Amy Cutler at SITE Santa Fe

Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Mar 18, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8

Fantastical Vignettes Works pose questions about oper ating in today’s art world Art Issues

MALIN WILSONPOWELL

For the Journal

If you go to SITE Santa Fe for their three solo exhibitions of currently fashionable women artists — apainter, a sculptor, a filmmaker — most of the viewers are congregating in the Amy Cutler installation.Visitors “ooh” and “ah” to each other with heads together, noses close to the artworks, eyes squintingat details, and fingers pointing to teensy oddities. A magnifying glass would certainly come in handy forthe aging demographic that frequents art exhibitions (a thoughtful museum practice sometimesdeployed for displays of Persian miniatures).

On view are 26 gouache works-on-paper from 2001 to 2009 that demonstrate Cutler’s facility formeticulously drawing fantastical quasi-narratives. Born in 1974, she first came to prominence in 2000— at a time when post-modern strategies seemed largely exhausted — when acres of white galleryspaces were filled with art that offered little by way of pleasure and beauty. The pleasure Cutler offers isclose viewing and engagement. The beauty is delicate line and color.

Cutler’s finely rendered vignettes advertise her skillful hand and loaded content and something to talkabout. The works also do what young artists have done now for generations — revive a modus operandithat is dismissed or considered outré by the preceding generation, their teachers.

In many ways Cutler’s work mirrors her entry point. All of her women are exhausted by unlikely,absurd labors; they wear similar clothing and participate without joy or engagement in seeminglysenseless, repetitive tasks. Many of her images — especially “Plot Line” women in little black dressesbent under the burden of carrying trees to plant on their backs — remind me of watching visitors at theVenice Biennale in 2001. That was the year the uniform for women in the art world was Prada, includingunstable, uncomfortable high heeled sandals. Long lines waited at pavilions or arsenale installations to— in one extreme case — crawl through a brutally reconfigured house. Just as in most of Cutler’spreposterous scenarios of women at work, everyone looked beaten and bewildered.

SITE’s gallery guide claims “Cutler’s compositions invoke fantasy worlds, while being grounded in theexploration of interior states and inspired by the complex web of emotions generated by real lifesituations.” Yet, none of these works feels grounded except by the tedium of their tasks. As noted,Cutler’s centrally placed imagery floats in a trackless sea of white paper. In a number of compositions,gravity — the one constant unifying force on planet earth — has no purchase. Pigs fly, figures recline inor row wooden boats upside down. In the piece titled “Row,” the women’s arms have morphed intoelongated and awkwardly bent oars.

Regarding “the complex web of emotions.” Where are they? The expression on every face is deadpan.Each figure, whether expending effort on her own or in a group toward the same incongruous end, isutterly isolated and alone.

Fantastical Vignettes http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

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Formally, the works pose a few basic questions about operating in the art world now. Cutler relies on acraft fussy about minute pictorial details after decades of artists’ reliance on commercially fabricated orcomputer-generated objects. This anachronistic emphasis on Victorian handmade execution is in serviceto her depictions of inscrutable activities. For all their finesse, the works are dissonant. A flock of birdsisn’t a graceful swarm but a chaotic multidirectional internal rumble. Sinuous curving lines are confinedto compositions that are sharp, jutting, and piercing at their edges and overall outlines.

There are no stories here. We only see scraps. In each vignette, there is no beginning; there is no end;only the sameold loop of polymorphously perverse action repeating itself. Things will never change, nomatter how ridiculous.

Is the empty space, the lack of context, a mechanism of fantasy as in children’s book illustration ordoes it reflect the sensibility of those who live in cyberspace? How do you get grounded when you arehabituated to a world oblivious of mundane realities and real consequences? Ungrounded. Wheregravity means nothing.

Cutler’s work is often described as dreamlike, uncanny, existing in a realm of fairy tales, if mostlyGrimm’s brand of fairy tales. In Cutler’s world it is all work and no play. And there are no fairies.

Cutler’s paintings are presented in an installation that appears arbitrary. The paintings are jumbled andnot grouped in any discernible relationship to advance a curatorial point of view, unless the curatorialassertion is that sequence, subject matter and date don’t matter. The gallery guide lists the paintings inreverse chronological order from the most recent to the earliest. Displaying them this way would haverevealed that Cutler has been filling in more of the surroundings as the decade progressed. From thejousting figures in the pure white paper-space of “Umbrage” (2001) through mid-2000 suggestions offield, forest, ravine and mountain to the rolling seascape of “Zephyr” (2006) and the rolling landscapeof “Burden of Proof” (2008).

The press release contends there is a strong visual resonance in the juxtaposition of the three distinctartists — painter Cutler, sculptor Ruth Claxton and filmmaker Runa Islam. The statement: “Their sharedinterest in form, color, line, phenomenological engagement, and, in some cases, the employment ofsimilar motifs, creates a suggestive visual conversation” is generic art-speak that really doesn’t clarifyanything. These are clearly transitional projects until SITE’s new director Irene Hoffman begins herprogramming in the space. If you go

WHAT: Amy Cutler WHERE: SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta WHEN: Through May 15. COST:$10 general admission; $5 students, teachers & seniors. Free every Friday. CONTACT: (505) 989-119or www.sitesantafe. org


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COURTESY LESLIE TONKONOW ARTWORKS PROJECTS, NEW YORK

“Cautionary Trail” is a 2005 gouache on paper by Amy Cutler.


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“Summit” is a 2007 gouache on paper by Amy Cutler.

“Plot Line” is a 2006 gouache on paper by Amy Cutler.


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Amy Cutler at SITE Santa Fe