Richmond
Claire Lieberman
Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University
Containing elements of childhood play, both sensuous and sensual pleasure, and a silent though pervasive anthropomorphism, Claire Lieberman’s Walking thru JELLO, half three-dimensional comic strip and half nonlinear parable, slyly considers the postmodern critique of the pure aesthetic object. Concurrent with this is a selfexamination of the artist herself and her intentions—a natural task for this theory-savvy artist, but also an imperative one since Lieberman’s formal training is grounded in traditional stone carving techniques and underpinned by certain tenets of high Modernism. Addressing the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of stone in contemporary sculp
ture (Sculpture, February 1998), Lieberman asks: “…in an era in which the absence of material in art is of equal or greater importance to physical presence, how then is it possible to use stone persuasively, to pry it away from conventional associations, and to evolve compelling engagement pristine “white room,” Walking thru JELLO appears like a sci-fi moderne landscape. Comprised of five alabaster sculptures, three identical 13-inch white televisions, four white studio lamps, and two black VCRs in plain sight towards the back, the installation spreads out across the floor with
Duplicating the smooth and elastic plumpness of water balloons and breasts, the five alabaster sculptures are oriented horizontally and carefully posi-tioned—four of them directly lit (and warmed) by a corresponding lamp. Motionless and serene, there is a curious suggestion
that transcends the obvious?” Walking thru JELLO is one answer to this question, compelling through its visual dialogue, which continually loops and reloops intersecting strains of irony, physical beauty and pleasure, and critical theory. The work is refreshingly nonpolemical, and it possesses an overall tone not unlike that evoked by Duchamp’s sense of structured whimsy.
As an installation that occupies half the length and the entire width of the Anderson Gallery’s nothing higher than the tops of the portable TV sets. There is a sense of design in the overall placement of the objects, yet there is a welcome casual quality too, derived from the intractability of the TV, lamp, and VCR cords.
of consciousness: reverie, self-reflection, and the possibility that two or three of the sculptures are watching TV. Superbly crafted, their humble elegance references Brancusi’s ovoids—icons of idealized form, of Modernism’s search for truth and its parallel movement toward abstraction and formal purity.
Amid these stone muses, two different, though related, videos continually play on the three televisions. The subjects of both are deep-red Jello forms that correspond exactly in shape and scale to the five alabaster sculptures. Both videos document a sleek, beautifully veined foot—appre-hensive one moment, engaged in unrestrained indulgence the next—as it explores the skin and marrow of each Jello balloon/ breast. Sequences of alternating slow motion and real-time shots, the videos are seductive and oddly thrilling as celebrations of touching, pressing, petting, and violation. Testing the breaking point of the taut and fragile waxy veneer, one scene reveals the foot poised in anticipation of penetrating the surface and interior of one of the forms. Another segment shows a gleeful foot speckled with Jello fragments, rhythmically stretching and tapping its toes in deep satisfaction like a jubilant dog wagging its tail.
While the sensationalism of the videos tends to dominate the attention of the viewer, the alabaster sculptures linger in thought. One becomes engaged in discovering the connection between the video imagery that is experiential (though purely visual) and the solemn stone forms that are idealized; although there are no fixed answers, myriad questions and possibilities emerge. How would one interpret the sculptures without the presence of the videos? And vice versa. Is one an ancillary object of the other? Is there a hierarchy of importance here?
Initially, the video imagery and the alabaster sculptures seem to be distinct elements (despite sharing certain attributes); but eventually the activity on the video screens becomes a mirror for the musings and dreams of the stone forms—perhaps a kind of projection of the sculptures’ fantasies or id. In this context, Lieberman establishes a narrative not unlike that of Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire, where in the scale of perfection and imperfection, longing, desire, and even covetousness can point us in the right direction: a locale where the experiential, the complexity of details, the human, the flesh are the ideal.
—Paul Ryan