UP TO CODE

Jon Kessler's Recent Sculpture

Terry R. Meyers

Arts Magazine, March 1991 (Pp. 71 - 73)

The dramatic shift in semblance that distinguishes Jon Kessler's sculptures of 1989-90 from his previous work can be seen as the result of an act of renovation--a construction job that has remodeled a body of work already well- noted for its theatricality and wit. Moving, on occasion, away from the stage-set allusions that allowed for the production and presentation of work that could be both entertaining and serious, Kessler has now hit upon another form of permanent housing for his graspable references and specific found objects--in the shape of the building. With it, he has effectively overhauled his assembled sites so that they continue to support the exuberance of his trademark multi-tiered meanings while provoking a different range of associations in the mind of the viewer. Employing the fabrication, stratification, and materials of buildings, several of these most recent sculptures, when mapped out in relation to each other in a vacant space, make their own small-scale municipality--an active yet unpopulated, constructive yet emptied, cityscape. Unlike much of the tableau vivant-inspired photographic work of today (for example, the heavily populated work of Laurie Simmons or David Levinthal), Kessler's use of what reads in these sculptures as Lilliputian/doll-house scale asserts monumentality--or, at the very least, emphatically comments upon it--without the benefit of the blown-up image (a device that he would subsequently use in work shown in Europe). From there, his most recent installation, at Luhring Augustine in New York, November 1990 to January 1991, has turned partially away from the reinterpretation of the modern city (while he has been dividing his time between New York and Paris), and integrates the aggregate spirit of his earlier assemblages into the composition of the "City" sculptures. More freestanding than ever (even when they're attached to the wall), Kessler's sculptures display the artist's increasing ability to combine the optimism inherent in any act of building with the inanity required in most acts of making art.

The City sculptures, shown together in December 1989/January 1990 at Luhring Augustine Hetzler in Santa Monica, are deliberately inconsistent as a group. The formal concerns of construction and function, as well as the conceptual problems of money, power, and neglect, are variously combined in individual pieces, so that each "building" is imbued with a distinct atmosphere. As in architecture, form and content in these sculptures are co-dependent and politically charged. Like the real city, there seems to be both a good and a bad side of town in Kessler's project.

Closed for business at this hour, one wonders if the piece will open itself up in the morning, like an expensive flower, for eager shoppers, even though there is nothing to be found for sale on the inside.

At first, things seem even bleaker in Broken Building (1989). Mimicking a typical office building, it comes complete with wall- to-wall institutional gray carpeting in the hallways, and two elevators and staircases (indicated by drawings of double and single doors). Once again unfinished architecturally, the plate glass covering the entire structure has been strategically shattered, ruined before the sculpture could be put to use as a building. In sculptural terms, however, it is formally consistent, historically conscious (whether of Duchamp or Judd), and perfectly acceptable. No longer so abandoned and irreparable, Broken Building is an important piece for Kessler because it allows him to consolidate the social issues of architecture with the oftentimes witty preoccupations of sculpture. Operating completely within the boundaries of sculpture, but at times moving close enough to renovative architecture to make you look twice, the artist's City sculptures are in two scales, two occupations, and several stories.

Kessler's contribution to a group show titled Le Desenchantement du Monde, held in the summer of 1990 at Villa Arson in Nice, included two sculptures (one a horizontal floor piece) structurally similar to Broken Building. The most important components of his installation, however, were the large black-and- white photographs that were taken of the insides of his miniature buildings. Suddenly human-scale, the photographs functioned as uncanny illustrations of the potential physical accessibility of Kessler's interiors if they were of "normal" size. Out of context they can become documents of marketable square footage; instead, however, Kessler presented them not only alongside similar sculptures, but also as pieces of pure artifice themselves, leaving their white borders exposed and loosely tacking them to sheets of plywood. Kessler's disenchantment with both photography and architecture seems to be a reflection of "the disillusionment of the world" indicated in the exhibition's title.

Kessler's New York exhibition could have been named after one of the pieces included in it: Stayin' Alive (1990). Returning to the baroque sensibility of his earlier work, Kessler gave this sculpture a pair of rubber hip boots for protection, an anthropomorphizing gesture that makes the piece look as if it's high- stepping, as its motor maneuvers a pencil that persistently draws a geometric pattern on a piece of metal painted white. A lens angled toward the too-short viewer creates a distorted image of the drawing. Deliberately absurd, Stayin' Alive functions as a hilarious example of sculpture's unique capabilities for dealing with the figure/whether its own or that of the viewer. Another piece, Earthquake (1990), impersonates human motion, indirectly returning human presence to the City sculptures. Consisting of a five-level rack that holds numerous photographic reproductions on glass of Kessler's office buildings, the sculpture intermittently behaves as if it has caught a chill (it lacks the aggressiveness of an earthquake), rattling its glass plates against their restraints.

The 1200 Building ( 1990), a variation upon Broken Building and others like it, is the only sculpture in this show that might have fit comfortably into the Santa Monica exhibition. It is difficult not to interpret the piece metaphorically, with the white flag twirling slowly on the "roof as a symbol of the surrender of the smaller art gallery to the large "art mall" buildings on Broadway, which also tend to be called by their addresses. With a similar mixture of skepticism and ridiculousness, Birdrunner (1990) represents the cityscape photographically in a disorienting montage of overhead shots. The little stuffed bird, dressed in a jetpack and helmet (Wasn't the scenario of The Jetsons supposed to have already happened? Shouldn't our cars be flying by now?) and riding triumphantly up and down on a platform along the length of a fluorescent light bulb, appears to be better prepared than we are for the future.

Appearing to be some sort of a hybrid Venus of Willendorf/ Brancusi form in fiberglass, the backside of The Other Side (1990) was pointed directly toward the entrance of the exhibition, making it likely to be the first thing that the incoming viewer would see. It looks like anything but a Jon Kessler sculpture. On the "other" (front) side, however, placed inside a prefabricated shower/tub sealed shut by blue glass, is a classic Kessler display: a toy polar bear peering at a repeatedly dimming and brightening light bulb screwed into the drain. Such a mise-en-scene confirms that Kessler's recent direct investigations into architectural configurations have not led him astray from the theatrical and the whimsical, but instead have allowed him to recast the forms, materials, and magnitudes in which his assemblages perform, while simultaneously increasing his capacity to mess around with the "inherent properties" of other techniques, mediums, and vocations.

Terry R. Myers is an art critic living in New York.

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