Shana Kaplow: A Coterie of Chairs

Rosalux Gallery - Minneapolis

By Christina Schmid

Fifty-seven works on paper, assembled in a horizontal series, wrap around three walls of Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis, interrupted only by two black-and-white projections. The sequence begins in pale, barely visible marks before inky black lines gather into recognizable structures: a coterie of chairs, from plastic molded to stainless-steel curves, antique wood to skeletal sleek. Shana Kaplow’s latest work articulates an entire vocabulary of chairs. Arms reach elegantly, backs bend to beckon the weary, legs touch and furtively snuggle against each other. Distinctive shapes quiver and dissolve into misty ephemera, as if objects had turned into ghosts, their aural shadows extending beyond material limits.

Chairs are curious creatures. Designed to support and cradle the human body, they are often public amenities, passed between strangers. As sculptural objects, they inevitably allude to the body’s proportions. As art-historical artifacts, they have been photographed, painted, defined, designed, stacked and broken. In Kaplow’s hands, chairs become parts that stand for an abstract whole: a system of relationships that extends far beyond domestic interiors; a global armature of trade reliant on geographically separate sites of production and consumption; an economics of distance fueling manufactured desires a hemisphere away. Informed by two residencies in China, Kaplow investigates a choreography of cross-cultural relationships. Invisible lines between intimate and public spaces shimmer in and out of focus in her work, hinting at the web of social interactions centered on deceptively ordinary objects. Chairs figure as seats of power, sources of comfort, gauges of prestige and distinction.

Shana Kaplow, Close to Home: Chairs, 2014, ink on paper, video projections, projector stands made from scrap wood and manufactured furniture parts. Installation view at Rosalux Gallery, Minneapolis. Photo: Petronella Ytsma.

The linear arrangement of works on paper pauses, twice, to make room for projected, silent footage, shot in public places in Beijing. The first, recorded from great distance, shows clusters of people standing, talking, waiting in the square outside of the Forbidden City. As others pass by, a ballet of personal space unfolds. Bodies in black and white enact familiarity and alienation, negotiating proximity and distance in ever-shifting constellations. Parallel power lines run through the bottom half of the frame, connecting the moving image to the swift black lines on paper. The second video brings us closer to the subjects whose movements it records, but their silhouettes blur. Far from solely courting formalist affinities to the bloom of ink washes on paper, the blur begs the questions, where do we begin? Where do we end? How far does our sense of self extend beyond the body’s bounds?

At once restrained and gestural, Kaplow’s visual language is at home in the interrogative. The work conveys a deep interest in form but is not constrained by formalism. The tangible ease with her materials allows the artist to plumb possibilities: What emerges from the space in between deliberate gestures? What do ordinary objects reveal about the shape of our world, the web of economic entanglements that structure our everyday? The chairs become protagonists whose portraits refuse to fully come into focus, as if demonstrating Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the age of global neo-liberalism: particle or wave, momentum or location. The more we emphasize one facet, the foggier the rest becomes.

(April 5 - 27, 2014)

Christina Schmid is a writer, teacher, editor, and critic, who lives and works in the Twin Cities. She is a regular contributor to Flash Art and Afterimage.

Filed Under: Reviews