Archive Inland Specific: Installations by artists of the San Gabriel Valley

Annabelle Aylmer | Enid Baxter Blader | Castillo Georgia Fee & Michelle Pauline | Megan Geckler | Christian Mounger Images from the Exhibition | Inland Specific Home Page Archive - Fall 2000 Home

Inland Specific:
Installations by artists of the San Gabriel Valley

The six installations at the Pomona College Museum of Art shared similarities beyond the simplest definition of "installation art." "Installation" is a term that signifies an approach to art making in which the traditional concept of the discrete object displayed on a wall or pedestal is rejected in favor of the creation of a differentiated environment. As "installation art" developed, it encompassed the additional idea of being "site-specific." Site-specific installation concentrates upon and draws meaning from the distinct contextual and physical space it inhabits; it can include, for example, the physical characteristics of the gallery, the history of the local community, and personal concerns related to the site. While Enid Baxter Blader and the collaborative team of Georgia Fee and Michelle Pauline created installations as discrete environments, the four other projects addressed the concepts of site-specificity. Castillo, Megan Geckler, and Annabelle Aylmer dealt with the physical site of Museum, both inside and outside the building. In very different ways, Aylmer and Christian Mounger explored the social and historical context of Pomona College and the city of Claremont.

In her video installation, Threshold, Enid Baxter Blader creates a physical experience that is both poetic and melancholic. Confronted by three projections of curtained windows, the viewer experienced a threshold between the world within and the world beyond. This threshold became both a visual and a psychological boundary. Through the subtle device of poignantly fluttering curtains, Blader suggests a feminine domestic viewpoint and the disenfranchisement of rural America.

Georgia Fee and Michelle Pauline created an interactive space that focuses on sleep and involves the viewer in the unconscious world of dreams. Within the physical installation of Pillow Talk, walls of overlapping donated, refurbished, and handmade pillows invite the viewer's touch and thoughtful exploration. Disjointed sounds of slumber faintly echo through the installation, reminding the viewer of the intimate experience of sleep. The Pillow Talk website unites this otherworldly realm with the intangible domain of cyberspace, extending the material installation into the collective sphere of the unconscious.

Addressing the scale and dimension of the Museum's physical space, Castillo created a sculptural rope installation. Through these dramatic cascading installation, she examines the role of hair as a metaphor for vanity, power, identity, ritual, care, and sacredness. The rope becomes a representation of human hair on a colossal scale, an overwhelming and commanding presence. Castillo does not use new rope, preferring instead to use materials with a utilitarian past. The rope retains much of its original form; yet the artist's hand is an omnipresent force, focusing the viewers' attention on the dichotomy between tautness and unraveling disarray, between control and surrender.

Megan Geckler situates vivid rectangular forms within the strong verticality of Museum's windows, visually alluding to both a metropolitan cityscape and stained glass. Using vinyl, a manufactured material used to make records, purses, weatherproof siding, and numerous other products, Geckler replaces the artist's hand with a precise industrial cutting tool. Speaking in the visual language of urban signage and contemporary commercialism, she unites the crisp layout of advertising with the bright color of pop culture. This play between natural light and vibrant color has an almost painterly quality despite its readymade characteristics.

Placed in a courtyard outside the Museum, Annabelle Aylmer's installation interacted with both the physical and contextual space of Pomona College. Consisting of wood found on the campus, the sculptural installation references Aylmer's personal association of the tree with the concepts of life cycles, growth, and time. In its structured abstraction of nature's patterns of growth and decay, her installation combines organic form with mathematical reason. By creating a nearly mechanical repetition of a natural object through a series of wooden sculptural forms, she intimates industrial precision without conforming to the bland efficiency of mass production.

Christian Mounger's installation addresses authenticity and memory within the specific context of Claremont and the Colleges. His large-scale photographs of Claremont from 1984 to1987 suggest the transient and deceitful nature of memory: the parking lot where trailers once stood has been developed and the historical authenticity of the boots and is doubtful at best. These images form a backdrop for a variety of objects including furniture from local collections. A homemade batch of "Flubber," references the long-standing relationship between the Colleges and Hollywood, in movies like The Absent Minded Professor. Mounger has constructed a space as artificial as a sound stage, recapturing the quirky quality of his Claremont experience.

Museum visitors rarely have the opportunity to view more than one installation at a time due to their considerable space and construction requirements. This exhibition provided a chance to examine new work by San Gabriel Valley artists through shared affinities and the historical thread of installation activity.

Stephanie Porras
Getty Grant Multicultural Undergraduate Summer Intern