This summer, the Sculpture Center isn’t just the venue. It’s also the subject.
Two of three new exhibits now on view at The Sculpture Center dwell explicitly not on a medium or genre but rather on the history and meaning of the building itself, on all that’s taken place in and around the physical property over the decades.
The third show, meanwhile, doesn’t stray far from that idea. It meditates on similar themes, but doesn’t focus on any one place in particular.
Of the three shows, the most compelling are the two about The Sculpture Center – that is, about the potency of place. Both employ highly unusual media and techniques to foster clear, unexpectedly moving connections to the past.
Who knew The Sculpture Center was once a vegetarian restaurant? Cleveland-based sculptor Malena Grigoli, that’s who. In a single, utterly unique piece called “Genesis 1:29” (in which God designates plants as food) the name of the restaurant, she exploits the fact that in the 1970s, the facility welcomed people not for art but for cottage cheese, fruit slices and bread.
Note that last menu item. For her portal to the past, Grigoli created a cloth mold of an old door from the Sculpture Center, one possibly in place when it was a restaurant. Over this, she applied a thick culture of yeast, which then rose, dried and split. The result is both the echo of a door, through which countless people passed, and an object that bears a more-than-passing resemblance to a loaf of bread.
In sum, what Grigoli created is a totem, a tribute to the place and an evocation of its past, using objects and methods steeped in both. Simply put: Grigoli earned her dough.
A restaurant, though, isn’t all The Sculpture Center used to be. Originally, and aptly, it was a stone-carving studio, where workers created headstones and other monuments for Lake View Cemetery next door.
That history is what inspired Jacklyn Brickman to create “Arris|a vestige,” a séance-like setup that uses weeds from the area to make points about the things we choose to cultivate, preserve and ignore. (In architecture, an “arris” is a border between two surfaces.)
Safe to say, you’ve never seen anything like this. Inside a small greenhouse reminiscent of the cemetery’s Wade Memorial Chapel sits a vase of mugwort weed, a few strands of which are wired to a droning sound machine, which itself sits inside a smoothly carved block of sandstone.
By touching the plants, visitors alter – slightly – the sound, thereby leaving an impression on the display. Meanwhile, at a small nearby fountain reminiscent of a cemetery pond, guests are encouraged by a somewhat creepy resin hand to deepen their impact on the piece by gathering water for the vase, and mugwort plants grace the center’s front windows, as if they were rare and beautiful flowers.
There’s a certain supernatural aura here. Brickman seems to be reminding us of the many forgotten souls resting next door. But she’s also giving us a different kind of portal to the past. Through the senses of touch and sound, viewers commune with something generally overlooked and reflect on their own place in the continuum of life.
The third and largest exhibit, “Adventurers,” is both more personal and more confusing. Artist Noelle Choy uses film and a dizzying array of media to present what she calls “biographical fiction,” the story of a life through places and objects.
The film, titled “Wonders of the World,” is a short and perfectly comprehensible documentary about the artist’s Taiwanese heritage. Where the artist loses this viewer is in the pieces surrounding the film, in her physical creations, abstruse assortments of objects found or collected over the years.
Papier-maché arches, matchbooks, photographs, a doorknob, flowers, electrical and plastic detritus, car parts, wood panels, flames of clear resin: Every conceivable material, it seems, is represented in Dada-esque displays full of vitality, contrast and color. A bit of text relates an amusing story from the artist’s childhood.
Presumably, to Choy, there’s meaning in these objects, stories to explain why she kept them and how they came to be displayed in this way. None of that, though, is readily apparent. Each piece here is like an inside joke or strain of family lore, intelligible only to a select few.
Still, while the full significance of Choy’s work isn’t clear, “Adventurers” plays its part in the whole. It complements the other two exhibits and joins them in a wildly creative reminder that meaning can be found everywhere, in all people, places, and things.
REVIEW
The Sculpture Center
What: Exhibits by Noelle Choy, Jacklyn Brickman, and Malena Grigoli.
When: On view now through Aug. 22. Wednesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m.
Where: The Sculpture Center, 12210 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.
Information: Free. Visit sculpturecenter.org or call 216-229-6527.
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