Building Silence

7/17/2019 Building Silence

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-silence 1/7

Building

Silence:

Guillermo

Kuitca

TEXT

GRANT

JOHNSON

"...forget,

forget, make silence.. 1

-Paul

C6zanne,

Dragons in

the Clouds

There

is at

least

one dragon winding

through

serene clouds

in

Guillermo

Kuitca's

pictorial

project.

From

the

isolated

microphone

stands

and

wall-

facing

paintings

of his

stagecraft

series,

across

the empty

beds

and

bare mattresses

that serve as

both

subject and support,

right up

to the

vacant

concert

halls and arrested

baggage

carousels of

recent

years, it

arcs

in and

out of

view,

a half-hidden

secret. The

dragon is silence-not

the

silence

that equals

death,

but an activating

energy

that passes

through

nearly all of

Kuitca's peripatetic

paintings,

drawings, and

col-

lages,

a unifying

thread.

Indeed, the monumental

and

disarming

retro-

spective

Everything -

Paintings

and

Works on Paper,

1980-20o8

reveals

Kuitca

as a master

architect

of silences.2

The scope

of

the

exhibition

allows us

to grasp silence as

much more than

the subject of

his

work-

which has long

been a

staple of its

critical reception.

Here, silence

becomes the

vital operational

mode of his

art.

The

artist once

told

Hans-Michael

Herzog that

in

good

painting,

"[t]here

is

an experience

of solitude,

no, not solitude,

privacy. That

is the

pictorial

measure. 3

The

subtle hesitation as

Kuitca's

thought

moves

from

solitude

to

privacy --and

which

appears,

by way of

commas,

as

a

small

silence-opens

another

possibility. I

fantasize a

scene in

which

I

take Herzog's

place:

GK-There

is an

experience of

solitude,

no, not soli-

tude...

GJ-Silence?

GK-Yes, silence.

That

is the

pictorial measure.

In

that momentary

hitch,

which

is in fact

a silent

space,

I

can

imagine

Kuitca

authorizing my exegetical

thesis.

Were

he to

have

simply

stated,

There

is an

experience of

privacy.

That is

the

pictorial

measure, any

other options

would

have been foreclosed.

But through

the

portal

of his

pause, I

enter

and rearrange the

mental furniture,

exchanging

"silence"

for privacy,

occupying the

space opened by

his

hesitation with

a

cre-

ative

insurgence.

This potential

recurs

again and again

in

Kuitca's

pic-

tures

as they

build a momentous

quietude-which

Jean-Louis Chr6tien

describes

as

a "...communicative,

radiant, and

cordial silence,

which

invites

us

to

live within

it.'4

Of

course, these fantasy

lines never passed

between

us, but I

did speak

with Kuitca

this July,

after seeing Everything

at the Walker

Art

Center in

Minneapolis.

Although I

had not

yet

developed the notion

fully when

we

spoke,

I did mention

that my strongest

impression from

the show was

one

of

shared

silence.

He

warmed to

that,

saying

that

he

looked

for-

ward

to my

exploration

of

the

idea. Like

a dragon in the

clouds,

that

exploration

has

been

far-flung and

recursive, ultimately

leading me to

circle

tightly over two paintings,

but not

without many flourishes

and

glances towards other

images and

series.

Signals

to Silence

All pictures

are silent.

We know

this

as

a

bare

fact,

even if pictorial

silence

does not

press

forward

in

current

critical discourse.

I

admit

that

although I often

tried to tune

in

the sounds

of paintings

and

other pic-

tures,

I had given

their silence

little

consideration before

seeing

Everything. For

one thing, silence

is difficult

to

talk about-it silences.

This

unavoidable

symmetry

is why discussions

of what

Chr6tien

calls

"the essential silence

of

painting always

risk

tautology-can

it even

be

a picture

if it

is

not silent?

But Kuitca shapes

another class

of silences

altogether.

His

are

supplementary

to "essential"

pictorial silence.

Ultimately,

they

transform

this given

dimension of pictures,

even as

they

derive momentum

from

it.

