All art lives on a hypothetical spectrum of receptivity, with front-loaded impact on one end and back-loaded on the other. Front-end interactions, as I’ve termed them, are usually sensational experiences providing quick and immediate satisfaction. They’re kind of the refined sugar of visual consumption. Think: street art, pop art, or neo-expressionism—you get it, you’re satisfied and you’re off looking for more. The back-enders metabolize more slowly, but they carry the potential for mental nutrition that only prolonged engagement itself can generate.
The work in Peter Scott’s exhibition “Future City” is fairly unremarkable at first. A back-ender, to be sure, suggesting either an absence of content, or, as it turns out, the possibility of latent presences only waiting to emerge. Seven unframed, matte prints, all between 24 and 30 inches, and one transparency covering a single large window in the gallery, eventually begin to release the fundamental oppositions that are the source of that slow-burning nutrition: interior/exterior; within/without; public/private; single/multiple; and, of course, absence/presence. The polarity from these opposites ignites the static content and propels a jet of subsequent theoretical takeaways.
Most of the prints engage these dualities through the use of tagging or graffiti in the extreme foreground, formally as repoussoirs, but performatively as proscenia. Untitled (High Line) shows a leisurely couple strolling the fashionable boardwalk above New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, and engaged in romantic and theatrical flanerie. But while it’s performed, the act also feels stolen because of the voyeuristic point-of-view. We peer at the couple through loopy spray-painted tags and a bar of what appears to be digital dialogue boxes on the right. This puts the couple inside and outside—inside one context, but outside countless others working on them and the impressions they broadcast.
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The gap between the mundaneness of Untitled (Go Away) and its elegantly dramatic ordering of contexts builds into a masterpiece of unexpected incongruity. What initially appears to be a slightly overexposed photo of a sterile-looking conference room mushrooms into much more. The words “NO ONE CAN AFFORD THIS… GO AWAY” are soon noticed. It is common variety anti-gentrification vandalism that we often see sprayed on New York City condos, but in this case it’s on an inside wall. The result of a break-in, or a layer in Photoshop? The graffiti sits in between two windows beyond which a kaleidoscope of additional architectural interiors and exteriors unfold. On top of it all (literally), the diamond-shaped window of the Suburban’s own front door almost goes unnoticed in the foreground (or on the surface) of the print. This added element finally compresses formal space into physical space, merges the site of the exhibition into the theoretical realm of its subject matter, and blurs the lines between our safely enclosed private fantasies and the more unsettled and ubiquitous public realities that envelop them.
The clear vinyl overlay on the main window happened to provide the show’s most demonstrable and revelatory metaphor. Lights, windows and cameras are supremely good at this, just ask any 17th century Dutch painter. Instead of New York, Untitled (Interior with viewing panel) channels the eye out of the gallery space, past another interior-with-conference-table, and out onto Fifth Street in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point. It also happened to channel my thoughts, as well as the thoughts of Michelle Grabner, the Suburban’s proprietor, into a rhizomic and energetic discussion about places, spaces, sites and rituals; public and private performance; Los Angeles, New York, Milwaukee; and, ultimately, about art as an invisible spirit that suffuses every and all aspects of existence but is at last frustratingly difficult to control and objectify. This is art’s greatest asset but also its most tragic limitation. And it’s all demonstrated on the back-end of one’s persistent commitment to Peter Scott’s “Future City,” whose gifts don’t come with the sugar-high payoff of a visual spectacle; but with the mental satisfaction that comes from a balanced diet of vision, vigilance, contradiction, and contingency. Not cloyingly sweet, but very good for you in the end.
Peter Scott’s Future City is on display through Feb. 10 at the Suburban, 2901 N. Fratney St.
