In his solo exhibition at the MCA, which was organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Sietsema explores what it means to make art today—a time when much of what we say, think, or look at, whether we like it or not, is produced and circulated in the digital realm. Immaterial platforms equalize all objects, no matter their historic or cultural value. On sites like Tumblr, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon, physical artworks become flattened vessels of value that can be linked, traded, or appropriated for the often sinister purpose of selling commercial products or personal brands. By insisting on using analog processes in the creation of his films, paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Sietsema reclaims various modes of hand-based production from digital technology—and in so doing, rips his work from what he describes as “a kind of social ether infused with planktonlike masses of monetized hooks and barbs.” The value of his work is not merely visual—to appreciate it, you must understand his method.
The artist has stated that film is central to his practice—and that his work in other mediums is really just another way to process ideas. One of the three 16 mm films in the exhibition, Figure 3, 2008, becomes a thematic umbrella for the other works on display. At first glance the film looks like an ethnographic slideshow of artifacts—ancient vases, tools, and coins—culled from an archaeological site. In fact, the objects were made from plaster in the studio, calling the liquid value we might place on such historical objects into question. When we discover they were created by Sietsema, they attain market value as contemporary sculpture—but this assumption is disabused by the fact that the artist destroyed the pieces. Ultimately, all that’s left is the film-as-document, which in the exhibition is shown as an ethereal light projection.
Sietsema frequently uses objects in his studio to confound expectations based on visual assumptions. From afar, Brush Painting (grey), 2013, and Studio Painting (green), 2012, look like combines covered in paint but reveal themselves on closer inspection to be two-dimensional depictions of a paintbrush (in the former) and a roll of tape, a file folder, and a paint-can lid (in the latter). After seeing a number of such works, Untitled (collection), 2007—a wall sculpture near the exit composed of, among other objects, the actual paintbrushes and paint-can lids depicted in the paintings— is shocking. The effect is that you feel haunted by objects you’ve already come to accept as existing in another place entirely.
The four ink drawings in the 2012 “Calendar Boat” series are rendered in such detail that they resemble vintage photographs of sailboats. Despite their beauty, they (like the other works) are ultimately just containers for Sietsema’s ideas. To replicate the image four times, the artist read a pre-digital manual on touching up photographs and employed the restoration techniques to build each image bit by bit on a blank sheet of paper. Sietsema frequently speaks of using cliché to understand what has been lost as the digital world takes over the analog. Here, cliché is embodied both in the source image and in the handmade means of drawing (rather than scanning the picture digitally.) The cliché offers an access point for almost any viewer under the easy guise of nostalgia—using it, Sietsema forces us to think about the cultural conditions in which we live.
Paul Sietsema is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago from September 7, 2013 through January 5, 2014.
To see images, click on the slideshow.