Whereas

essential pictorial

silence

is

featureless

and

interchangeable,

the

silences

I encountered

in

Everything are varied

and

particular. They are,

among

many

others,

the

silences

before

and the silences

after, diagrammatic

silences

and

the

silences

of music.

While no single

image

provides a complete glossary

to the operations

of silence

at play in Kuitca's

oeuvre,

L enfance

du Christ(The

Childhood

of

Christ),

1989, does

deploy

an intricate

sequence

of

those

operations

which

echoes

throughout Everything.

The

painting

depicts

a

series of

box-like rooms, packed

tightly together

and rendered in crimson

and

sienna

cooled

by metallic blues.

We view

this

isometric

grid from high

above

through

a

web-like veil

of white.

The

entire construction floats

in

a

shimmering gray

nebula. In place

of

human

tenants: empty beds

unused chairs,

and

a microphone

on

a

stand,

painted with

a precise

yet

tremulous

hand

that gives them

all the

look

of dollhouse

furniture.

The first secretion

of silence

comes before

the fact, from

the short cir-

cuit

between image

and title. With

nothing

in

common,

they

refuse

to

communicate

openly,

and

therefore seem to

be keeping a secret.

Astute

to

the partnership

between silence

and secrets,

Kuitca often

elects enig-

matic

titles

that

keep mum

in this secretive

way,

such

as

l mar dulce

Sweetwater

Sea)

and

iyo_fuera

el inviernomismo

IfIWere

WinterItself)

But this particular title-L'enfance

du Christ-compounds

silence

at least

twice

more.

First,

by its

most available reference:

the

chroniclers

of

Christ's

life are quiet

on the subject of

his childhood,

outlining only

a

few

brief

scenes.

In

this

sense,

the

words

L enfance

du Christalways

mark the

silence of

an untold story.

Silence

erupts

on

another register with the

discovery that

L enfance

du

Christ

is the

title

of

a choral trilogy

by

Berlioz.

o give a

painting the

name of

a

musical

piece-a recurring

gesture for

Kuitca-is

to point out

INSIDE

FRONT COVER: Guillermo

Kuitca,

Untitled,

2008, oil

on canvas, 95 x 83 cm

private collection)

/ OPPOSITE,

TOP TO

BOTTOM: Lenfance du

Christ (The

Childhood

of Christ), 989

mixed

media

on

canvas,

60.5 x

80.5 x

2

inches

courtesy

of Ramis

Barquet, New

York); El mar

dulce [The Sweet

Sea], 1986,

acrylic

on

canvas,

78.75 x

118

inches

collection

o

Ambassador

Paul

and

Trudy

Cejas,, Cejas

Art Ltd.) all

images courtesy

of the artist and Sperone

Westwater,

New

York)

3

ART

PAPERS





by

contrast,

that

the painting

cannot sing. It is

also,

especially

in the

quiet

of

the

museum, to

call forth

the

silent

memory of that

music, or, if

one

has never heard

the

piece

in

question, the silent imagining

of music

unknown.

Thus, titles such

as

L enfance

du

Christ

and Siete

6ltimas

can-

ciones

Seven

Last

Songs),

as

well

as Ku itca's eponymous revisions

of CD

covers

from recordings

of Wagner's Ring

Trilogy,

replay

musical compo-

sitions within

the silent context of the

museum, and against

the

silent

backdrop of the artist's pictorial project.

Miraculously, we are

made

to

hear music-familiar

or unknown-in a new space

where its sounds

are

inaudible yet present. (Imagine

Beethoven's

Ode

to

Joy

without

hum-

ming

it

and

you

will hear something

like what

I am talking about.)

When

a

work

cues a viewer

to imagine

choral

music that

she

has

never

heard,

it opens

up an expansive field

of

creative

possibilities.

And yet, this

realm of potentiality nevertheless

derives its direction and complexion

from initiatives

of the artist.

