American
Technological Sublime,
installation view,
1997
michael merchant
and stephen brower
at TZ'Art
by Peter Fend
As I have proposed to review only art shows
dealing with architecture, or what could be
better called "Architecture Shows," this
was a natural.
One could not call this exhibition anything
but an architecture show. None of the
objects presented have meaning except as
they bear on questions of House, Site,
Building, Container or, if you want to
raise smiles, Architectural History.
There is what might be called a video
sculpture, but it's really more a guide to
sexual orientation. It's a boom-box-sized
model of a standard `50s house, with
building elements exposed, much like what
might be shown in a real estate sales
office, EXCEPT that all of this sits on top
of a `50s-style TV playing movie footage of
a man and woman within a car. He drives;
she, quite pneumatic, moves from seat to
seat.
The car, like a cage, like a moveable
house, rocks about. An esthetic from the
`50s becomes very clear: house, with happy
bodies inside; car, with happy bodies
inside; a comfortable sexual norm pervades
it all. This is a situation that people
will yearn to be inside of: like well-cut
clothes, or a cozy bedroom, with His and
Her roles very clear. This is not the
sexual fashion today. Does Merchant try
turning the wheel of history, again,
through habitat fantasies?
The painting by Stephen Brower facing the
street, with a very long cutaway model of a
Quonset hut used for storage in front of
it, does not function as a painting. It
functions as a theater-set backdrop that
says "Sky." Sky, in turn, says "Air." Air
says greater and lesser pressure,
pneumatics and breathing.
Upon entering the gallery you first
see, tethered to the floor at three points,
a mini-blimp by Michael Merchant. Mini outdoors, but very maxi
inside the space. We cannot call it a
sculpture. Who would want it in a
collection by itself? But we can call it a
statement. On the walls all around are
blow-ups of antique picture postcards of
ideal sites, often with idealized
buildings. A collector could dedicate a
whole room to the exhibition, or at least
an image or two of inflatables together
with that blimp, and that assemblage,
possibly even the whole room, would be an
Architectural Statement.
This statement, which the objects and
photos all lead up to, is that
architecture, being something you inhabit,
is something you breathe. It is inhabited
by elements that are more or less inflated,
and more or less permeated, or more or less
sealed. The interior of the Quonset hut is
of course stuffy, with dead air, and the
cutaways don't change that sensation a bit
because we know they are just
illustrational; the sky, by contrast, makes
any passerby take a deep breath. Inside,
the scenes of Niagara Falls make us respire
(oh, the invigorating air!); the model of
the exposed-beam house makes us feel cozy
without feeling stifled; and the road scene
on the TV seems remarkably airy, well-respired; the blown-up landscape postcards,
like the scene from near Utica, induces not
a sensation of There but a nostalgia for Us
As We Have Been, Healthy.
We leave reminded of the first
obligation in any built situation: Our
Bodies as they Breathe, Pump and Move. The
blimp functions as do we in the space:
blown up, elastic, in a dynamic state,
poised. Building from these understandings
will yield, of course, very different
results than those today -- hopefully, in
brand new constructions, brand new forms of
building, which help achieve the fantasies
evident in the postcard pictures, enlarged
for the show, from long before.
A maxim might be gleaned, worth citing to
those architects now seeking -- in vain,
given the lifetime of buildings -- to build
monuments: seek not to build a timeless
structure, but to satisfy, with brand new
efforts, our timeless needs.
