Backbone > Lucid Dreaming
Material Vision
by Beth Elaine Wilson

Ever since the Renaissance, when the concept of art was redefined from mere manual craft (as it had been understood throughout the Middle Ages) to something that involved the manipulation of various materials-paint, marble, wood, etc.-guided by a significantly intellectual design, art's center of gravity has been pulled this way and that by the contradictory demands of its fundamentally hybrid constitution. The confluence of the physical and the intellectual is at times as much a clash as it is a union.

In the past century or so, artists have presented a number of different ways to negotiate this intractable demand, from the invention of purely conceptual art (Marcel Duchamp) to the brute physicality of some Minimalist art (Richard Serra, Carl Andre). And yet the conceptual work still demanded some physical trace in order to exhibit the ideas, while the Minimalist work becomes equally "heady" the more one tries to articulate the meaning of all that material. And contrary to the self-abnegating attitude that seems to have been systematically instilled in a substantial portion of the population regarding "art" and the individual's ability to make meaningful judgments about it, the truth of the matter is that once the artist puts his or her work out there, the ball is metaphorically in the viewer's court, to be understood on whatever terms he or she brings to the work.

Michael Pilon's show of sculpture that opened on September 28 at Collaborative Concepts in Beacon makes manifest the wonderful set of contradictions involved in the intersections of thought and material, and of artist/self and viewer/other. Pilon is a down-to-earth sort of guy who you could easily imagine downing a few beers with after work. In fact, the work itself-constructed from loose bits of industrial detritus, from sections of I-beams to metal cables, rubber equipment treads, rusted wire screens, and whatever else might be salvaged from an abandoned factory-shares this deceptively coarse exterior. Out of these rough materials, Pilon creates a spontaneous play of form, the sort of recognizably organized assemblage of elements that the philosopher Immanuel Kant identified as art's "purposiveness without purpose"-the idea that beautiful things, in their essence, seem to be there for a discernible reason, but without any direct practical purpose.

From Pilon's perspective, these impressive welded assemblages are really just an accretion, the residue of a very extended process. He begins by "going scrapping"-surreptitiously gaining access to burned out or abandoned factories, warehouses, and related industrial structures, and walking out with whatever interesting bits and (sometimes large) pieces he can carry. He gets a feeling of heightened awareness from the combination of the risk of being caught trespassing and the potential physical hazards of spending time in sometimes structurally unsound spaces, an odd sort of high, which is then invested in the individual pieces of scrap that he finds. "This stuff is like gold to me," he confided to me in an excited tone, his eyes lit up from within. These solitary missions are less about finding raw materials for sculpture than they are about bringing the artist in contact with his own soul.

On one of these scrapping excursions, Pilon recalls roving through an abandoned warehouse full of junk; at one point he noticed in one corner of the place that the debris seemed organized into more recognizable shapes with real world references-a makeshift bed, a coffee stand, a stool-and suddenly realized that he'd intruded into the living quarters of a vagrant, who then appeared out of the shadows. Startled, he backed off, apologizing, and left the premises, a bit shaken but deeply intrigued with the whole experience. It's this sort of existential sensibility that informs the work, each piece of metal invested with the character of the specific moment of its retrieval, and haunted by its now anonymous previous use.

Back in the studio, Pilon kicks the stuff around the floor, juxtaposes the pieces against one another, and intuitively assembles them in a process that for him is never definitively finished. In the show at Collaborative Concepts, the larger "complete" assemblages are in fact sort of framed by a number of individual pieces of scrap (or "fragments" as Pilon calls them) lying randomly on the floor, each of which could conceivably be incorporated at some future time into one of the larger works.

The rawness of these new works is something new for Pilon. A former long-term employee of Tallix Foundry in Beacon, he used the equipment and scrap materials available to him there to construct deeply competent, abstract welded sculptures that he then patinated, giving them a homogenous, authoritative finish. Now the preparator at Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies museum, he has (partly by necessity) allowed the prosaic materials to maintain their individual presence in the work, including elements of color such as the dull industrial orange paint on the I-beams or the spotted rust on pieces of iron. The resulting heterogeneity preserves something of the history of the individual elements, and highlights the open-ended process of the sculpture's creation. That these frankly industrial works thus speak on a surprisingly spiritual level is entirely the product of the artist's insight. His confrontation with the detritus of industrial society, presented in the converted industrial space at Collaborative Concepts, carries with it something of the monstrous spiritual force of cannibalism, updated for the information age. All that is required to "get it" is a little open-mindedness, and the willingness to both embrace and move past the literalness of the materials. It's a trip well worth taking.

The fall fundraising season is now in full swing. Both Time and Space Limited in Hudson and the Center for Photography at Woodstock are conducting auctions of work to support their respective programs, and I strongly encourage everyone with excess available funds to participate by making a bid. The TSL silent auction, currently showcased in its gallery, features an impressive lineup of 37 artists curated by John Davis (many of them previously represented by him at the late, lamented Davis + Hall Gallery). The works can also be viewed (and bids placed) online at www.timeandspace.org/art_auction.htm until the Fall Supper benefit and the conclusion of the auction on October 19. You can view some of the many 19th and 20th-century photos that will be available in CPW's live auction on display in its galleries in Woodstock, on view until the day of the sale, October 12. A catalogue of all the prints (actually an extended issue of the Center's signature Photography Quarterly) is available for $17, and also serves as admission to the sale.

"Beyond Matter and Tactics: Sculpture by Michael Pilon" through November 2 at Collaborative Concepts, 348 Main Street, Beacon. 838-1516.

Time & Space Limited Fall Silent Art Auction, works on view through October 18 at the gallery at TSL, 434 Columbia Street, Hudson. (518) 822-8448 or www.timeandspace.org.

Center for Photography at Woodstock 24th Annual Benefit Auction, prints on view through October 12 at CPW, 59 Tinker Street, Woodstock. 679-9957 or www.cpw.org.