And since silence is

the

only space

where

such

possibilities exist,

Kuitca gives

L enfance

du Christ a silent sound-

track,

distinct

from

the silences

of Wagner or

the

tango,

which

also

have

their place in his oeuvre.

These

are

intense

experiential revelations built

on

the

fundamental

lesson of John Cage's

4'33 , 1952-that

silence opens

a space in which every noise

and movement,

no matter how small,

is

transfigured.

Silence

is

the

space

of limitless creative

potential.

The Wide

Spread of

Silence

Kuitca deftly shapes that

space over the full sweep

of

his long practice.

The

earliest work in

the show, Del 1 a 30 000

(From to 30,000 ,

198o

presents the

total

number

of

Argentina's

desaparecidosas a

meticulously

drawn sequence

without gaps. Referring directly

to

Pinochet's

brutal

silencing

of the opposition,

the

image

redoubles that

silence by

render-

ing

the

individual

numbers indistinguishable-by

filling all space,

he

makes

a

space

of silence.

Later, in the

stagecraft

series,

tiny

props, sets,

and

pieces of furniture shiver in

cavernous theaters

where water pools

on the stage and

staircases lead

nowhere.

Although

specific

silences

issue from details

like

empty beds,

lonely microphones,

and paintings

turned to the wall, they

soon vaporize into

the

overwhelming

hush of

massive

empty architecture.

In the Puro

Teatro

pictures,

first appearing

in 1994, and based on diagrams

of auditoriums, the silences are

those of

empty

seats

and

of

the

viewer

positioned

on

the vacant stage.

They

are

also Ku itca's silencing

of

his source

material by

re-coloring the sections

to

prevent

them

from

broadcasting

their

assigned

values.

In the paintings

Terminal, 2000 and Trauerspiel (Tragedy),

2001 the

image of

an

empty baggage carousel-shut

down for the night

or for

repair-proclaims

its

own silent

stillness.

It can

also

recall-or even

induce-the trance-like

state of a

jet-lagged

traveler

awaiting reunion

with his personal effects.

And then again there is

The

Ring

series,

2002,

whose title invokes

a silent

soundtrack

while its

imagery

acknowledges

the

special

silence

in which

we

contemplate record

album sleeves; a

class

of

picture

whose silence

is

always set starkly

against the music

it

(un)covers.

Indeed,

nearly all of the works

in Everything

announce-

more

or

less

insistently-Kuitca's ambition to wield

silence itself, proto-

plasmic

and

excessive, as

both

figure

and ground

in

his

art.

Empty Rooms, Absent Sounds

Let's

go back to L enfance

du Christ for a moment.

We have established

that,

beyond its

essential

pictorial

silence

and the silences

that its title

articulates,

L enfance

du

Christ

s a catalogue of silent

rooms, each

with

its

own shape

and

texture.

And

so, silenced

by the silent

face-off

betwee

title and

image, we stand ready

to

explore this hushed

house, vacan

except

for spare furniture

and a

microphone.

Inside,

in its rooms,

Kuit

seems

to have painted

the silence in a way analogous

to

that

by whic

C6zanne

painted the light and air between

himself and

Mont

Saint

Victoire.

Empty chairs line up along

certain walls of some

rooms,

seemingly

s

ting

in

the familiar silence

of

waiting.

Such chairs-un-upholstered,

re

tilinear-are strewn

throughout Kuitca's early canvases,

and often lie o

their

sides

or

backs,

sustaining

the

silences

of

their

percussive

hit

on

th

floor.

Prone, they

are

also silenced

as chairs,

becoming

mute sculptures

forgotten props instead. In

L enfance du Christ, hey may be waiting f

the promised

sound of the

lonely microphone,

with

its

voluminou

potential

for

all

manner

of song, speech, and feedback.

A straightene

question mark, this

microphone

may

stand

at

the closest pass betwee

title and image

as it

suggests

the

possibility

of a present-day Young

Jes

rehearsing

the Sermon on the Mount in

his

parents' paltry flat.

