Mindy Shapero by Rachel Miles, http://thepop.com/, June 2012 POP 941 Weekend 16-17 June 2012 Today's POP is Rachel. Athens part II: In the centre of everything lies chaos The Breeder Gallery is housed in a former ice cream factory in the Metaxourgeio area of Athens, re-imagined by Aris Zambicos GR405 architects, making it the ideal location to house Mindy Shapero's exhibition Blinded by the light. Amongst the sculptures in what is now her second exhibition at the Breeder, includes those created from bath towels, covered entirely by a scaly black web of plastic paper; their underbellies glowing like sour sherbet radioactive ores. These are accompanied by explosive paper works detailing black holes at the centre of the chaos which forms the centre of her mythological narrative, Blinded by the light - a talisman so powerful that the viewer goes blind when looking at it with both eyes. Mindy invites us further into her psychedelic narrative below in an exclusive POP Q&A.
This idea of being Blinded by the light sounds like it has the potential to induce hysteria, yet at the same time your work appears to rationalise this imagined phenomenon. What can you tell POP about this relationship? I am really interested in exploring the unknown, exploring these relationships between what is real and what is fantasy, the uncanny; the hesitation between the fantasy and the reality. There are no specific images that can possibly fit specific words and so I am trying to create that. Take the word death for example: there is no specific image for death. There are broad ideas that one can conjure when discussing but no universal image. Or an emotion, they are all ephemeral. My work in general is usually teetering on that edge. It could just be completely out of control, and fail or it could be really close to it, or even better- it does fail or lose control and now I'm in a place that I could never have imagined. And now how do I make it work? I also like to think of my work as it follows its own logic, it is almost flat footed at times. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, published in 1892, is a beautiful example of this. Not only is it a feminist critique of a woman being locked up in her bedroom by her husband on doctors orders because she is basically suffering from postpartum depression, but its notion of insanity and its resolution is that the patterns in the wallpaper begin to move, women's faces appear and she finally gives into it, learns to take comfort in it, and it becomes her normalcy, her home, the uncanny. My conceptual ideas mirror its process, meaning that in the studio, all these ideas are floating around and I have to figure out how to make them, this part is me rationalising the idea in a way. I'd also like to add that there is so much patterning in nature and the most sublime thing to me is when there is an interruption in the patterns, creating chaos. Or in the Eames film, The Power of One, the micro/macro effect. I am really almost always looking for ways to make something that has an image from a distance and then as you approach it, more information reveals itself and you are now lost in it because you forgot the image it held.
Why is the narrative extending through your works so important to you? Again, it's the space between realities that I'm interested in. I'm not interested in creating an environment to immerse the viewer, I would rather keep the viewer aware of themselves but have the potential that they can lose themselves for a moment whilst looking at the 3D or 2D work. I think the narratives offer a little more information to the viewer but not quite enough. I also think it acts as an anchor, it grounds the sculptures in this place they are formal works of art and they look abstract, but they are not abstract at all, and the only way you would know that is by having access to the titles. It's also important to me that the work actually comes first, they are not illustrations of the narrative the narrative is made in a very similar way to the way the work is made, but usually after the work is in process. Sometimes I use the narrative to help make formal decisions in the work when I arrive at a place where the work isn't really going as far as I want it to visually, or I can't figure out what it needs: I will consult the narrative and it will usually determine the direction of the work.
The titles of your pieces are often sprawling and lengthy they sound almost like hypotheses. Do you use these titles to impart a logical structure to your work? In many ways yes, the titles parallel the process of making the work in the studio like a run on sentence. I think they also either, yes inform the work, or push it even further into its unknown. They help to create that hesitation between reality and fantasy you are looking at the work, and reading the fantasy about its existence. I also love the idea that literature can create these mental images and art can create this place for words. And I'll just briefly mention too, the connection to surrealism and automatic writing. Can you explain your hierarchy of colours and why you deem to separate between all (colour) and nothing (black, white)? Yes, no hierarchy of colours at all! Which is why I use all colour or no colour. I believe that all colour is the same as no colour. They bleed together, cancel each other out, and flatten out, and ultimately operate like black and white in theory. Sometimes I use color to demonstrate the 'reality' and then I use black to demonstrate 'fantasy' or visa-versa. Originally though, I started to make sculptures of drawings, so it was important that they remained black and white, and eventually they got more complex. The black was the ink of the drawings, then the ink of the words, then it became symbolic for the real thing and the colour was introduced as this element of science fiction. At the time I was reading Phillip K Dick's,
Vallis, and felt a kinship with his use of colour and lightso colour began to activate the sculptures and drawings in a more spiritual way. And now, I play with all of those ideas and reverse their meanings if it makes sense to me and to the piece. Coming back full circle now, the idea of me rationalising or applying a logic to the chaos. The innovative use of materials in your sculptures beach towels as bases, plastic paper are playful in their construction as well as their realisation. Was this is a deliberate move? In the studio, sometimes it's just out of necessity that certain materials are used. I let their politics remain visible because I think that it addresses the urgency in the work. It's important to me that the work remains hand crafted, but I really hope that it does eventually transcend its materials. Ideally I would hope that the viewer is essentially transported from their reality, if even for a moment. Your works force us to confront chaos head on. What can we, as spectators, learn from this? I suppose that I could hope one could learn to let go and trust that out of the chaos comes new understanding and perspectives. God, that sounds cheesy! Blinded by the light is showing at the Breeder Gallery until 30 June. Iasonos 45; Athens 10436, Greece. +30 210 3317527 thebreedersystem.com
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