Brookhart JonquilIn a Perfect World

April 12, 2013 – May 11, 2013

2 | Emerson Dorsch In a Perfect World | 3

In A Perfect Worldby Brookhart Jonquil

If a man, while forming out of gold every type of shape, never stopped remolding each into all of the rest and if someone indicated one of those shapes and asked “what is it?” then, by far the safest answer with regard to truth would be “it is gold”. -Plato, The Timaeus, c. 360 BCE

With this analogy, Plato first attempts to describe ether, a level of reality situated between the world of pure forms and our physical world. He proposed that since the elements of the physical world are constantly changing, such as water into steam, they cannot be the most fundamental material of the universe. Ether is the material of emptiness, the gold out of which arises the flux of images that constitutes our sensible universe. It fills the universe and has no time or any other material attributes. Some 2,400 years later, we confirm that matter is nothing but a condensation of electromagnetism, vibrating energy in constant flux, and furthermore, that what gives form to the physical are the forces within emptiness itself.

Our present view of the universe presents two realities which are completely separated from each other conceptually, although connected causally, namely, gravitational ether and electromagnetic field, or — as they might also be called — space and matter....According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable... But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it. -Albert Einstein, Ether and the Theory of Relativity, 1920

The physical world, it would seem, is so much a matter of flux that, like the shapes in Plato’s gold, it is impossible to say with certainty that it exists – as soon as one does it has already changed. Having no physicality or temporality, ether is perfectly complete, an ideal version of reality. Looking carefully at these qualities — immaterial, timeless, existing without physical location, a perfect reality — one may very easily think we

are talking about something else– Utopia. While ether describes physical properties, Utopia refers to social implications of the same, so when speaking of a place, they are functionally synonymous.

In Utopia there is no discord between people. Yet discord, not to mention the whole spectrum of human drama, requires duration and bodies, it is a circumstance of flux, placing it in our world of images. Ether is void of subjective qualities; in it there can be no conflict. The reality this suggests is an interconnected dualism, on one hand we have the joy and suffering that feel as true as the ground beneath our feet. On the other hand, we have a place without ground or feet, a void free of duration where everything is exactly the way it must be at the moment that it is.

Utopia is not something to be attained, on the contrary, it is an aspect of reality more fundamental than the constant flux we perceive as the physical universe. And it is indeed from this ideal world that our physical surroundings take form. We all occupy Utopia, and it occupies us.

To talk about a place without form that is everywhere is challenging, however, it is made easier through the dual nature of mirrors. Reflections present us with visible evidence of a space we know cannot be physical – they are our only visible reference for Utopia. And yet it is paradoxically the only circumstance in which Utopia is not actually present. These images are purely phenomena, a phantom reality in which there is no foundation of ether. Through mirrors we can talk about what is through what isn’t and about what isn’t through what is.

The sculptures that create In a Perfect World do just this. Besides the four objects that inhabit the gallery, there is another object which is physically nowhere, yet occupies each of the sculptures. This form, used by Buckminster Fuller in his first Dymaxion Maps, divides a sphere by four great circles into equally sided triangles and squares. Each of the physical sculptures in the group is composed of bowed fiberglass rods that pass through holes cut in mirrors, and each is entirely unique with regard to the shapes, angles and numbers of these components. Yet as the fiberglass

4 | Emerson Dorsch In a Perfect World | 5

rods reflect around in the mirrors, all create this same virtual spherical structure. The rods bow with tension as they pierce their mirrors. They have a sense of sustained action, a charge of potential energy. The virtual sphere’s entire structure is composed of reflections of this charged material, imbuing it with an explosive quality, an outward force bound by its material.

Seeming to float like a nucleus within the recurring sphere is another virtual shape that is different in each sculpture. This form arises from and echoes each unique composition of mirrors. These nuclei are caused by a hole in the end of each sculpture that presses against the gallery wall. The isolated architecture seen through the hole becomes perceptually dislocated, combining with reflected images to form a geometric mass that seems to float disembodied from the surrounding wall.

