by John Perreault
Like many artists, Susan Kaprov tackles a full range of techniques
and formats: from drawings, to large public murals installations,
to photographs, to paintings that are for galleries or private collections.
She has worked on paper, canvas, wood, aluminum, and produced a 54
foot enamel-on-glass wall installation. Think of it as the Picasso
effect. Once one goes beyond mere formalism, then what one says can
take many forms. In fact, exploring new technologies, whether digital
processes or flat-bed scanners, can offer the challenges that trigger
inspiration and invention. Picasso covered the gamut of format and
media for his time --- from painting and printmaking to sculpture
and ceramics. And although he did not tackle photography, he even
tried his hand at plays and poems.
But there is a drawback. When an artist works in a number
of genres, techniques, and technologies it is sometimes difficult
for the casual viewer to discern continuities.
It used to be a juried exhibition commonplace that if
the slides entered by one artist might conceivably comprise a group
show, the artist had to be rejected. Is sticking to only one theme
and image the only sign of seriousness. Or was it because galleries
(and museums and critics and curators) need art that can be branded?
Fortunately, the puzzle of Kaprov's body of work is
easily solved. Some might initially have difficulty in seeing the
common denominators of her jigsaw puzzle paintings, her scanner photos,
and her public art commissions, but at least two things unite her
oeuvre: a personal palette of bright, highly saturated color and,
structurally, the assemblage of discrete units into larger wholes.
The color pops out at you; it is luscious in the flower pieces, radioactive
in the digital mutation images, rich and moody in the jigsaw puzzle
paintings, and appropriately up-beat in the public commissions.
Color is very difficult to particularize and it takes
getting to know the artists work to be able to pick out a palette.
An exercise for art students or art historians might be the following:
using paint chips, from memory assemble a Matisse palette, a Rothko
palette, an Ellsworth Kelly palette and perhaps not in the too distant
future a Kaprov palette. Many of my victims, I suspect, might fail.
It is easier to recognize a palette than to recreate it on the spot
from memory. Structure, on the other hand, is easier to remember.
In most of the works of Kaprov's that I've seen the
all-over repetition of discrete units is the structural principle.
In earlier works on paper such as Kingdom, in the flower scanner photographs
that make up her "Nature_last modified" series, and in some
of her public works such as Urban Helix (2002) at Polytechnic University
the units are consciously ordered, are "composed." In other
works, the units are assembled by chance, as in the jigsaw puzzle
paintings or the proposal for a mural on Houston and Broadway called
Mandala for the 21st Century. Kaprov says she "loves color."
and she "loves to use chance," feeling that her random juxtaposition
of pre-painted puzzle shapes open up the artwork to combinations that
she herself---or anyone else, for that matter---could not have come
up with. I agree. The freely painted puzzle shapes are in themselves
small paintings; when locked together at random they create fresh
and energetic fields of color and abstract paint-handling.
The big names in public art started out producing gallery
art: Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, Christo, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito
Acconci. Kaprov may be doing it the other way around. She's already
completed thirteen commissions; the gallery exhibitions will have
to follow. She is already in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum
(with 20th Century Dilemma, a 14 foot photomontage on aluminum done
in 1983), The Air and Space Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
and many others public collections..
Kaprov's foray into public art has become a calling.
At a certain point she decided that she did not like working alone
all the time in her studio. Also, more people see public art than
ever see art shown in galleries. To prepare herself to compete for
commissions, she took courses in architecture and model-making. Eventually
this paid off. She was able to communicate her vision; the commissions
started rolling in.
Work space requirements are another advantage to a focus
on public art competitions. Not too long ago Kaprov had to give up
her Manhattan studio when the rent tripled. Since most public art
is produced at factories or ateliers outside the artist's personal
work place, a huge, expensive studio is not absolutely necessary.
The imagery for Urban Helix was created on Kaprov's computer and the
actual glass panels made in the famous Franz Mayer glass studio in
Munich.
Kaprov, of course, now is confronted with the predicament
that all artists working in the realm of public art face. With a few
exceptions, the art world simply does not track, never mind evaluate,
the genre. Consequently, there is little art criticism that addresses
particular works or, in fact, the field as a whole. Some will answer
that the works are spread far and wide, are sometimes not all that
accessible, particularly if they are commissioned by corporations.
Plus public art is on the whole quite wretched.
I would counter that earth works were spread far and
wide and were often really, really inaccessible, but critics and historians
had no problem writing about them. Furthermore, most public art is
wretched because there is no art criticism. There is no feedback except
occasional public outcry, usually uninformed, usually off the mark.
There's another reason why there is virtually no art
criticism about public art: the sale has already been made.
But isn't that the case with most art shown in museums?
Not always, particularly when it comes to art borrowed
for an exhibition. Besides, there's always more work by the same artist
ready for sale somewhere else, often close by.
For the record, I actually went to Brooklyn to see Kaprov's
Urban Helix, which is what inspired this more general treatment of
her work. It is an easy ride on the N and to see Kaprov's spectacular
glass wall installation you don't even have to pass the metal-detector
in the lobby of the Joseph and Violet Jacobs Building on the MetroTech
campus of the Polytechnic University. The theme of fractals and other
scientific images totally fits the situation and the space. It's a
breathtaking piece.
A studio visit confirmed my suspicions. Kaprov is someone
to watch. I particularly like the jigsaw puzzle paintings. Her flower
scanner photos are gorgeous and there's a lot to be said for the mutant
vegetable images she recently showed at the Santa Barbara Museum of
Art.
Where does Kaprov fit in the larger scheme of things?
Neo P& D? She certainly utilizes the grid, in an
anti-minimal manner. But she does not intend the feminism or the decorative
nose-thumbing of the original Patterning and Decoration movement.
I'd say that since science is one of her themes the use of rational
schemata is a natural. Since nature is another, saturated color is
a natural too. In the meantime, her public art works multiply and
certainly enliven a multitude of public spaces. Public art requires
a specialized talent and Kaprov has it.
See Interview In Double Exposure
© copyright 2009–2011
Susan Kaprov
