Charles Long
March 2004

To write an essay which falls clearly into the category called “criticism” seems to imply, for the writer’s standpoint, a position of criticality. - One point for Captain Obvious! -But perhaps not. There’s something a little fishy about the word “criticism,” and that fishyness problematizes this seemingly obvious implication. This all connects to the word “criticize,” and through that connection, it borrows a connotation of negativity. “Criticize” is probably the most often used of all of these words, critical, critic, criticism, etc. To put it in terms of cognitive psychology for a moment, the hypothesis here is that “criticize” is the form people would think of first, due to stronger and more direct connections in the brain, and, significantly, it is the form which stays activated for people even as they use the other forms.

Why, then, is “criticism” fishy? Well, as I set out to choose the subject of my criticism, out of a list of several contemporary art shows, a perplexing thing happened. I spent a bit of time at each show, and imagined what I might want to say about it: any kind of thing, whatever happened to come up. Whatever connection my brain felt like making. There were a good number of shows, and for most of them I found something worthwhile to say. For one though, Charles Long at Tanya Bonakdar gallery, I found quite a heap of worthwhile things to say. So, would this be my choice then? I have no doubt that this is a reasonable method of choosing which artwork to focus on; what could be better than finding a heap of worthwhile things to say? There they were. But something didn’t seem right. Why would I, writing “criticism,” go out and find what is basically my favorite show, and write about that?

Words quietly bring a certain sort of baggage with them. There is a direct meaning, or a direct intent to represent something with a word, but then there is also something like a stow-away meaning, an accidental implication. Connotations, connections, “X makes me think of Y,” that sort of thing. “Criticism” activates “criticize,” which activates “finding fault, negative commentary,” which leaves me thinking maybe I should write about my least favorite show. “Criticism” is fishy because this idea, sneaking in through semi-conscious connotations, is a pretty stupid idea. Connotations are something to be careful about, as we’ll see.

Charles Long’s work was indeed my favorite out of what I looked at on that day. Interestingly, what made it so strong for me had quite a bit to do with stow-away meanings and connotations. At first, what a viewer believes he or she is looking at is a sort of playful yet rather simple sculpture. It’s lively, it’s fun, but there’s nothing terribly innovative about it - at first. Take Oblivion Parkway for instance: a roughly seven foot tall, vertical-feeling plaster construction. It resembles a cityscape more than anything else: a dense bunch of skyscrapers, and some twisty roadways or bridges. The plaster coating has a homogenizing effect on all of the materials used to build this thing, so at first, it’s just a shape, and what it might mean comes to a viewer only in a direct way and only out of the shape or form. Even in these terms, it is an interesting piece, but as I walked around it a bit more, I started to notice some of the more subtle qualities: under the plaster, there were not only some raw building materials, but also here and there some junk, like pieces from furniture – some ornate chair or bureau – and model train tracks… These found objects bring their own connotations into the situation, the furniture’s shape mimicking an animal’s leg, the train track bringing up the phenomena of models, and toys. These stow-away meanings actually connect to the more direct ideas of the piece: a cityscape, but on a toy-like scale, pointing to the inherent strangeness in the human activity of constructing, creating, and the tension between formulaic and organic processes in all of these things we build.

Another fascinating piece was A Marvelous Science. This is also roughly human size, and in fact echoes the form of a figure. There is an intricate and very well-produced steel frame, mounted on a stand, as if it were meant to spin for some reason. At about chest-level, a series of aluminum pieces, much like tubes or conduits, come out on either side, and all connect to a rectangular piece, one on each side. The other ends of some of these conduits (they’re actually solid, but they resemble conduits) hold odd little biomorphic blobs made out of ceramic, while the other ends of the remaining conduits attach to the steel frame. This is an entire system of clues and references. The conduits are often perfectly parallel to one another, and have perfect ninety degree bends, making them rather like a circuit-board, an orderly grid of some kind, but they interface with these organic forms, and they exist within the frame of a surrogate figure. But there’s nothing magical about this – the methods of building, the materials, the fasteners, are always obvious. This has been built, it didn’t just occur. This piece operates almost entirely by connotations and connections, and it is this indirect formation of meaning which actually lends it the weight that it has.

Accidental implications, in whatever context, can form these sorts of phantom meanings. In the case of words and what they bring with them, or in the case of Charles Long’s use of found objects and recognizable materials, this realm of connotation is a very real thing. Perhaps more real and more significant than the directly intended or directly apparent meanings….