Christine Lee - "Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3"
at Art Produce North Park
“Leave no stone unturned” – Euripides
“No good deed goes unpunished” – Clare Booth Luce (for Doug Simay)
What constitutes a good deed in art? Having the idea, being the artist, making the work, selling it, or a good crowd for the opening?
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Does a good deed in art mean that you were a success; the show was a success, tout était compris by the viewer or a viewer, the public, a friend, a lover, an art critic – you? Do good deeds in art or in life make up for all the bad things we’ve done or the bad art we’ve shown? Is there a bad deed that is never punished? Should artists be punished – and for what you ask? I say for all their good deeds, their artwork, their desire to create and fabricate images and objects out of thin air, and for their blasphemous cries of “this is art!” Or does this punishment for an artist come in the form of a show “missed” closed the weekend before you could get to it, or maybe a bad review or none at all? Is a good deed really enough to absolve you, me, and her from our daily responsibilities and moral and ethical – social – upbringing(s)? Isn’t it better for an artwork to be punished by the questions it leaves unanswered than to be complacent and all knowing?
Isn’t it better to avoid the mushy gooey in the middle types of art that leave us all sick and instead leave the studio, the gallery and the museum saying “Christ, that was amazing! What the hell was it?” I for one and perhaps I am long on patience, goodwill and virtue – yes, a Saint – would rather be punished by an artist’s good deed if only for the pleasure of not knowing what I was looking at (I didn’t say feeling) and wondering if she was thinking the same thing or at least had taken the risk to find out if there was something there after all. The problem is, you can never tell. And you can never tell, because you’re never there at the beginning of the story. And as a storyteller, as an artist, the good deed of telling a story is almost always punished simply by the telling of it. So you do the best you can.
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Doing the best you can in an imperfect world. But within that imperfection, does an artist sometimes overcompensate by bringing a sense of order, a strict working methodology, a repetitive, excessive and laborious technique to his work which somehow “rights a wrong” or renders the désordre less chaotic? Is there a heightened sense of well-being, of “feeling secure” within the familiarity of repetition that the artist somehow feels she is controlling the situation or the conversation with the viewer? Isn’t it almost always about power and control in an artist’s work anyway, disseminating a certain propaganda or party line disguised as style? Or as Vito Acconci clearly points out in his essay Art & Authority from 1983, “Every art-work falls under – on the part of both artist and viewer – the assumption of an atmosphere of authoritarianism. The art-work makes an appearance as if out of nowhere, as if it’s existed from all time...” Existed from all time or so tightly rendered, constructed, and “crafted” that you can find no fault with the object before your eyes that you forget what the artwork has come to say.
There is a lot of this type of work being shown in galleries these days, here in San Diego too, that is “crafted” to the point of obsessiveness, that it overrides for the most part the original impetus for making the work. It’s a bit of a domino effect; once it starts it’s not easily stopped. And if the process is stopped, it appears that the work is unfinished, random, and incomplete which I believe, fosters a certain anxiety within the artist to resurrect and somehow make the image whole/right again. Two exhibitions come to mind, David Adey’s recent show at Spacecraft Gallery in North Park and currently, Christine Lee’s exhibit entitled “Shims: Thousands of Uses – Use #3” also in North Park at the Art Produce Gallery. Both Lee and Adey are hands down two of the most innovative and interesting artists that have shown here. But what intrigues me as a witness to their inclusive systems of production is what Acconci again states, “(that) the viewer is given the illusion of power – I would add the illusion of comprehension - that is operative only in the laboratory conditions of an art context and that couldn’t be exercised so conveniently outside.” If Lee’s good deed was somehow punished by an impressive yet somewhat elusive showing of her work at Art Produce, then one can argue she has exercised a body of work, perhaps unbeknownst to and unseen by the public that is rich, poetic and succeeds entirely with her intention to “develop an understanding and appreciation for a material beyond its common associations and intended function.” I know this argument to be true and as for the shims, they just happen to be the most current material of choice for her.
