Plexus
Gallery 4731 - 4th floor
4731 Grand River Ave. at 14th St. Detroit, MI
Phone/fax: 313.894.4731
www.4731.com
12PM - 5PM Mon - Sat.
For more information: 734.355.2975 or 810.287.7974
opening Friday July 29, 6-10pm
closing Saturday Aug 6, 6-10pm

The cavernous fourth floor of 4731 plays host to a group of artists working in sculptural abstraction, in effect they’ve turned the entire space into a series of installations. Their approach to installation is quite spare, a tribute to Minimalist artists past. It does feel a bit empty, but is quite full of different approaches to altering the architectural landscape.

Think of the entire installation as a self-contained land, replete with distinct zones created by the different artists. If one looks to such story book lands as Oz and the sort, we might imagine these as different lands with their own unique inhabitants adapting to the specific living conditions within. Every artist gets a space to their own (in some cases a few) and has not so much put an art object in the space, as transformed their corner into an environment. As no land of fantasy is complete without a map detailing its nooks and crannies, the artists have smartly provided such a diagram, serving as an offbeat show catalogue.

The first thing one encounters upon entering the space is a “Great Wall” of toast by Beili Liu. As evidence of the obsession needed to create such a thing we note that the wall is about forty slices of toast tall, and spans a good 20 feet. Liu has also filled an entire alcove with similarly stacked toast. It is, to say the least, a significant undertaking, supplemented by the fact that an American born Chinese person is referencing the Great Wall out of very American white bread. As it stretches so far through the room, like the Great Wall itself, it both divides and links this space and serves as its main feature.

Audra Wolowiec contributes a number of pieces to the landscape. Of ping pong balls and fishing line, she creates a disconnected cloud form, like large droplets suspended in the air. One could imagine this as ping pong ball after ping pong ball hung like Liu stacked toast, but there is a poetic quality to the more limited configuration that is satisfying. Additionally, in walking around the work different alignment of the ping pong balls arise as well as varying interactions with the collective shadow. A second piece of Wolowiec’s also deals with the viewer’s perspective. She’s cut pieces of rubber tubing (of differing heights and diameters) and arranged the cylindrical sections on the floor in a loose snowflake shape. Depending upon one’s orientation to the work the conglomeration can appear to shift from being dark in appearance to quite bright.

With clear plastic sheeting and blowers, Seth Weiner creates several instances of a shimmering illusion of water. The strongest instance of this occurs in a separate room off from the main one, as the walls of that room conceal the mechanics of his work, and it benefits from that uncertainty far greater than out in the open room when it is all on display. Gerhard Schultz works with recorded sounds captured in other areas of the building and also uses loops of audio tape to create hanging sculptural pieces, perhaps most interestingly, stretched and tied in a cat’s cradle of sorts in one corner of the space. Kendall Babl’s “Rafter” is a wooden plank sticking out vertically from a support column suspended only by the tension of a rope pressed stretched between two distant columns.

There are several contributions towards altering the space, including that of Seth Lower who encases an entire support column in the bark of a tree. Lower’s piece works, but it points out where this show could be even stronger. As interesting as the individual pieces are, one starts to imagine what would happen if everything were taken further. What if the obsessiveness that fueled Liu’s toast wall infected the rest? Sure, it might be overcrowded, it might be too much to handle, but it might make the entire room truly sing. Babl’s suspension piece is almost magical in its gravity defying positioning, but we can’t help but wonder about more such works throughout the space. None of this is said to belittle the efforts that went into the show, only that it is such a welcome approach, that it feels like it is on the threshold of great potential. Furthermore, the title “Plexus” refers to a network or combination of parts within a system. This could refer to the artists working together or the space itself. In the outset I spoke of this as an environment, and it seems there’s a chance to intertwine the various artists’ creations into a seamless landscape while preserving their distinctive integrity. The connective tissue between the works is something that can truly distinguish such an exhibition from the typical gallery show where a viewer walks from piece to piece – here even the empty spaces could be inhabited and vital.

All in all this is a conceptually strong effort that raises a lot of questions about sculptural space, architecture, and more. There are plenty of standout pieces within and the promise of further explorations in this vein. And hey, what better place than a city full of empty buildings to continue to explore such terrain? Check it out at the closing, Saturday, August 6. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com