Presentation as ...
How does the spectator engage with the work?
Ultimately, this is not up to the artist, it is beyond his or her control. The spectator will engage with the work as he or she chooses.
In the past years I have addressed this by ceding as much control as possible to the spectator. However, in doing so I am still in control by not controlling how the spectator engages with the work.
One way I have often done this is by establishing conditions where touching the work - normally paintings' greatest taboo - is not only encouraged but hard to avoid. If the spectator won't touch the work freely it is not guaranteed that the work will not somehow touch the spectator.
I've played with ways of stacking, laying out, suspending from ceilings, working in spaces where the work can be viewed from more than one angle or side, using mirrors, or otherwise displaying and presenting painting in ways beyond hanging on the wall.
I have played around with double-sided works in which access to one side is limited to a very select few - for instance, to the person installing the work or otherwise in a position to handle the work.
But with this still to be titled work I and the others decided we wanted to try something else. To present the painting in a way where the spectator questions its identity as painting the same way he or she might question what is figure, what is ground.
Although the painting is quite long it is rather small at a height of only 5 inches. If the painting were divided into its individual panels it would lose any relation to largeness it had. This inherent smallness of its fragments made me hesitant to present it in ways where the spectator could freely separate the painting into its parts. But I wanted the painting to be seen without forcing the spectator into contortions; needing to stoop to the level of this painting (but its a thought for future paintings!). This meant I would need to bring the painting up to the eye level of the average height spectator which could be done one of two ways: 1. suspending from above 2. supporting from below.
Petra has tried the first approach, suspension from above, with her work A Little Madness in the Spring. It works n conjunction with the idea of the hanging garden but it is a difficult work to install if the space does not allow or is ill-equipped to accommodate this type of installation. I want the work not only to be seen by the spectator near his or her eye level, I also want it to be easily exhibited no matter the conditions of the space in which it might be exhibited.
Option two, supporting from below immediately brought to my mind a plinth. At first I envisioned a traditional, modern white plinth upon which one would sit a small sculpture - a bronze, glass, or ceramic object. It would need to be as unobtrusive as possible as to not detract from the painting. Yes, it would need to be at least ten feet long, and to bring the panels to the average spectators eye level around five feet high. But it should not bee to deep so as the panels would not be swallowed up by the surface upon which they sit. With the deepest panels being two inches deep a plinth as just described would need to be no more than five inches deep.
Hmm, a plinth ten feet long, five feet high and five inches deep ... I don't need Sir Isaac to tell me there are issues with the stability of such a plinth if built in a traditional, modern form.
Not to mention it would be difficult to move/store/build...
There is the option to break it up into sections or even into 24 individual plinths but stability would remain an issue and though weighting the bottom could help in stabilizing the plinth it would make lifting and moving an issue.
So I gave it a few days thought. And suddenly one afternoon while reading on the sofa I looked up and saw the answer staring back at me. A metal sculpture I had made out of aluminum in 1987. The sculpture is just over five feet tall and consists of a small square base plate of approximately four inches, a five foot rod topped off with a plate about 3 inches x 8 inches welded to the top of which is a curling whirl of strips of aluminum - part of my grandfather's lawn chair - that had been run through a roller and pop-riveted together. The work is incredibly light weight and yet stable and easy to move. Metal! I began thinking of other sculptures I had made in the late eighties also using rods and small bases welded together to create a pedestal for a smaller sculpture to sit on top. Of course this is the solution; twenty-four individual supports upon which each panel can sit like a head on top of a stick-figure body, held in place by magnets embedded into the bottom edge of the wood. With nothing sticking out at the sides the panels on their pedestals can be grouped close together, in a straight or curved line, even in a circle. Or they could be spread out, scattered through a space, or clustered in smaller groups. They would be easy to move, store, and flexible in their installation. So I set about designing what I want. I am currently in the process of pricing the materials and eventual fabrication by others - although I do have a welder which I might just break out.
If all goes well I hope to have this work finished and documented in the next two months. Maybe by then it will even have a title. Until then it remains the work yet to be named with a drawing of the legs which will carry it, me, Franzi and Petra to our next collaboration.
Here is the drawing.