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Be they trained
or outsider types, artists inclined toward the visionary and the
mystical are all over the art-historical map. They usually
present their mysterious visions as something beyond our
immediate realm. Or they insinuate such visions in the everyday
world, as if it’s naturally embedded there.
“In
No Strange Land” is a solo exhibit by Edouard Steinhauer at
the gallery FiveMyles in Brooklyn. In it, the mystical is
something that’s individually engineered and grounded in one’s
chosen socio-historical sense of being.
The
entire show is based on the only surviving work by the
African-American visionary artist James Hampton, “The Throne
of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.”
A monumental 14-year labor of love (currently in the permanent
collection of the Smithsonian), it consists of over 150 pieces
of various found objects almost all covered in aluminum foil and
presented in a shrine-like installation. If Hampton’s work
exudes an awesome presence of spiritual mystery and his deep
faith in Christ’s Second Coming, Steinhauer’s exhibit, in
contrast, galvanizes such a concern, launching viewers in a dark
universe that he himself has aesthetically (re)fabricated and
encoded. It’s a marvel that, through his earnest engagement with
this chosen realm, he manages both to demystify as well as
amplify its mystery.
Steinhauer achieves this paradoxical demystification, though,
partly because he has (wisely) localized, and therefore
grounded, the spiritual-mystical in the particular aesthetics of
a self-taught artist. Made immanent or politicized as such, the
mystical forfeits some of its transcendence. Five of the six
works presented in the show, especially the wall-sized triptych
“The Illuminated Throne of the State of Eternity no. 2,”
“Winged Beast,” and “The Illuminated Throne […] no. 1,”
consist of images or motifs that are, like Hampton’s
installation, foil-wrapped. These include toy-like spacecrafts,
winged quadrupeds and other creatures and even a couple of
handguns. In the latter photograph, there’s a sense of
theatrical opposition and of imminent combat between vestiges of
shimmering beings seemingly facing off in the lateral sides of
the composition. The staged action takes place as if under a
central watchful presence flanked by two gold-handled guns aimed
in opposing directions.
Unlike Hampton’s work, however, the artist uses the
foil-wrapped objects seen in the photo-based works as electrical
capacitors and conductors. The shimmering lightning-like fringes
that seem to streak against the dark background of his pictures
result from the artist generating and manipulating electrical
discharges or filaments of light emitted by the wrapped objects
and then photographing them in complete darkness. By
electrifying images that recall Hampton’s shrine, Steinhauer not
only affirms and amplifies the mystery he has appropriated but
also vouches for it as a viable means of projecting one’s chosen
identity in the world.
That
Steinhauer deliberately seeks to establish to some extent a
spiritual and brotherly identity with another black artist is of
course also evident in the sense of connection suggested by the
show’s title, “In No Strange Land.” Born in Haiti, the
artist came to the United States at age two and went on to
receive his art training from Yale. Having visited his native
country several times as a child and as an adult, even attending
school there for about three years, he seems rather familiar
with Haitian culture and its fantastical art tradition. His
compelling “Winged Beast,” one of two smaller magnificent
photo-based works in the show, is an existential, frenzied take
on the theme of chien pays or (stray Haitian) “country
dog” the artist referenced in an exhibited work at the
alternative space Exit Art in 1996.
But
the cultural-historical identity that underpins the show is only
part of what makes it compelling. Aptly presented in a dimly lit
gallery, the overall feel of the works is contemplative but
longingly so, quite at ease but open to possibilities. In “The
Millennium General Assembly Starship,” the seemingly bulky
but actually lightweight radar-like rotor that glints and crowns
this large but finely economical sculpture seems able to detect
even imperceptible vibes far and wide, not least from the other
exhibited works, on which its reflected light flashes. But the
entire work, under which viewers could easily walk, seems
self-contained, emitting (as in “Winged Beast”) an
abiding stoicism as the rotor’s engine whirs on.
All
in all, the magical beauty – and even the mystery – in the show
lies in it’s transparency of means. For instance, in the kinetic
piece “Crown # 1,” which somewhat recalls Duchamps’
playful machine “Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics),”
Steinhauer dispenses with the already deconstructed
theatricality with which he conveys the notion of mystery and
opts for a more open engagement with it. Here, a simple metal
ladder, a couple of light bulbs, a motorized contraption that
spins some foil-wrapped spacecrafts and a transparent disc with
a lone star glued on it are all that the artist needs to project
cyclically on the gallery wall a sort of shadow film about a
space quest to an unreachable star. (Hampton had claimed that
the Star of Bethlehem supposedly appeared in 1946 in Washington,
DC, where he labored as a daytime janitor and nighttime artist.)
Steinhauer’s quest is all convincing. But it’s not about
attaining a fixed, external goal. Nor is it about acquiescing to
the promise of salvation per se. Like the glinting, persistent
and surprisingly dissimilar faceted bulks that make up the two
sensors of the would-be symmetrical rotor probing the heavens
(the only variation in an otherwise thoroughly balanced work)
the artist simply insists on the freedom to stand for one’s
belief against, as he has written, “our ingrained acceptance
of the current ‘global order.’”
It’s
this dynamic that lends “In No Strange Land” its
reverberating power.
“In No
Strange Land”
FiveMyles
558 St. Johns Place
Brooklyn, NY 11238
718 783 4438
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