Tony Tye, Post-GazetteThese two posters from Josh MacPhee's "Celebrate People's History Project" are part of the "Small Acts" exhibit of eight artists at the SPACE gallery, Downtown.
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Where:SPACE gallery, 812 Liberty Ave., Downtown.
When: Noon to 8 p.m. today through Thursday and noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Exhibit closes after Saturday.
Tickets: 412-325-7723 or www.spacepittsburgh.org/flash.html.
For its latest exhibition foray, "Small Acts," the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's SPACE gallery feels confused and crowded with the offerings of eight artists.
Exhibiting are Bob Bingham, Kathryn Sitter, Shaun Slifer, Ally Reeves, Josh MacPhee, L'Oxformidable, Carolina Loyola-Garcia and Tiffany Sum.
Bingham and Sitter's eerily titled "Wegrow: Drive by Shooting" is a three-dimensional project display comprising a video projection and a gardening cart.
Accompanying Wegrow project literature states that this husband-and-wife team initiated a community-based art action that identifies vacant or neglected lots in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. With volunteers from the neighborhood, the team reclaims the lots from disuse and debris by cleaning them up and planting a sidewalk border of African Marigolds. The cleanup and flower planting seeks to identify these unused spaces in Homewood as viable neighborhood sites rather than dumping grounds.
I like this idea of artists as workers, as opposed to dictators, in the community. The artist, in this instance, becomes a medium between the inhabitants of a space and their immediate surroundings, acting like a specialty lens that refocuses locals' attention to the possibility of their immediate space.
Cleaning and replanting an urban space highlights community land for consideration beyond refuse. Consider this in contrast to the possible aggressive action of painting a three-story mural or developing land into contrived "artist's spaces" that rarely house artists or integrate or assist a community.
Continuing this idea of artist as medium between action and idea is MacPhee's "Celebrate People's History Project."
MacPhee has been hand printing posters that eulogize groups, individuals or historic events that are deemed too radical or fringe to be recognized in mainstream American history. Expanding on this idea, he brought the project to CAPA teacher Tresa Varner's 11th-grade art students, asking them to look beyond their programmed academic history curriculum and create block relief print posters of their own, commemorating people and events that the students felt have been omitted from their general history lessons.
Joining MacPhee and Varner to present lectures to and conduct workshops with the students were artists Etta Cetera, Shaun Slifer, Jude Vachun, Mary Tremonte and Tommy Budjanic.
Historical art activism informs Slifer's participatory mixed media-installation "Trail of Tears (and Andrew Jackson)."
Affixed to the wall is a $20 bill with the new big-headed Andrew Jackson. Officiously stamped upon it in large block letters in an antiqued font is the phrase "Great Heroes of Real Estate/Indian Removal Act of 1830." The inked stamp rests on a shelf below, inviting visitors to deface their own $20 bills in a gesture of latent activism via revisionist history.
At first I thought no one would really stamp a 20. I was pleasantly surprised when, a few days after I had seen the exhibit, my friend paid for a latte and a bowl of soup with a stamped 20, upon seeing which I exclaimed, "I didn't think anyone would really do that!" Granted, my friend is a local curator and we were at The Warhol. But nevertheless, once money is back in the till it goes to the proprietor, then to the bank, then into the world, etc.
The effectiveness of defacing money, as opposed to decorating public property with graffiti, wheat pasting posters or posting stickers is that no one has to spend time or money to clean it off. Also, the audience potential for this action becomes universal, ignoring a specific site's exclusivity.
Common to each of these works are individuals exploring socially engaged artist roles, impacting communities and exchange networks.
Two artists work with families and neighbors to clean up disused lots in Homewood, inviting the neighborhood to consider the functionality of the too often dysfunctional spaces in which they live, while -- most importantly -- lending a useful hand. A group of artists/activists/educators raise the awareness of young people on the subjective reality of history and the ramifications of its uses (or misuses) in institutionalized and academic settings. Finally, an artist infiltrates the U.S. Treasury by tagging a surface that's not so easily cleaned with soap and water, very much like our country's actual (and daily compounding) history.
So why is this show misleadingly titled "Small Acts" followed by a bizarre sound byte wall text that belittles these works and the big ideas they ignite?
The works I saw didn't incite "dialogue ... on how we work through our most quotidian problems." In contrast, I found clear statements made through thoughtful projects, despite the fact that the works were not so thoughtfully presented as to allow these ideas to fully speak.
The show crowds the space and the works coalesce into a mass, making it difficult to extrapolate any value. On the day I visited, one of the artists was gallery sitting, and our discussion, rather than immediate visual impact, generated my interest in investigating the show.
This isn't a movie review, ad space or derivative "Best Of" list that needs a slogan or special typeface to grab an audience. It's an art exhibition -- highlighted by some quality ideas -- that's weakened as a whole by an exhibition statement's callous attempt to qualify a catchy interpretation and title. People aren't stupid, so why does SPACE continuously put its patrons down with trite leads and formulaic exhibition designs?
Sometimes I wonder whom the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust trusts with Pittsburgh's culture.
First Published: December 27, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
