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Hudson Valley Artists 2008
The Medium is the Message
June 6 - September 7, 2008
...In 1964 philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” This was a turning point in society’s increasing awareness of the powers of the technological world. McLuhan’s now-iconic term posits that the medium (in his case television) actually creates meaning. McLuhan’s phrase can also be taken in a more literal way. This alternate read gets to the heart of the matter…the idea that meaning can be found in specific choices one makes in the materials used to present ideas to the public. This year’s Hudson Valley Artist exhibition takes McLuhan’s idea and expands it to include all forms of artistic expression in which the medium is integral to the meaning of the finished work. Over 150 artists submitted work to The Medium is the Message, in a range of materials from painting, photography, video, web projects, sculpture, installation, etc. In the end, the artists explore the materiality of art-making and the meaning inherent in their choice of media.
 
Matt Harle, Untitled, 2008 .........................Laura Moriarity, Scientific Wild Ass Guess, 2006-2008
...Matt Harle and Laura Moriarty each start with the notion of painting and then shift into the realm of sculpture. Harle’s works begin with the stretched surface but here he replaces canvas with black spandex, which he pulls around irregular metal supports and places in the middle of the gallery space. The material in this work becomes evident, as Harle emphasizes the way in which the spandex puckers across the surface and edges. Moriarty, on the other hand, does away with the support all together, instead focusing on the sculptural qualities of paint. In her large installation Scientific Wild Ass Guess, Moriarty piles curls of densely packed encaustic remnants onto a low platform, creating a sprawling environment made visceral and solid from a medium usually associated with fluidity.
 Allen Bryan, Shaved Noodles, 2007
David Bush, Untitled, 2006
...David Bush and Allen Bryan both take liberties with their medium, playing up photography’s illusionistic qualities. Bush’s photographs seem straightforward but, in each, something not quite right is soon revealed. For instance, in a cramped room a man sits slumped in a chair facing a television, on which plays an image of a bed, the same bed in the room behind the man. Though his subject seems to be asleep, Bush is sure to pull his viewers out of visual complacency. Bryan similarly composes his images, leading viewers to another double-take. In Shaved Noodles, a comforting interior scene is presented; however, beyond the windows the nightlife outside seems incongruous. This image comes from Bryan’s Comforts of Home series, which uses photography’s malleability to merge together time and space.
  
Deborah Davidovits, From the video Shadowplays Volume 5, 2008
 
Tasha Depp, Trashweed I, 2003 .............................. Carrie Scanga, plumbum, 2008
...Deb Davidovits, Tasha Depp, and Carrie Scanga work in a space between drawing and object-making, providing a link from painting and photography to the transformation of everyday materials. Davidovits takes as her material nature field guides, which she painstakingly and partially cuts out and backs with drawings of her own. In one work, she removes a bird and inserts behind the void a watercolor mimicking the scenery of the original, calling into question our ideas of nature as distinct from the rendering of it. In a video work, shadow puppets enact short vignettes addressing similar themes. In Trashweed 1 Depp presents a crumpled plastic container onto which she draws a plant, conflating ideas of trash with beauty. This juxtaposition is further compounded by the fact that the plant she chooses is a weed, another undesirable, so that the piece talks as much about her choice of materials as it does about the discarded and about environmentalism. Lastly, Scanga’s work doesn’t explicitly involve drawing; rather, it is derived from its act and materials. For The Medium is the Message, Scanga created plumbum, a delicately sculpted parchment paper rendering of stacks of architecturally-inflected forms. This ghostly white reference to a façade creates a phantom space—one filled with memory but also the meticulous evidence of its own making.
  Roman Hrab, Green Zone Kilim, 2008 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tatania Kellner, Iron, 2007-2008
...Roman Hrab and Tatana Kellner transform easily recognizable materials or imagery in their work. Hrab’s work looks like a Persian carpet, full of ornate detailed patterns. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that the design is actually constructed out of satellite images of the so-called green zone in Baghdad, taking two recognizable forms (the rug and the satellite image) and merging them into a new hybrid. Kellner also explores pattern-making in her installation Iron. Here viewers are confronted with an ironing board, iron, and crisp white shirts. Kellner’s iron moves on its own, methodically ironing the shirts to reveal text as the material burns. The texts comment on working conditions of female laborers and immigrants from the 1900s to the present.
Iain Machell, Twist on Turner, 2008 xxxxC. Haun, Empire Line, AM, 2007
...Iain Machell and Christopher Haun ironically address art world conventions specifically and, more generally, the way we see. Installed outdoors, Machell’s piece Twist on Turner deals with art history: the artist has designed and built a sign post pointing in multiple directions. Instead of providing names or distances, however, the signs bear designations including “pastoral,” “mountainous,” and “historical,” terms derived from British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner’s categorizations of landscape art. Taking on the contemporary art world’s mixture of aesthetics and commerce, Haun presents colorful collages. The patterning is abstract until you realize that as his material Haun uses cut up exhibition announcements rendering these seemingly important markers of success into new forms.
 
Kathleen Anderson, Transmission Table, 2004........... Dara Greenwald, What is Capitalism?, 2006
...It makes sense to close with three artists who in some ways channel McLuhan. Kathleen Anderson addresses communication, using her material to create and transmit meaning. For Transmission Table, visitors to the museum are invited to sit across from one another and place capped wires on their finger tips, waiting for an exchange conducted through the wires to take place. This piece calls for concentration and a leap of faith, not unlike most communication. Dara Greenwald also deals with communication and the slippery notion of language. In What is Capitalism? Greenwald interviews a variety of people all trying to answer the question posed in the title for the piece. Responses in this video, which resembles a television talk show, range from “I have no idea” to “something being ridiculed by other countries.” And lastly, Robert The is right at home with McLuhan. The’s materials are books which he meticulously cuts into various shapes including snowflakes, bugs and guns. Here The takes a copy of McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Massage and turns it into a gun, holding viewers at its point to consider McLuhan’s phrase loud and clear. In the end, with all of these artists, the medium is the message, and it holds us all under its spell.
Robert The, The Medium, 2006
-Denise Markonish, Curator
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