Archive Freckled Gyres: Sculpture by Mowry Baden

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Freckled Gyres: Sculpture by Mowry Baden

This exhibition of the art of Mowry Baden spanned more than thirty years of work by one of Canada's most accomplished artists and Pomona College's most distinguished alumni. Its intent was to examine and celebrate the enduring legacy and far-reaching artistic vision of an extraordinary artist. "Freckled Gyres: Sculpture by Mowry Baden" presented a selection of the artist's "task-oriented" objects completed between 1969 and 2000, along with related drawings. Although it was possible to include only a small sampling of a very large body of work, the exhibition provided important insight into the nature of the artist's work.

A maker of objects whose interest lies in the physical and perceptual interaction between viewer and work of art, Mowry Baden constructs interactive pieces that incorporate bodily participation. The artist's seminal body-oriented works of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his broader interest in the perceptual and interactive possibilities of art, were influential to generations of artists who were his students, including Kim Adams, Lewis Baltz, Michael Brewster, Chris Burden, Stephen Davis, and Jessica Stockholder. Since that time, he has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. In 1998 alone, his work was seen in "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; a survey exhibition at Open Space Gallery, in Victoria, British Columbia; and at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles.

The works that were included in the exhibition further explore the performative nature of Baden's work through a collaborative project undertaken with Pomona English Professor Steven C. Young. Two "transformative" sculptures, Prone Gyres and Freckled Gyres, which are at the heart of this venture, led two lives--as interactive sculptural objects during regular exhibition hours, and as central "props" for theatrical performances based on two short Sam Shepard plays as interpreted by Young. Over the last 15 years, Young has focused on productions of Samuel Beckett's shorter plays; in 1997-98, he designed and built a portable stage for Beckett performances that he took on tour throughout the western United States.

This exhibition represented the third occasion on which Baden and Young have collaborated. The first was a "mapping" project in 1976. In 1992, they worked together again on Wolf Tracker, a work included here. Both earlier collaborations resulted in projects that combined Baden's interest in object making with Young's textual explorations. This, however, was the first time the two have created individual works--within their respective fields of art and theater--and brought them together. Baden's overlapping interests in sculpture, architecture, and perceptual psychology, which reveal themselves in a concern with social and political as well as artistic issues, dovetail instructively with Young's concern for examining and transforming everyday actions, experiences, and dialogue through theatrical interpretations.

"Freckled Gyres: Sculpture by Mowry Baden" explored the artistic process from a variety of points of view. The exhibition addressed the nature of art; the artistic process as a solitary, individualistic pursuit; the role of working drawings; the populist, interactive potential of objects; and the role of collaboration in artistic practice. The exhibition also asked: How is art--the visual arts, theater, and music--altered by contact with another mind--of the collaborator, of the viewer? Does this interaction transform the way we see the work? Does it change our perceptions? By raising questions like these and encouraging us to see the potential of art's intersection with life, Mowry Baden demonstrates, on a fundamental level, the transformative power of art.

Rebecca McGrew
Curator