couple and, just as important, the existence of a small tradition of alternative thought and action. It is not a matter of defiance but inquiry and somehow independent of how it survives.