historical derivé
review of mary lum's exhibition "when the sky is a shape"
Mary Lum’s new exhibition when the sky is a shape is a collection of twenty-five collages constructed from text and photographs, often warped and dissected beyond recognition, with painted shapes cut and torn from construction paper. In this series, Lum’s abstraction is a tool used to create little worlds.
To me, this project is distinctly of the pandemic. The press release supplied by the Yancey Richardson Gallery refers to the theory of derivé, where a person might abandon their activity and allow themselves to be pulled in by their surroundings. The pandemic, a historical derivé en masse, supplied a unique moment in human history, a time in which the sky became a shape. Something viewed upside-down through a window as we lay strewn across our beds, or paused in our tracks on the slowly returned-to streets. Without the static of the world around us, our upward gaze was obstructed only by the tops of buildings.
In the first room at the Yancey Richardson gallery, text is bisected, even trisected. Only corners of letters are left so the words are beyond recognition. The familiar is relinquished, reduced into shape. Faded blues stand against stark triangles of magenta. Process is present in the pentimenti1. Hot pink lines the cuts on the paper. Something is torn away, treated, revealing contrast underneath. Small paintings are grouped together on one wall, while larger five foot creations act as portals.
Sometimes, the works feel like an exercise in construction, in graphic design. One piece called “Poster” places letters at the forefront, with three-dimensional abstraction relegated to the corner. In others works, this is not the case. In a previous series of hers called Historical Present, Lum took photographs of images from newspapers and abstracted them into angles and lines. The results were cubist imaginings which evoked real spaces and crowds. In this new exhibition, the outlines of spaces, shapes can be seen. A piece called “Endless Fall 3” depicts something like a piano, which folds up out of itself like origami, coils visible beneath its lid.
In the second, smaller room, the subjects of photographs are more easily recognized, and while the letters are still distorted, some phrases are legible. In one piece, “Thing”, the phrase “Do the Right Thing,” serves as a pedestal for looming green and fuchsia shapes, like a building built on top of promise. Another yellow and blue-gray piece called “Pressure” places the phrase “Personne histoire naturelle nouvelle vague,” atop a brick wall, a reference to French New Wave. Like the musical genre it evokes, the piece speaks to iconoclasm. Criticism of modern life simmers beneath the surface of Lum’s work.
There are doorways in Lum’s pieces, lots of them. Eyes catch on three dimensional edges like toes, forcing the viewer to stop and move inward slower than we might’ve. On the other side, photographs of the real world can be seen, but not from angles one would look at them. In “Endless Fall 4,” we stare down a sideways subway tunnel, hurtling like some derailed train car. In “Menu,” we find our necks craned, staring at a blue wall, like a writer falling asleep at a table outside of a cafe. At first glance the colors which border the view are solid, but a closer look reveals that clementine peaks through lime green paint. A construction within a construction. These pieces, which shift perspective, are entrancing.
This show carries Lum’s fascination with the “Unbuilt,” an idea established by Indian nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha. The idea is to depict an imagined world in the wake of one which is constantly being destroyed. Invention is redefined in the rubble. As everything falls apart we view our surroundings in a new way. Sometimes, it even feels like a new world.
Mary Lum is currently a professor at Bennington College in Vermont, and my friend who went there says she seems cool. If you want to see this exhibition, it’s currently free at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea, at 525 West 22nd Street.
The art included in this newsletter, is my hack-y procreate interpretation of one of Mary Lum’s Voyage, 2021. Acrylic and photo collage on paper. 12 x 16 inches.
Under-drawing and paint from previous versions drafts of the work.