At The Windup Space, in an exhibition titled Coupling, artist/curator Jason Hoylman has paired Baker Artist Awards nominees in ways that surprised me—and maybe even the artists selected.
I could readily find connections between the coupled works. But pretty quickly, I wanted to say— “Wait, wait, let’s change partners!” This may be the intention. After all, full participation is not just voting on the website, but turning the virtual exhibitions into in-person experiences—maybe even into an exhibition where we as viewers can speculate on the most appropriate placement of the works.
So, I really wanted to rehang the show my way, the same works but with different couplings, maybe even try it several different ways. As installed, Tim Horjus’ abstract painting of a ribbon-like grid in front of a faceted green form—a figure? a mountain?—hangs beside Matthew Hance’s painting of a nude.
She is viewed simultaneously from multiple points of view, her contorted body twisted into a shape that for all the world evokes contours–the central element of Horjus’ abstraction.
Yet, surprisingly, looking across the wall, either Horjus’ or Hance’s painting would have made a credible companion for Greg Minah’s energetic, expressionist painting, with its activated, drippy paint surfaces. There, to my eye, a circular pattern of pale blue paint quivers gently, the essence of a living being or a shape found in nature.
Hoylman has hung Minah’s painting, with all of its elegant references to Abstract Expressionism, beside Adam Estes’ The End and the Beginning. Estes uses an approach that combines elements of symbolism and street art to create a powerful depiction of man descended into a crawling creature, a monster totally insensitive to the havoc man reeks against Mother Nature. So, different as this work is from Minah’s, they may both suggest apocalypse: Estes, more explicitly representing the end of human life as we know it; and Minah, in an explosion of paint, abstractly suggesting the end of a world or a universe.
Between the two pairs of painters, we are drawn in by a seemingly quieter pairing, each exploring a very different kind of notation in black-and white.
Fred Scharmen, an architect, developed his Voronoi / Delauney Drawings from mathematical exercises. For the uninitiated (and I was one), his Baker entry explains that Voronoi invented “a method of subdividing space based on a set of input points.” These are usually generated by computer algorithms, but Scharmen has drawn them exquisitely by hand, beginning the process from some everyday event, like the random distribution of pepper from a grinder. The resulting patterns recall, equally for me, beehives or elements of modern architecture.
Scharmen’s drawings are coupled with six of composer and percussionist Will Redmond’s modular one-page compositions from Book, a collection of 98 collages available at Bookmusic.org for interpretation by any performer, anytime. These collages combine sheets of music with drawings and words.
Whatever couplings you might think up for these works, the exhibition is just the sort of outcome the regional artist community might have hoped for from the Baker Artist Awards. For all the artists who participate, their work becomes more widely known and new opportunities open up as a result. Maybe other spaces and curators will be inspired to respond!
- If you missed the opening reception, stop by The Windup Space on Tuesday, March 23 to listen while you look. That night jazz musicians show up for Out of Your Head, an out-of-the-ordinary jam session with improvised and experimental music.
- To get some insight into the mind of artist/curator Jason Hoylman, stop by Hive, the current exhibition at Area 405, and see an example of his work.
- And don’t miss the Baker Artists Awards 2010 exhibition, on view at the BMA beginning April 7!
Filed in: Baker Artist Awards, The Windup Space.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 
Great to see these physical exhibits born from the cyber world of the Baker Artist Awards. There are so many such connections to be made, it is fun to imagine a year’s worth of shows based on the site. Kudos to Jason and Windup.