Li

chairs,microphones are

ubiquitous

in

Kuitca's

floor

plan and

stage

se

series,

where

they

seem to

assert

silences

louder

than those of

the

peers. Is it

paradoxically the

silence produced when an amplified

voice

used to mute the

crowd? Or is

it

the

silence

of

an

unwanted

explosion

noise that has

been shut off?

Richer

still

are

the

echoing

silences

of

the

empty

beds

in L enfance

d

Christ,which link back to

the single empty bed in

the small, almost

nee

ful painting Nadie

Olvida

Nada

(Nobody

Forgets

Nothing),

1982,

who

covers turn down in anticipation

but

are

too tightly tucked

to

offer a

we

come. The peculiar silence

of a Kuitca-painted empty bed can

present

th

absent sounds of lovemaking,

which at some

other moment might b

heard inflagrante. It may

also carry the more

profound

silence

of

dream

whose sounds erupt in

unconsciousness, only

ever heard in soundles

memory. Reaching

out

to

the viewer's

bodily

experience,

the image of

vacant

bed

can

also be

an

invitation to the simple stillness

of sleep.

An

finally,

attending these

intangible bed-borne silences

like acolytes, w

find

the

solidified

silences

of blankets,

pillows,

and

mattresses-palpab

vehicles

of quiet and absorbers

of sound.

Ultimately, behind

the rooms and

their contents, Kuitca spreads a

enveloping atmosphere of

silence

made

visible

as a

formless

void.

Th

amorphous, ubiquitous

silence spans both invocation

and benedictio

between which

Kuitca

conducts

his

tour

of

this enigmatic dwellin

where many of the chambers are

near duplicates

of one another,

an

each opens

into

the

other

without any hallways.

As a house and a maz

it

recalls the setting

of

Borges'

1949 story The

Aleph,

as well as

the

gre

Argentine

author's preoccupation

with

labyrinths, reminding us that

h

is

Kuitca's

countryman

and artistic forebear. But

the structure's righ

angled

and equilateral

geometry, seen

against the

amorphous

bac

ground,

reflects

more

faithfully

the

spaces of

the gallery, and sudden

another

silence

rushes in, one

always

given in advance-the

silence,

hush, of the museum.

Sweeping

In

the

Museum

It is common to

decry the museum's

hush as a

stifling

effect of the

he

metic seals

that led

Sartre

in

Troubled

Sleep

to

denounce

the Museum

Modern Art as ...organized, approved, enclosed,

sanitary, and sterile.

But Kuitca

turns

away

from Sartre's

sneer to embrace the silence

of th

museum, and thereby transform

it.

He

explicitly

invites

that

silence in

OPPOSITE, TOP, LEFT

TO RIGHT:

House

Planwith Tear Drops,

1989, acrylic on canvas,

79 x 63 inches collection

of the

Walker

Art Center, Minneapolis;

gift of Mary and John

Pappajoh

20101; Mozart-Da Ponte

/ 1995, oil,

pastel and graphite on

canvas, 71 x 92 inches collection of

the Hirshhorn Museum

and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian

Institution,

Washingto

D.C.;

Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program,

19951; OPPOSITE,

BOTTOM:

Trauerspiel

Tragedy), 2001,

oil

on canvas, 77 x 133.25 inches collection of

the Hirshhorn Museum a

Sculpture

Garden, Smithsonian

Institution, Washington, D.C.;

Joseph

H.

Hirshhorn

Purchase

Fund,

20031

4

ART

PAPERS





V enfance du Christ with a composition that

could have

been drawn

directly

atop a

gallery

floor

plan. We recognize

in

the

image a

model

of

the galleries

around

us, and a picture

of how we

might imagine

the

whole

show;

namely

as

a

suite

of

rooms,

each

shaped

by

its

own

unique

silences.

Indeed,

once

this

painting

reveals

itself

as

a

visual analogue of

the space

in which

it hangs, it becomes

an

enchanted mirror of the

entire

exhibition-and

we find ourselves on

both

sides,

inhabiting

a

series

of refractions that fork

and

join

in

all directions. Maria

Gainza has

said

of these

effects that

Kuitca's

oeuvre

ramifies

endlessly.