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Lee graduated with a M.F.A from San Diego State University this year but already has a slew of awards and honors, professional experience, exhibitions and work in several collections that span nearly 10 years of her young life and career. Lee left the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an undergraduate degree in furniture and woodworking and came to San Diego specifically to study under Wendy Maruyama, head of the graduate department at SDSU, who is also a furniture designer as well as a traditional woodworker. Lee is currently residing in the Bay Area and teaching two classes of 3D Visual Dynamics at the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland. Some of you might know that California has always been a strong arts & craft state, notably during the sixties and seventies when the Bay Area Figurative movement was exploding and the California Funk Art movement headed up by painters, sculptors, and ceramists the likes of William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, and Wayne Thibaud revolutionized the art world with their quirky visual imagery and non-sensible art performances. The CCAC was univocally during this same period, the school to be for any serious formal and technical training in the art of craft.
“Shims: Thousands of Uses – Use #3” is the title for Lee’s current installation at Art Produce Gallery, it is also the third time she’s found a use for them. She estimates at least 12,000 shims, cut from red cedar, were employed to create the work. Tightly fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, Lee used no glue, nails or wire to keep the work from tumbling down. Why shims is an obvious question to ask until you discover that Lee has employed similar unlikely materials such as discarded telephone books, fire hoses and cast paper to make her art. It was however, a stint as a studio assistant for a custom cabinet and furniture maker, Steve Akana, that Lee discovered her passion and fascination with shims. They are for all intensive purposes, utilitarian objects manufactured in mass quantity of a recognizable triangular shape of varying lengths and thickness, used to support level and hold other very utilitarian objects such as doors, windows and cabinets. Cedar shims smell good, though I’m not sure why the cedar wood is used other than perhaps for its soft easily malleable and compressible qualities. For the most part shims are often left in place, a temporary fix towards a more permanent solution that is generally sheet rocked over once the window is in place, their value and resourcefulness hidden and unrecognized by the homeowner. Hidden, abandoned or is it that we humans generally don’t like to see what’s underneath the veneer whether it is our own bodies or the long chain of events that brought those skinless chicken breasts to your supermarket, nicely packaged and safe for you to take home. Lee would make us believe so. And in particular that the shim is not duly recognized for its usefulness or its capacity to bring order and support to our daily lives – even when it does, that she feels so compelled to redefine it as material that has a certain aesthetic nobleness to it. Which of course, they cannot be fully appreciated when stuck around windows and doors like some pin cushion and then coolly plastered over by our desire to decorate in an attempt for orderliness and cleanliness within our environment.
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
That Lee brings a new appreciation and regard to shims is obviously apparent. To art banter its raison d’être beyond its intended purpose is just talk, and to conceptualize beyond the shim’s stoic function to fabricate/construct something (art for example) with it is another issue all together that depends I believe, on how successful you are in transforming the shim beyond its “shim-ness.” You only have to look at an earlier work by Lee entitled “Between Twelve and Three” constructed out of used fire hose to see what I mean. That she uses the shim to purposely undermine its function and could also be viewed as a pun of sorts, shims shimming shims, is also evident but is it enough to support or carry a message and/or meaning. I think there are two ways in some regards to making art: do the obvious or do the contrary. Neither one is necessarily the correct approach, it does however depend on the reason(s) you’re choosing either one – meaning you’re contrariness is not being used to confuse or muddle the visual waters as justification for the placement or use of an object, image or idea that is unrelated to the work and vice versa, your obviousness is not being used as a shadow of shallower ideas, laziness or facility. The “sense” of what you do or make has to correspond to the “sense” of the object made.
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Where does Lee’s installation fall within my arbitrary parameters, well, perhaps you can find the work to be in a little bit of both. Lee is certainly at a disadvantage from having the work “read” in all its complexities and conceptual underpinnings, and from speaking with her I know this also to be true. It is as Acconci points out, the laboratory like conditions of an art context/art gallery, often misused by the artist or misinterpreted by the spectator as something more, is further complicated by its sudden appearance of the work on the path of the public or in their way. Lee’s installation may have appeared out of nowhere leaving itself open to too much literal and decorative interrogations. One of the inherent problems with the installation that troubles me is her use of household appliances embedded into the structure, such as the washer & dryer, refrigerator and microwave. It is still a question that I have no convincing answer from Lee. “Use #1” the first installation shim work Lee produced, was tested within the comfort of her apartment by literally suspending her refrigerator between the door jams of the kitchen and living room – floating the appliance several inches off the floor, shimming the gap with several hundred pieces of red cedar and magically making the refrigerator appear to “walk through walls.” “Use #2” incorporated someone else’s refrigerator and dishwasher and was installed in Lee’s studio. “Use #3” of course as I mentioned above, now includes a microwave and is installed inside a gallery. Lee’s desire to incorporate everyday recognizable objects as she states, may seem a little arbitrary only because there are lots of easily recognizable common goods in the world to be utilized. Why one over another? This isn’t entirely clear looking at the installation. There has been mention of going door to door, shims in tow like the Welcome Wagon lady, to shore up other neighbour’s refrigerators and household appliances. To what end I can’t say. I wonder though if it isn’t the choice of the object - one that has a specific function of keeping your food cold and your laundry clean, not to mention that they could still function mechanically albeit elevated – that doesn’t rob them of their functionality that say would happen to a couch or chair given the same treatment.