The physical composition of these sculptures is entirely dictated by the necessities of their immaterial aspects. Similarly, the other body of work in this exhibition, Voids for Burning, consist of sculptures that derive their form from a physically absent element. These sculptures are made of a paper-like material that is draped over geometric objects, the object is removed and the paper retains its impression. The viewer can sense that it’s empty but the emptiness has a specific shape, an implied physicality which seems to have mystical weight due to its veiling. This paper-like material is nitrocellulose, an unstable material that when ignited burns quickly, brightly, and completely, leaving nothing behind, not even ash. The intention of the piece is for the collector to take it home, and when they are ready, to burn it. The object transforms into a void. And yet in many ways it was already a void to begin with; the veil has just been removed. If the collector cannot bear to burn it, the instability of the material will cause it to eventually dissolve into a powder or a goo. The collector is free to make his or her own decisions but cannot control the ultimate ephemerality of the material. The sculptures are not multiples. Each one is a unique piece—its erasure is final.

Building Pyramids2011 Acrylic mirror, paint, gold spray paint on floor7ft 6in x 8ft x 4ft

Installation view, Brookhart Jonquil’s installation at IMPULSE Miami, 2011

6 | Emerson Dorsch In a Perfect World | 7

In a Perfect World2013Mirror, wood, fiberglass rods, steel 7ft 8in x 7ft 8in x 2ft 6in

As anyone who has entered a mirror maze can attest to, it is disconcerting, at times terrifying, to be confronted with the illusion of the multiplied self. As the surrounding space is fractured into reflections, and as one continues to bump up against the reflective surface, the world as we know it is truly unrecognizable, and difficult – near impossible – to navigate. It is not quite this Bruce Nauman-esque sense of bodily uncertainty and disorientation that Brookhart Jonquil strives for in his work, but certainly bringing one’s attention to one’s place in space is: “It’s kind of a theater where you interact with yourself. It’s about a fracturing of the environment and of yourself in that environment,”1 he says of his use of mirrors. As a material, mirror took on loaded connotations throughout Minimalism and Post-Minimalism. Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic text on “The Mirror Stage” was translated into English in 1968, and mirrors were being used by artists as means to provoke a literal reflection on the act of viewing. Jonquil’s interest in the act of reflection and has lead to some lofty ambitions. In the case of In a

Perfect World, mirrors and fiberglass rods, along with an intricate series of geometrical calculations and an understanding of quantum physics, serve the artist to communicate his belief that we all, at any given moment, occupy utopia.

Minimalism brought the subject-object

relationship to the forefront of the act of viewing in the 1960s, and works such as Dan Graham’s mirror-based installations in the 1970s placed increased importance on the interactions between viewers themselves. With the advent of Relational Aesthetics and participatory art in the 1990s, a viewer’s interaction with artworks and other viewers have become primary relationships in the art-viewing experience. Jonquil’s sculptures do not necessitate a social atmosphere in terms of multiple viewers, but a social component is inherent as he asks us to contemplate our place in the world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61), a French philosopher whose theories were integrated into the discourse of Minimalism in the 1960s, argued that

subject and object are reciprocal, interdependent, and also made clear that viewing is an embodied experience: “I do not see space according to its

exterior envelope; I live it from the inside; I am immersed in it. After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me.”2 In Jonquil’s work, reflections allow the eye to take in multiple views at once, and an allover sense of space is palpable. Even his two-dimensional works

provide a sense of three-dimensionality. The upsetting of the linear picture plane

has been cause of radical artistic developments – perhaps most notably Cubism – and the canvas’s potential for both illusionism and object-ness continues to be mined by painters today. Jonquil is adamant about the fact that he does not think pictorially: “It’s really hard for me to think about a flat image, and illusory space that you enter metaphorically.” Still, there can be no denying the appeal of illusion – in terms of manipulating reflections - in his work. Symbolic representations may hold little value for Jonquil, but, that notwithstanding, he is interested in painters like Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein, two artists whose grandiose theories sought transcendence through the canvas – Fontana by piercing it, and Klein through texture and color. Clare Bishop notes that Merleau-Ponty, when writing about art specifically, considered painting exclusively. The artists associated with Minimalism, however, Bishop writes, felt that “painting mediates the world, and does not allow the viewer to experience perception first hand.”3 Donald Judd exemplifies this position when writing about the object-paintings of Frank Stella in 1965: “Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and literal space; space in and around marks and colors.”4 The “problem” of illusionism, however, is one that Jonquil persistently parses.

