I know nothing of the weather when I know it is either
raining or not raining: That tangled statement, with which curator
Gabrielle Giattino christened the group show currently on display at
PNCA’s Feldman Gallery, comes from a line in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The Austrian philosopher wrote
it to illustrate how linguistic devices such as
tautologies—statements that, however scrutinized, remain
true—and contradictions represent a kind of debasement of
language. That is, rather than reinforce some logical system or reveal
something to us about the world, they break down as constructed
figures, and actually strip away meaning. The seven artists Giattino
has assembled all present work that uses language to highlight what an
incomplete and, at times, nonsensical system it truly is. We may take
linguistic communication for granted, but the artists in I know
nothing all demonstrate how easily its methods are disrupted.
In Andrea Merkx’s “Like Um (An Autobiographical Interview with
Andrea Merkx),” for example, she pares down an ostensible video
interview to spoken word’s dead weight: the “likes,” “ums,” and “uhs”
that punctuate the spaces between actual language. Tom Holmes, on the
other hand, emblazons a single repeated black-and-white image of a
greyhound wrapped in a white blanket with various phrases.
Superimposing slogans on the side of the dog’s sandwich sign-like
blanket, from the mandate “Get on TV” to the declaration “I make stuff
up,” he lampoons advertising as a kind of surreal spectacle that has
nonetheless become camouflaged in a culture saturated with the
stuff.
But the most fascinating portion of the show belongs to Ellie Ga.
Inspired by her artist residency onboard a polar expedition, Ga
wrestles with how to represent such an encounter with the unknown. She
turns to an obsessive mapping of physical phenomenon, photographing
dozens of watches—all set to 10:10—as if such examination
could tell us something about that precise moment. She offers dozens of
drawings, tracing routes and plotting the boat’s location in the world,
in an insistent attempt to articulate her experiences. But it’s a pair
of ineffably gorgeous C-prints, capturing the ship’s passage through
luminous ice floes, which prove how hamstrung language is for
describing the extent of such beauty.
JOHN MOTLEY