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Out of Context/Into Context The twenty artists in this exhibition incorporate and transform the material discards of our environment-accessible spectres that haunt street, house and road-in their work. They use convoluted cans, scattered machinery parts, paper bags, styrofoam packing, wooden crates and charred beams, wall posters, secondhand shoes: broken, worn, displaced or decomposing fragments from our lives-archeological finds for a not-too-distant future. Familiar materials are combined and resurrected into new tabernacles of meaning, the icons of contemporary life. These artists invest objects, such as sticks, stones and bones, that initially possess little intrinsic worth, with significance, just as their ancient forebearers did when they created totems and fetishes. Through the artist's intervention, the materials evolve into new, transformed entities that function as foci for spiritual contemplation and evocation. Tribal "artworks" served as poetic bridges from this world into another, and were a link between the individual and the society. They reflected both personal and collective visions, and were an essential part of the community. Today Art is being elevated to new and loft spheres of value, which contributes to its being locked away in ivory towers with the question of who has the keys. Art is generally isolated from the community and from everyday life. All the more reason to remind ourselves that even the most highly valued paintings contain within themselves the humblest of elements: permanent pigments like raw sienna and ochre are made of earth, clay colored by iron oxide, or rust, and other combinations of "dirt", minerals and/or metal ores. And now such fundamental stuff, Jean Dubuffet points out, has been raised from classic subservience to a level of equality with form, and even dominance over it - becoming the subject matter itself. For centuries the thematic traditions of European painting and sculpture were restricted to the "important" subjects: religious and historical matters and portraits of prominent persons. Dutch genre painting, then the authentic depiction of rural life and landscape by the French Barbizon school, and later the Impressionists working out-of-doors to capture nature and life, broke away from these limitations. The revolt extended further into this century when Braque and Picasso used the actual fragments and debris of modern life - newspapers, broken glass, ticket stubs, for example - in their work; the American Ashcan school attacked the preciousness of art by depicting industrialism, its victims and its trash; the Dadaist Schwitters and Duchamp took the real object out of its context; while Breton and the Surrealists imbued it with the life, mystery and magic. The theme of permanence versus impermanence, of value versus junk, weaves its way throughout the exhibition. Materials from our everyday life, according to Dubuffet, have a direct and potent language; they have presence, vitality and emotional associations. "Experience with found materials develops a source and an aesthetic library for personal creativity", states Victor D'Amico, "and expands individual sensibilities to creativity outside oneself". In taking the old, unwanted, displaced, unvalued material and giving it new life, the artist seeks to tear down the barriers between art and life. The artists shown here are unorthodox visionaries, deeply in love with life's forms and the stage upon which living goes on. They have created works that have appeal, each one on many different levels. On one level, these works dance their way into the senses: the enormously rich variations of texture, form and color and the surprising balance of composition present a striking, sometimes exotic, contrastive interplay with the emotional associations engendered in the materials themselves. This is apparent in works by Sari Dienes, Anna Bisso and Beatrice Claremon. On another level, we enter the realm of the unconscious, of the surreal dream of desire, of bizarre or whimsical fantasies which can be at the same time disconcerting. The humor has a bite to it, Alfonso Ossorio, Sophie Newman and Len Peterson with the power of their sorcery bring us here. On yet another level, we are caught in the dimension of time: the state of the materials themselves evoke the process of change. Carol Goebel resurrects old tools and instruments into timeless figurative presences. Paul Laster's torn and layered wall posters clearly show the passage of time as event, as does Robert Rauschenberg with his use of contemporary print media transfers perceived as through a veil. In Katie Seiden's pieces the process of change actually goes on in the changing colorations of the hydrostone. There is poetic metaphor in works by Doris Lanier and Alan Rosner, sometimes violent and vitriolic as in Lanier's while Rosner's manifest mood and control. Faith-Dorian Wright's tribal handings and Alexis Gorodines's assemblages evoke ancient civilizations and tribal magic; the juxtaposition of ancient and modern creates an new synthesis. We shall also find, in this show, explorations of the elegance and simplicity of materials as in the figurative wood abstractions of Gordon D Rapp, and in Liga Kalnajs' silk lamination with glass pieces. Many of the artists, perhaps inadvertently, have become critics of social values; their art challenges the esteem in which we hold costliness, newness, unblemished forms, clean, shiny commodities that reflect this year's transient styles. These issues arise in work by Arman, Cara Croninger, Rosalie Schwartz and Sue Fishbein. The selection and use of cast-off and dislodged materials becomes not only a satiric or darkly prophetic statement about today's world, but suggests an optimism based on the process and possibilities of transformation. By dealing with reality on a symbolic level, by arranging and rearranging new patterns, artists search for a sense of control within a social system that fosters feelings of powerlessness and despair. The materials talk about life, events, location; the artist hears and communicates; the communion with nature becomes a communion with the entire environment. Perhaps, in the final analysis, the work and the exhibition itself are a reflection of the struggles and determination to build anew; to keep the elements of life, of life itself, from being destroyed, In an expression of dissatisfaction, hope and strength the message emerges; if we can create something new with the objects and materials of the world around us, we can create a new world. Rosalie Schwartz Curator "Out of Context" Artists in the Exhibition ARMAN ANNA BISSO BEATRICE CLAREMON CARA CRONINGER SARI DIENES SUE FISHBEIN CAROL GOEBEL ALEXIS GORODINE LIGA KALNAJS DORIS LANIER PAUL LASTER SOPHIE NEWMAN ALFONSO OSSORIO LEN PETERSEN GORDON D. RAPP ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG ALAN ROSNER ROSALIE SCHWARTZ KATIE SEIDEN FAITH-DORIAN WRIGHT