Past works such as Looking Both Ways and

Self Portrait (both 2009) invite the participation of the viewer in such a way that the picture is not activated without him or her. These are works for

the individual. In Looking Both Ways, the viewer climbs a ladder to look into two mirrors placed side-by-side at 90-degree angles. The viewer’s line of vision is split, so that one eye sees a dart stuck into the wall, while the other eye sees a drawing of the same thing. This dual view allows the mind to simultaneously interpret these two views as one reality – both an object and a drawing. Minimalism blurred the lines of painting and object by eliminating linear perspective and attempting to negate a hierarchy of viewing by stripping away a sense of composition by focusing on basic geometric structures. This work, however, utilizes the mirror’s reflection to unify drawing and object. In Self Portrait, graphite is drawn in an allover manner onto board, so that no line or perspective is visible, just an opaque, slightly reflective surface. There is no “image” to be seen until the viewer steps in front of the board, and is reflected back to him or herself. Again, reflection is utilized to upset notions of an illusion based on linear perspective. Although Self Portrait is technically two-dimensional, it is not activated until a person engages with it – it necessitates a three-dimensional component.

In “Art and Objecthood” (1967) Michael

Fried famously decried the theatrical element that he argued was inherent to Minimalism, marked by a sense of duration that exists because of the Minimalist object’s engagement with both viewer and space. In Jonquil’s work, however, a sense of theatricality – as well as interaction - is embraced. This is exhibited perhaps most clearly in Void for

Burning (2013), a project that makes sculpture of a void. Thin sheets of nitrocellulose, a highly combustible material sometimes referred to as “flash paper,” are dampened with water and draped over shallow geometrical objects. The objects are removed once the nitrocellulose sheets have dried, and have taken on the geometrical form – ghostlike veils encasing a mysterious volume. Then, in a flash, they are gone. As a material, nitrocellulose most interested Jonquil for its ultimately immaterial properties. It naturally degrades to nothingness

over time, but most spectacularly, when lit on fire, it quickly flashes and then disappears – no smoke or ash is left behind. When set alight, as they are throughout the exhibition, the veils reveal what’s underneath – emptiness. This fascination with the void cannot be discussed without reference to Yves Klein, who designated himself “the painter of space,” striving for ways to give currency – quite literally – to the immaterial.

The sculptures in In a Perfect World

embody the seamless combination of illusion and solid material that Jonquil is so adept at - he

knows how to harness a mirror’s image to disrupt visual perception. Four sculptures, comprised of glass mirror and fiberglass rods, are placed on each wall of the gallery. Each of the sculptures is in the shape of a diamond, triangle, kite and square, and each has one, two, three or four rods. Despite

their obvious differences, every sculpture, through a combination of the rods and reflections, creates a fifth, uniform shape, based on a form from Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map (1944). Although viewers are free to look at each sculpture from any angle they desire, the same “fifth shape” will appear. Jonquil works with Google SketchUp to draft his sculptures, and makes his calculations for the angle of each piece of mirror beginning with the immaterial “fifth shape,” a spherical form composed of four circles. As he notes, “The immaterial parts determine the proportions of the physical parts.” These are perfect-looking geometrical forms, charged with a tense energy because of the bent rods that are inserted into holes in the glass, waiting to spring straight. These are perfect-looking geometrical forms, charged with a tense energy because of the bent rods that are inserted into holes in the glass – they are charged, waiting to spring straight. The idea of perfection is particularly relevant here because these sculptures are meant to allow for reflection – quite literally - on the existence and location of utopia.

On the Sculpture and Installation Works of Brookhart Jonquil

1 All quotes by artist were recorded during a studio visit with the author, February 23, 2013.

2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, The Primacy of Perception, Ed. James Edie, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1964, p. 178.

3 Clare Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical History, Tate Publishing, Lon-don, 2005, p. 50.

4 Donald Judd, “Specific Objects”, Arts Yearbook, 1965, p. 94

“It’s about a fracturing of the environment and of yourself in that

environment”

The sculptures are meant to allow for reflection – quite literally – on the existence and

location of utopia.

Mirror Images

By Katherine Pill

153 NW 24 St 305-576-1278 dorschgallery.comMiami, FL 33127 Tue-Sat 12-5 info@dorschgallery.com

April 12, 2013 – May 11, 2013

Detail from front page of booklet is from Brookhart Jonquil’s In A Perfect World, 2013.

Brochure/poster published in April 2013 to supplement the exhibition “In a Perfect World” by Brookhart Jonquil, at Emerson Dorsch April 12, 2013-May 11, 2013.

Statement, “In a Perfect World,” by Brookhart Jonquil. Copyright April 2013.

Essay, “&KDUJHG�5HÀHFWLRQV,” by Katherine Pill. Copyright April 2013.

Artworks by Brookhart Jonquil.

Images courtesy Emerson Dorsch.

Branding & brochure/poster design www.bellamystudio.com

Brookhart JonquilIn a Perfect World