| Archive Project 20: Pauline Stella Sanchez |
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Catalogue Essay |
Images from the Exhibition Pauline Stella Sanchez Home Page | Fall 2003 Archive |
The Project Series
Project 20: Pauline Stella Sanchez
In her past work, Sanchez has variously presented groups of cartoon-yellow surrogate sun paintings meant to be lit by the sun; circular installations of digital and ink drawings capped with quirky cartoon-yellow sculptures; interactive Formica sculptures that mimic architecturally designed furniture; and photographs of herself on the sun. Starting in 1989, Sanchez traveled to architectural, cultural, and landscape sites focused on cultures of the sun, including Versailles, France; the Vatican; Bolivia; Peru; and England. These experiences further solidified her interest in sun mythologies, mirroring as a cinematic tool and as a self-portrait, the society of the spectacle, art history, and the world of images. The work on view here stems from the artist’s earlier explorations into modernist painting, color theory, quantum physics, and furniture design, as well as her connections to artists as diverse as Yves Klein, Piet Mondrian, and Joseph Mallard William Turner. All of these sources and objects are linked by Sanchez in her on-going investigations into art history, art production, and spatial systems.
In this exhibition, Sanchez presents a new video entitled ...self-portrait...with notes and opera light, three new sculptural arrangements entitled Sun helmutbonnethalo prototypes that are to be solitarily made of water with ubu stairs..., and an earlier example of one of her surrogate sun paintings. Both the earlier painting and the video self-portrait bring together her diverse interests and link the past with the present—the “dazzlement” of the sun with the reality of her artistic influences. The video consists of footage from an art history lecture by Sanchez interspersed with flowers, sun imagery, and a photograph of the artist on the sun. Through her own teaching—captured in the video—of film and art history, she weaves connections between theoretical structures, in this case, connecting French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his essay, “Cezanne’s Doubt” to her sun photograph as well as other filmmakers and artists. Each of the three sculptures includes carefully designed floating podiums; small wooden quasi-Cubist “staircases” that collapse two-dimensional space with three-dimensional space, playing on Sanchez’s earlier interests in spatial systems; and hand-modeled cartoon-color glazed porcelain objects that play absurdly with notions of use for a “helmet,” a “bonnet,” or a “halo.”
Working more like a researcher than an artist, Sanchez has found that sun myths are interwoven in political, social, cultural, and economic histories. Ultimately, through her research and artistic process, she finds that connections can be made and epiphanies can be reached. At the same time, however, she reaches no logical conclusion—there is, in her work, a constant searching for states of comprehension.
Pauline Stella Sanchez’s exhibition is the twentieth in the Pomona College Museum of Art’s Project Series, an ongoing program of small exhibitions that brings to the Pomona College campus art that is experimental and that introduces new forms, techniques, or concepts.
Rebecca McGrew
Curator
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