What we cannot speak of, we must remember

Sarachek, After Fukushima (O), 2014

As visual artists, we are most sensitive to what we see.  What we see in fact could be said to become part of our body's tissue, which soaks in, while we walk around and conduct our lives, events happening or glimpsed at the most remote distances, as well as those from nearby, not to overlook those from the snapshots and clips of television, magazines and cinema that our culture has so carelessly laid before us.

With our organs of sense therefore we extend ourselves, and what is there is also, by this extension and in a way, within us.  We may ignore it - we are free to do so, as some artists strike a pose of doing - or we may be so engaged emotionally by it that we are wracked with outrage, heartbreak, and despair.  There is an art of protest that comes from this, often reduced to naive cartoons, graffiti and posters, as if all the rights and wrongs were already established in everyone's mind; and there is a deeper art that is itself a struggle for expression.  One thinks here of Goya's El 3 de mayo (1814) in the Prado or Picasso's Guernica (1937) at MoMA, pictures of a specific time and place and yet the most devastating statements imaginable about man's injustice to man.  There is also an art of response, call it political or not, which, quite unlike these stirring calls to arms, sustains itself more softly as meditation, commemoration, memorial, or prayer, and may last the lifetime of the artist.  Examples abound; to mention them all would constitute a poem of epic length, a prolonged lament for life and for peace on earth.  One favorite of many is the 40-year series of pictures by Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, begun in 1948 but based on memories of the Spanish civil war a decade earlier.  Some versions are of an astounding simplicity of gesture, such as this lithograph in the Tate.

Motherwell, Spanish Elegy I, 1975

This appropriately brings us to the present exhibition of works on paper, twelve chemigrams in all, together with an installation of ceramic funerary bowls, by Norman Sarachek entitled After Fukushima, on display at the New Arts Program Gallery in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, until November 1, 2015.  Norm's intent is to draw attention to the meltdown of four nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011, with the accompanying release of deadly radioactivity into the water and atmosphere that is, quite inconceivably, ongoing to this day, and not only to honor the memory of the victims of that tragedy, which it almost shames us to say in passing, but also to stimulate public discussion of the dangers of nuclear power in its aftermath.

Sarachek, After Fukushima (D), 2014

Sarachek, After Fukushima (C), 2014

 

Sarachek, After Fukushima (H), 2014

The fragile, flowery imagery, lazy with the relaxation of a summer's day, recalls Norm's deft chemigram touches from previous outings, in particular the handsome show he had in Philadelphia in 2010, which we covered then.  The strategies and devices haven't changed much over the years, nor need they : it's a language waiting for good use and he has found it.  His images amass a subtle power as they confute the public's relative indifference to the tragedy and even perhaps ironize it - but it all takes place by tiny, slow movements which achieve their graded effect almost without one's noticing.  He helps complete the picture by placing funerary bowls containing clear glass beads, an allusion to radioactive particles, beneath each picture, with inverted chopsticks that, I'm told, symbolize death.  It's his conception that each picture becomes an altar.  OK, maybe the staging's too obvious, but maybe also it has to be : the exhibition will serve as a platform for future poetry readings in traditional Japanese modes and for public discussion of issues raised by Fukushima.

Sarachek, After Fukushima (L), 2014

installation view showing funerary bowls

Sarachek as pot-maker

Sarachek's chop on lower right of an After Fukushima scroll

The twelve chemigrams are printed as an edition of 10 on Moab museum rag paper, each presented as a 56 x 24 " scroll, in further tribute to traditional Japanese practice, with an impressed chop in the corner fashioned by Norm himself.

For further information, the reader is invited to contact the artist at his site, www.nsarachek.com.

Where you can look at chemigrams this winter

Turnbull, numerical structure 2, 2012

The Hosmer Gallery is located at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, about a 2-hour drive west from Boston.  Very soon you'll be able to see some of Richard Turnbull's work from 2010-2012 there, in a much anticipated show running February 1 to February 28, 2013.  Am I giving it all away by saying that my favorite is the surprising, apocalyptic 'glyph studies 1'?

Turnbull, glyph studies 1, 2012

Meanwhile, down in Pennsylvania Norm Sarachek is having a show at Santa Bannon Fine Art in Bethlehem from December 7 to December 30, 2012, featuring his new 'Steel Works' series.

