City Paper welcomes Jonathan Wallis, assistant professor of art history at Moore College of Art and Design, to our Critical Mass team. His column, β€œPerspective,” will run monthly in this space, bringing a critical eye to a visual art scene that continues to thrive in Philadelphia. Questions? E-mail Wallis at jswallis@gmail.com.

voxpopuligallery.org

Brent Wahl, “Arrivals and Departures”

The Earth completes one revolution on its axis every 24 hours. Brent Wahl’s self-created world accomplishes this feat a lot faster β€” about every 15 seconds.Β  It’s a small, simple world physically, made up of everyday stuff β€” aluminum foil, branches coated in glitter, some black foam cut into the shape of military bunkers and a scale model of a Le Corbusier building, all placed inside a circular floor with a backdrop of black construction paper.

But technically and conceptually it’s much more complex.Β  By modeling the structure off a zoetrope, with a number of creative alterations to the traditional format of the device, Wahl places us both inside and outside his world simultaneously; we are both mundane inhabitant and omniscient Olympian God. But there is more. As a mechanical device rotates the entire 360 degree environment at a constant, steady pace, a video camera placed at a fixed point inside the structure projects the changing (yet repeating) view of the inside of this desolate world onto a neighboring wall in the gallery. It’s a fascinating contraption, and Wahl’s creative ability to conjure up the extraordinary with ordinary materials (which the artist will recycle after the exhibition ends β€” kudos) places his construction methods alongside other mad scientist-like artists such as Tim Hawkinson.

To complete the effect in the installation, an audio track plays a combination of chirping birds and artillery bombardments from World War II, which adds considerable strength to the sensation of being β€œin” the world when gazing at the projection on the wall.Β  Peter Weibel’s 1995-6 installation, The Curtain of Lascaux, toyed with similar themes in metaphysics through projected screens that placed his audience in a participatory, yet illusory reality. But Wahl both chains us down in Plato’s cave and releases us from its confined and deceptive reality in “Arrivals and Departures,” and this double state of perspectival and ontological existence allows the viewer to enter an altogether different and unique metaphysical region via art.

The scenic transcription that takes place from what is observed in the mechanism to what is witnessed on the adjacent wall is mesmerizing. None of the visible fastenings on the surfaces and walls of the zoetrope carry over to the projection. Instead, the experience is that of a confined perspective onto an actual realm where you either stand as the world passes by or travel past a static landscape through some form of locomotion.

As glimmering trees, military bunkers and International-style architecture move across the screen, and bombs and birds reach your ears, it’s hard to not think dark thoughts. Is this a land of Cold War devastation? Are we looking at what could have happened to our planet if mutual deterrence did not hold back the massive destructive power of atomic energy and radiation at mid-century? Wahl’s world is devoid of human life (except for us), and suggests an experience of time travel to a spooky, enchanted nuclear winter somewhere in a past that has become an imagined future.

As a coda, one more element to “Arrivals and Departures” provoked curiosity: a serendipitous correspondence with the exhibition addressing Marcel Duchamp’s Γ‰tant donnΓ©s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There is a shared technical and optical conversation between these two exhibitions worth noting. Access and deniability of fields of vision, the fabrication of imagined spaces that are observable but unreachable, as well as rotating mechanisms within the installations (both with elements that glitter and sparkle β€” Wahl’s trees and Duchamp’s waterfall) all play out in various ways in these two works, and placing them in a historical and artistic tandem is rich with potential meanings and conceptual puzzles. The PMA exhibit exposes the inner workings of Duchamp’s installation and suggests a strong connection to the vicarious positioning of oneself as both β€œinside” and β€œoutside” the realm of Wahl’s lugubrious world.

Luckily, in both cases, this access in no way diminishes the mystery of the work, nor the tensions between the ontological states of the viewer. There is much to ponder in “Arrivals and Departures,” and successful exhibitions not only stimulate the aesthetic response in us, they usually generate more questions than answers.Β  Wahl’s work left me scratching my head, in a good way.

PERSPECTIVE: 30 Days Hath September at Vox Populi, Part 2

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