Photo courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center
In recent weeks I’ve covered the re-openings of several regional art institutions from Racine to West Bend. It’s a beat I never expected, but at this moment am grateful to be on it. This week I continued north to Sheboygan, where the John Michael Kohler Arts Center reconnected with public audiences after being closed for four months. Even more than other recent re-openings, Kohler directly addresses the psychological strangeness of our moment with dedicated programming, which is by turns triggering, therapeutic, and hopeful.
“On Being Here (and There)” at Kohler through Jan. 24, 2021, functions as an overarching titular concept that thematically unites five independent exhibitions. All focus on themes of human interconnection and the current conditions of distancing and social isolation. The work focuses on the nature of human movement and exchange, and considers how and where the artist, the audience, and the public sphere intersects.
The most ambitious of these sub-shows, indeed the “anchor” as the Center notes, is “Between You and Me,” which features artists whose works are therapeutically interactive in one way or another. Of the brilliantly curated and wildly diverse ensemble, Chloe Bass’ The Book of Everyday Instruction is the most ambitious and demanding. Her eight-chapter, totally comprehensive multi-media investigation describes in painstaking forensic detail, a single one-on-one relationship between the artist and another anonymous individual. The display recounts the most mundane exchanges through various artifacts, supporting data, and snippets of sound and photography. The sheer thoroughness of the work, in the service of such an ordinary subject, borders on absurd. Though it seems Bass is less interested in comedic than conceptual potential, and how this relationship affects and is affected by her obsessive commitment to preserve it.
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Self-Organized Activities
Christine Wong Yap’s clever and lighthearted text-based works break down everything from “self-organized activities” to “Subjective Well-Being” into visually appealing Venn diagrams, and are scattered intermittently between other weightier pieces in the show. Benjamin Todd Wills’ work jabs us visually before unleashing an emotional uppercut when we realize the paper airplanes jutting from the wall are made by prison inmates on hand-written letters. The large grid of beautiful paper objects maintains both a static minimalist beauty and a throbbing potential energy; its content, form, and authors all caught in-between states.
“On Being Here (And There)” also features a wonderful exhibition about the relationships between Kohler factory workers and past Arts and Industry fellows entitled “Tokens of Appreciation,” as well as “The Projector Room,” a new gallery dedicated to film and video projects, currently featuring films by Bill Daniels, Ailbhe Ni Bhriain, and Kevin Schmidt.
But of all the spectacularly diverse works about human connectivity in this multipart exhibition, perhaps the most refreshing is “Good Road to Follow.” The intimate exhibition takes a look at “hobo and tramp” art–categories of production I didn’t know existed until last Thursday. Apparently, it’s a legitimate thing, and was assiduously followed, documented, and emulated by one Adolph Vandertie, whose trove of original works and related artifacts is part of Kohler’s permanent holdings. The designation of “hobo art” was apparently coined during last century, and stuck, even as the style of work itself opened up and evolved through the years. The intricate hand-carving style of is on display in both work made by Vandertie himself, as well as by various tramps with whom he associated. The “balls-in-boxes,” unbroken wooden chains, and other bizarre tchotchkes made in the tramp style reflect passing time as much as human skill. As a supplement to the vitrines and displays of tools and carved artifacts, the show offers a documented tour of David Eberhardt’s immersive thirteen-year journey with the rail-riding subculture, a modern descendent of last century’s tramps and hobos. Wall text below photos of itinerant lifers like Joshua Long Gone and Dogman Tony romanticizes the vagabond lifestyle for us current prisoners of fate and biology. Their freedom almost made me feel that I missed an opportunity to exit the rat maze on my own terms when the getting’ was good. I’m sure these photographs would’ve been more plaintive six months ago, but as they stood last week, Tony, Joshua and the others all seemed enviably carefree.
“On Being Here (And There)” is the most comprehensive visual analysis of our current condition I’ve seen so far. I feel it’s a little too soon to come to any conclusions about what all this distancing and isolation finally means, but Kohler has given us an exhaustive running tally from many perspectives. I think we’ve all become acutely aware of how connected and disconnected we are at this moment, and it is gesture of curatorial genius to punctuate a show that in many ways reminds us of our limitations with visions from a world of peripatetic cowboys who wouldn’t know a pandemic if they ran over it with a train.
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