Artists Rhonda Holberton, Cybele Lyle and Lauren Douglas Respond to Unique Exhibition Space
According to philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his essay Phenomenology of Perception, perception of space is dependent on our understanding of the things around us—be they in front or behind, below or beside—and perception incorporates our understanding of the buildings within which we inhabit to relate to these things. Experiences in spaces begin to build personal significance for us: “To experience a structure is not to receive it into oneself passively: it is to live it, to take it up, assume it and discover its immanent significance,”[1] Ponty said. Because of their significance, spaces such as homes and art galleries are capable of providing particularly meaningful experiences for people.
The experience is even more amplified when homes and galleries are combined into one space. Located in the San Francisco neighborhood of Noe Valley, an unassuming space called Under the Willow is a place where artists and viewers can come together to view art in a comfortable setting that combines the simplicity of a white-wall gallery with the building’s primary function as a home. The modern home is noted as the greenest house in San Francisco, and features wood floors made from reclaimed South East Asia railroads that lend a warm and variegated texture, while solar panels provide efficient energy, including hot water for the house, and the deck outside includes 1300 gallons of rainwater catchment underneath.
Approximately four times per year Under the Willow hosts curated salons featuring work from galleries, artists and private collections. The main salon room is not a typical white cube; there are elements of comfort and domesticity, including discrete closet doors, and a comfortable large ottoman. The ceilings are approximately 14 feet in height, imparting an awe-inspiring and airy, open feel. Rising 10 foot windows reveal the outside: a tranquil, minimally appointed split-level deck made from reclaimed redwood with a delicate and comfortable crushed seashell path. The deck is surrounded by , , lush ferns, unique specimen Begonias with a bamboo-like quality and a soft willow tree that inspired the name of the location.
For its inaugural salon, artist Lauren Douglas curated pieces from Rhonda Holberton and Cybele Lyle in addition to her own work. “An ongoing investigation of "space" in all its myriad interpretations was the link between the three artists’ practices,”[2] explained Douglas. In some cases the artwork references the land while in other instances it references architecture—and the architecture of the space also influenced Douglas’s selection.
Visitors enter the space through the garage that leads to a small foyer, where to the right hangs a screen print by Cybele Lyle titled Untitled (Screens #24) (2014). Lyle’s work often examines architecture and the ways that bodies move within spaces. In the print, translucent taupe-colored rectangles are layered one on top of the other to form an imaginary room for the viewer to “inhabit.” Decisions are made as Lyle works through a process of experimentation, one step leading the next.
Apropos, the foyer is at the top of a small staircase that leads to the main salon room below. On one main wall of the room is a video projection by Lyle titled Structural Shift (2014). The video features what appear to be 2x4 wooden beams arranged in different configurations within a small room. Upon closer inspection the beams are actually strips of cardboard, and the walls are matte board. The scene mimics the floorplan for a gallery called Et. al, where Lyle showed the full-size version of the installation she created after making the maquette to create the video. Seen here, the transitioning rooms in the projection add dimension and a surreal quality to the space, shifting visitors’ perception of time and locale, emphasizing the integration of gallery and home and what it means to view art here.
Also creating site-specific curiousness is Douglas’s video Eureka (2013) nestled in a high alcove space which can only be seen looking up at a strange angle. Douglas titled the video after the epic prose poem by Edgar Allan Poe of the same name. In it, Poe recounts a direct corollary between nature, our experiences and the revelation of a divine entity.[3] As such, Douglas’s video flickers with bright white light reflections on water, constantly moving yet barely are revealing its subject creating a sense of the unknown. Similarly, her accompanying photograph of the same title depicts a close-up view of the ground, with dirt and rocks, symbolic of terra incognita—unnamed land or unknown territory.[4] In a sense, the photograph marks memory embedded deep beneath the earth.
To the right, Rhonda Holberton’s Hole IV (2012) is in direct conversation with Douglas’s piece. The Hole series involved a complex research journey that Holberton underwent in order to dig holes into the earth—“anti-heroic” holes as she puts it—that although seemingly banal are acutely profound.[5] The location is in the Salton Sea, near Sandia National Laboratories, a military non-nuclear component test site for nuclear weapons. Ritualistically, Holberton dug small holes then documented them with her iPhone, viewing the series as “an intervention of the body's internal being into the outer world.”[6] Digging into the earth, removing substance from its “body,” documenting the act, then releasing the aftermath of the gesture into the technological ether is synonymous with human intervention in space (outer space), and the state’s desire to invest in conquering rather than preserving.
Holberton, Douglas and Lyle each have their own perspective on what space means to them, bringing their own lexicon of materials, processes and mediums; as Douglas explains of the installation: “I wanted the work to have individual presence while dialoging with the other pieces.” Together the works poignantly arrive at the space where neither land nor architecture are materialized—that sense of “dwelling”[7] one gets when they become aware of themselves in relation to the space around them—to live it, to take it up.
Image Attribution:
Top Upper Left - Lauren Douglas, Eureka, 2013, C-Print, 20” x 20” Schefsky Collection
Top Upper Right - Rhonda Holberton, Hole IV, 2012, Archival Pigment Print, 24” x 32” - Schefsky Collection
Body Top - Cybele Lyle, Untitled, 2014 (screens #24) unique screen print, 22” x 30”), curtesy the artist.
Body Bottom - Lauren DouglasEureka, 2013, Video Projection, (dimensions variable), curtesy the artist
Not shown - Cybele LyleProducing Space, 2014, Video Projection, dimensions variableUntitled, 2014
Footnotes:
[1] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, (New York: Routledge) 1962, 301.
[2] All quotes from Lauren Douglas as per email dialogue.
[3] Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem, 1848.
[4] Walt Whitman’s poem “Unnamed Lands” comes to mind when he writes of the colonization of the United States and the people who came before: “Not a mark, not a record remains — and yet all remains.”
[5] Rhonda Holberton, “Indeed the heroic mythologies of the ‘artist as pioneer’ reflect the symbolic narratives of the American West and the manifest destiny given to America by Nature of God,” (MA thesis, Stanford University) 2012, 20.
[6] Ibid., 22.
[7] Martin Heidegger, “If we pay heed to these relations between locations and spaces, between spaces and space, we get a clue to help us in thinking of the relation of man in space,” from “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” in Poetry, Language, Thought, (New York: Harper & Row) 1971, 154.