6

By

them,

our experience

of

the museum

is

transformed.

Our

view of

the

various

series

becomes

analogous to Kuitca's

making of them,

which he

described

to me

as

being

like a

physical

revisiting

of

familiar locations,

or like strolling

from room to

room

in

a

well-known

house.

In

a moment,

we are

transported, no

longer

in the museum

but

walking

with the artist

from

chamber

to

chamber

in

the mansion

of

his

creative

endeavor.

Moreover,

the surplus energy of

these

effects arcs, jumping

to

other

images of

floor plans and institutions,

such

as

House

Plan

with

Teardrops,

1989,

and

The Tablada

Suite, 1992.

They,

too, become

reflec-

tions of

the museum-simultaneously

fractional

and endlessly fractal.

This is one

of the primary channels

by

which

Kuitca,

in the words

of

Leah

Ollman,

manages

...

to abbreviate

the

distance

between private

and

pub-

lic space,

the intimate and

the

institutional. 7

It is

also an example of

what

curator

Olga Viso means

when she says that

...Kuitca

has

focused

in particular on

the

spaces

where

individual

and communal experience

and personal

and collective

memory are exchanged.

8

Both

of these

observations can be

read

as

referring

to the museum-as

a public insti-

tution and space

in which collective

memories are exchanged.

I

do not

mean

such a reading

to

exclude others-Kuitca is

clearly

concerned

with

other

institutions

and modes

of

exchange-but

Ido

suggest

that it

is

the

museum's

space

and

silence

that he

addresses

most insistently.

This

seems more

than plausible

for an

artist

who

came

of age already mak-

ing pictures

for

the museum,

and

who

must know

its

silences as well as

he

knows

those of his own

studio.

The

Opposite

of

Cinema

Now

on to the lush silences

of Odessa 1988, in which

the artist

layers

a

grayscale

rendering

of

a

frame

from

Sergei

Eisenstein's

Battleship

Potemkin-the famous

runaway-pram-on-the-steps

sequence-with

a

partial road map

of Russia that includes

the titular city.

By

arresting this

cinematic

image,

which

we already

know to be silent,

Kuitca

superim-

poses a

second

silence:

stillness.

In that

stillness,

we

can discern the

image's graphic

logic

of

sounds

and

silences.

The

alternating

light-and-

dark progression

of

the

steps

fills the

top third

of the

canvas

with

a

metronomic

rhythm

that outlines

dark

silence

with

spare beats of

lighter sound.

The brightness

of the baby

carriage

cries out against

this

backdrop

as

it

follows

in

its

downward

plunge

the path cleared by its

own preceding

shadow-the silent

space

into

which

it, like all

sounds,

must eventually fall.

Although

quieted by

the

absence

of

color,

this

pic-

ture demonstrates

with rare elegance

the

simple

truth that all sounds

take

shape against

silence.

But

it

is

also

the

synecdoche

of

a

scene

notable

for its

sonic richness, which

Kuitca

has

hushed. We are

acutely

aware that

we do not hear what we

can clearly see;

the bumping

of

the

carriage

on

the steps,

the

squeak

of

its springs,

the cries

of the

baby, the

massacre's cacophony.

As with

the silent soundtrack

of

L enfance

du

Christ,we

cannot help

but

recreate

these

absent sounds silently

for

our-

selves. A last sound is mangled with

all

this:

in

the quiet

of

an imagined

movie

house,

the

primal

silence of

a

collective

gasp

as

the audience

responds in

shock.

The

silence of the

map

compounds these

silences

of the cinematic

image with diagrammatic

silence

or the diagrammatic trance. It is

the

effect

that all maps, charts, and diagrams

have

on us when they trans-

port us

into

contemplation

of

that which

cannot

be

expressed

any

other

way.

I refer to

the impossibility

of

writing

or speaking

the

road map of

Russia that Kuitca

has painted here.