“Use #3” is by far the largest and most ambitious and most theatrical installation Lee has produced to my knowledge. It is as stunning and breathtaking as a cascading waterfall (the placement of the work in the gallery was executed to perfection) and at times, reminiscent of some early Robert Rauschenberg set designs – imagine for one minute “Pelican” being performed in front of it. Its “Pop” appliance iconography and consumer goods accessibility as well, brings us back to a time where a washer and a dryer were indeed a luxury and an American commodity respected by some and envied by others. And though none of this imagery brought to mind wholly represents the context of the work on display, I’m still convinced that the spell Lee has cast on the viewer has been somewhat broken by taking the appliances out of their environment. The transition was too literal which broke down the beauty of the shim work by the blocky and formal mechanical appliances, creating very little tension between the two materials providing opposition instead of harmony. The “wow” factor comes more from the suspension in space of the objects than the objects themselves.
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Lee’s work is a lot about process, about learning as she says, learning through repetition – coiling, folding, interlacing and stacking –as well as fully understanding a material’s soul and spirit. It is to her comforting as well as relaxing, perhaps even a little cathartic. Lee’s work is also about what goes on behind the scene, the journey methods and resources she uses to get a work accomplished. This can take many forms from family and friends as workers and collaborators to materials (preferably) used and re-used, recycled and then put to another unintended use or brought back to their original state of being. Lee’s work is as spiritual as it is meditative and is as unique and personal as her vision and personality. The success that she brings to her work is in large part I believe, due to a heightened sensibility and order she wishes to bring to her surroundings, managing to find a poetic touch and gesture in every movement and placement of one part in a larger whole.
My reservations about Lee’s work are minor in comparison to what she has accomplished on many different levels. The ambition and tenacity she was able to hold on to complete such a heroic work – and I keep saying this about a handful of galleries and artists working here in San Diego – should be a lesson to others about professionalism and the breadth and range of good work shown in spaces that are willing to take risks. Once again, I prefer to nit-pick a work that is strong and resourceful than to make up stuff about minor works of art with no vision. And even though Lee’s vision is still very young, it is strong and growing with purpose. I spoke earlier of two possible approaches to making art, one is to do the obvious and the other, to do the contrary and even if I’m not too much of a fan of the obvious – a Saint but also an Anarchist as well – sometimes doing the obvious whether in life or in art is well, just enough. Plus juste as our friends in France say. I’m thinking in particular of a future work by Lee, to be installed and photographed for one day in Golden Gate National Park of a door and a window shimmed between two trees. There’s something about that that just makes sense. “Shims: Thousands of Uses” yes indeed, and what happens to them after they stop performing as spinning constellations of pungent red galaxies, mosaic quilts, ornamental éventails, Japanese gardens, rippling textile or an absurd game of Jenga once they’ve left the hands of the artist? They change back into shims at the stroke of midnight and head to work as ordinary shims holding in place windows and doors for the San Diego Chapter of the Habitat for Humanity. Somehow that too is just right.
Kevin Freitas
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
Christine Lee
Shims: Thousands of Uses – Use #3
Art Produce Gallery
3139 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92104
Through Dec. 1, 2007
The installation is visible in its entirety from the outside of the gallery and can be viewed 24/7
More info: www.missleelee.com
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" - Christine Lee
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
"Shims: Thousands of Uses - Use #3" (detail) - Christine Lee