Sarachek, Steel Works 1, 2012

Sarachek, Steel Works 2, 2012

He follows that up with another show at the Perkins Center for the Arts in southern New Jersey which runs from February 9 to March 23, 2013, because you'll need to see more of this fine artist.

The inventor of the so-called chromoskedasic variation in chemigrams, Dominic Man-Kit Lam, recently concluded a huge show with over 100 works at the Shanghai Art Museum (China) this past October 2012 entitled 'Vision of Harmony'.  He also spoke at the event, and an inspirational video of it has been posted on YouTube.

Man-Kit Lam, from Vision of Harmony, 2012

Man-Kit Lam, from Vision of Harmony, 2012

Man-Kit Lam, installation view, Vision of Harmony, 2012

Back in New York, Eva Nikolova is exhibiting chemigrams from her new series 'Ordinary Disappearances', which offer imaginary but quite emotional Balkan landscapes from and about memory, triggered by a trip to her homeland after many years' absence.  The show is at the Grady Alexis Gallery in El Taller Latinoamericano in upper Manhattan and runs from November 26, 2012 to January 9, 2013.

Nikolova, untitled IV, 2012

Nikolova, untitled VI, 2012

A blog regular, Nolan Preece, is presenting both chemigrams and glassprints at the PUB Gallery, Wildflower Village, Reno, Nevada from November 29, 2012 to January 15, 2013.

Chemigramist Douglas Collins exhibited in the recent Alternative Processes Competition at Soho Photo in lower Manhattan from November 7 to December 1, 2012.  He will also be in the annual group show at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California, from January 12 to March 1, 2013.

Chemigram shows for rest of the year, including some you'll have to travel to

Man-Kit Lam, 2005

For those with a yen for travel, we've gathered a few shows you may want to catch before the year is out.  All include chemigrams either solely or in part or, in Ms Rossiter's case, include what might be called a chemigramic inflection - and for that reason alone they're all worth seeing, besides the utter beauty and mystery of them.  If we've missed your show, please post a comment and we'll fix it.

Pierre Cordier 
Paris Photo, HackelBury Gallery, November 10-13, 2011, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Dominic Man-Kit Lam
Ink Art: a world without rules, September 2011 & February 2012, Novel Plaza, 128 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China

Alison Rossiter
Art Platform LA, Yossi Milo Gallery, October 1-3, 2011, LA Mart, Los Angeles, California, USA

Alison Rossiter
Paris Photo, Stephen Bulger Gallery, November 10-13, 2011, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Edward Mapplethorpe
The Variations, October 5 - November 12, 2011, Dubner Moderne, rue du Grand-Chêne 6, Lausanne, Switzerland

Norman Sarachek
Emerging Artists Annual Showcase, November 4, 2011, Allure West Studios, 15 E State St, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA

Matthew Higgins
Pingyao International Photography Festival, September 1 - September 30, 2011, Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China

Nolan Preece
Continuitive: Connections Between Parallel Directions, Dec 2011 - January 2012, Truckee Meadows Community College, 7000 Dandini Blvd, Reno, NV, USA

Douglas Collins
New Prints 2011 Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock, October 3, 2011 - March 28, 2012, Pfizer Corporation, 235 E 42 St, New York, New York, USA

just closed:

Dominic Man-Kit Lam
Sino-French Exhibition of Art Exchange, September 20-22, 2011, National Library Exhibition Center, Beijing, China

Nolan Preece
Xhibit, May 13 to August 27, 2011, Preston Contemporary Art Center, 1755 Avenida del Mercado, Mesilla, New Mexico, USA

Norman Sarachek in Philadelphia

Norm's beautiful work has hovered in my mind ever since I saw my first chemigrams several years ago. Its lyricism of spare gesture, radiant space, fleeting dark forms cutting cleanly across a diagonal have remained a model for the quiet elegance this art is capable of. Working with the simplest materials, water, developer, fixer, and black and white photo paper, he creates a world you want to believe in, where abstraction is pushed to a palpable limit and the feeling of a true humanist is never far off, an echo of his early dedication of documentary photography. You can now enjoy his work in a group show at the new LG Tripp Gallery, July 9 through August 21. Located in the Old City just a few blocks from Penns Landing and the Betsy Ross House, the LG Tripp Gallery is committed to bringing new abstract artists to the attention of the Philadelphia public. Here we present a couple of works which we hope will be in the show, Icarus-3 and Kokoro. For more information you should definitely check out Norm's website, which is full of history, methods and motivation.