Even

if

it could be judged

somehow

correct,

such

a

text

would

be

absurd and

useless. When we read

a

map-floor

plan or

seating

chart-we

fall

silent

not

only

because of

the force with which it impacts memory

and imagination but also, and

more fundamentally, because

we can no

longer

rely

on

language.All of

Kuitca's maps share this power,

but

the

one

in Odessa

is unique in that it

does

not

occupy

the

entire

picture

plane, but

rather

disappears

under

the image from

the film.

Better

still,

the two images

cross-fade.

Unlike in

a

movie,

this

effect

has no direction

in time. Sweeping in

either

way,

it

beautifully embodies the

function

of

clearing

out

that I

have ascribed

to

silence in

Kuitca's

work.

This function operates

in

pictures

as nowhere

else.

What's more, in

a

cultural

landscape dominated by cinema, it

pres-

ents

a truly

radical

proposition.

It might

even

be said

to be

the

opposite

of cinema.

We fall

silent in movie

theaters,

but without

the

prospect

of

meeting a reciprocal

silence

in

which

creative

potential

ramifies

end-

lessly. Instead, our

silence

simply

makes room

for the

film's

sounds

and

images, which proceed

with

or

without

us. Odessa effortlessly

carries

the

weight

of

its

pictorial

inheritance right through the

age

of

cinema, and

teaches us

that at the

core of his

practice,

Guillermo

Kuitca

walks

and

paints

in

silence.

NOTES

1 Quoted

in

Jean-Louis

Chr6tien,

Hand

o

Hand:Listening to the

Work of Art,

Fordham

University Press, 2003 57

2. Miami Art

Museum; October

9,

2oo9-January

17,2010

/

Albright-Knox

Gallery,

Buffalo;

February

19-May

30,

2010

/ Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; June

26-

September 19,

2010

/

Hirshhorn Museum and

Sculpture Garden;

October 21

2olo-January

16, 2011.

3. Hans-Michael Herzog

in

Conversation with Guillermo

Kuitca, in Guillermo

Kuitca:

Das

Lied von

derErde Zurich:

Daros-Latinamerica AG,

2006.

4. Chr6tien, Hand o

Hand:

Listening

to

the Work

of

Art, 19.

5. Jean-Paul

Sartre quoted in

Chr6tien,

19.

6. Maria

Gainza, Guillermo

Kuitca, Artforum

42:2 (October

2003 : 178.

7. Leah

Ollman, Guillermo Kuitca

at L.A. Louver

- Venice,

California,

Art in

America 90:1 (November

2002): 166.

8.

Olga

Viso, Guillermo

Kuitca:

Connection

and

Contradiction, Distemper:

Dissonant

Themes

in the

Art

of the

199os Neal

Benezra and Olga

M. Viso, eds.,

Washington, DC and New York:

Hirshhorn

Museum

and

Sculpture Garden

Smithsonian

Institution

and D.A.P. 66-77.

Grant

Johnson

is

a

professor

of

Visual Art

at

Alderson-Broaddus College,

Philippi, WV, and

a

working

artist. He began writing professionally

on

art

relatively recently,

but

his

deep

engagement

with critical

discourse

is

long-standing.

OPPOSITE, TOP:

The

Ring, 2002, oil

and colored pencil

on

linen,

5

panels, overall dimensions:

71.13 x

322.38 inches

(collection

of Daniel Tempton, Parisl;

OPPOSITE,

BOTTOM

LEFT

TO RIGHT:

Untitled,

2008, oil on

canvas,

95

x 83

cm Iprivate collection); Odessa, 1988,

acrylic

on

canvas, 180 x 100 cm (CoLtecci6

MACBA. Fundaci6

Museu d'Art

Contemporani

de

Barcelona; Dip6sit Coleccion

Alfonso Pons Soler)

6

ART PAPERS





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Johnson, Grant

Building Silence: Guillermo Kuitca

Art Pap 34 no6 N/D 2010 p. 32-7

0278-1441

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Building Silence