Thank you very much

by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator

 

The first time I visited Jim Hodges’s studio he was working on two projects simultaneously. Each seemed significant, as if they had undergone a long evolution. On the right was and still this (2005-08), a series of ten panels on which the artist was both “painting” and “sculpting” with gold leaf. They formed a golden horn, the subject matter covering the sacred and the profane. On the left was a modestly-scaled, all black contraption, the start of what has become generator. The two works were darkness and light, but neither was in opposition. They needed each other for both balance and harmony.

generator both exists within and aggressively denies the gallery space in which it is placed. It blocks the entrance, but does so as a means of protecting the interior, instead of merely impeding entry. While the object’s blackness and height are imposing, the work is positioned to allow for a comfortable passage. As the viewer enters the gallery, they are basked in blue light, connoting the travel into an otherworldly space. Leaving the complacency and comfort of the everyday, viewers are offered access to somewhere less than comfortable.

 

generator is constructed of simple, lowgrade plywood. Many two foot by two foot squares are hinged together and released or locked into place by small bars of wood. Everything is painted black. The wood is rigid yet flexible. It sporadically covers the floor, climbs up some walls, and occasionally forms a ceiling. Viewers are invited to walk on the piece but not to touch due to its precarious balance. generator, while installed, remains unfinished.

Just what is generator? Hodges, reticent to use language to didactically describe art, speaks of the work expanding to fill in spaces and gaps, morphing in response and reaction to barriers and boundaries. For him, generator is a catalyst for ideas. As such, I think of it as a metaphor for the soul and creativity. Neither the soul nor creativity know any limits, neither can be overwhelmed or controlled. They exist. We traverse them. We lose our way, our bearings, and our footing. They are there to nurture us when necessary, but also seem to say: Get used to us. Serve us well. And we, in turn, will be good to you.

 

Hodges acknowledges the physicality of his process. He states that all his art starts inside of him, and it is merely his job to let it out. Drawing is essential to his practice as is a collaborative approach to materials. He talks of the generosity of wood and gold. Each is thought of as a willing collaborator.

Installed in the center of generator is another work, golden straw. The golden straw is a thirty-foot long, gold-leafed copper pipe that starts at the artist’s mouth height, has punctured the entirety of the museum building, and extends eight feet up into the sky. The work draws fresh air into the gallery. It also serves as a type of lifeline, a means by which to be saved from passing claustrophobia, a guided way out of darkness and up, literally, into the light. Sporadically, tears appear on the end of the straw, gracefully falling onto the wooden floor below. A few times during the installation of generator, the artist was spotted with his mouth on the straw – inhaling deeply and with appreciation.

 

Differing from the temporary interventions into built structures by Gordon Matta-Clark, Hodges’s effort is less about the hole and more about what needed to be put there. The practice of breathing is an ancient art: the healing effects to both calm and heal the body are irrefutable. For me, Hodges’s installation is very much about the Buddhist notion of presentness. He creates a space in which one must be aware of the physical presence of their body. In order to prevent harm, one must notice one’s feet, walking carefully across and through the object. His intentions are in no way malicious, and yet the structure demands that you pay attention (or else).

The title of Hodges’s show is both a promise and a prediction: you will see these things. Hodges speaks of the blindness from which creativity can spring. If the time prior to inspiration is a space of visual, spiritual, and metaphoric darkness, the moment of knowledge is where we see the light, find our way, know what to do. The blindness can be generator, the awakening golden straw.

Yet neither art nor life is so simple. Darkness, confusion, and danger are seductive. People do things they know they should not and are drawn to people and activities that are poisonous. We flirt with disaster. Walking the right path, making good decisions, and doing the right thing can be exhausting. What drives us to do what we do, where does inspiration come from, and how do we guide our efforts? Maybe that is where generator comes back in—a place of uncomfortable comfort, allowing the simultaneous existence of darkness and light, frustration and inspiration, wrong and right: a place of balance rather than division.

 

Jim Hodges’s words on the Aspen Skiing Company lift tickets offer comforting encouragement and a subtle challenge: “give more than you take.” Like most great wisdom, the text is a simultaneously simple and complex idea, referencing philanthropy, environmental awareness, corporate responsibility, Buddhist practice, and the overall concept of just being a good person and doing the right thing. The text image is repeated three times and placed on the exterior façade of the museum. The works not only set the tone for the exhibition and the frame of mind in which the artist hopes that viewers might find themselves, but also functions as an echo. These banners echo all of the regular sized versions of the lift ticket that decorate the jackets of skiers on the mountains and around town.

Some visitors have found generator perplexing. When I told the artist, he replied that that was the greatest compliment he could receive. Art that is easily understood can have less to offer. What can we learn from art—a practice so subtle, so personal, so exacting? What part of that learning comes from the objects themselves, and what from the dialogue that surrounds them? Life is about the search for mystical truths, the something other or more. It is through the generosity of artists and the objects they offer that these truths can at least be considered, if not understood.