"Conversation re: Marc Pally" by Macia Belgleiter and Terri Friedman of zingmagazine
On Space: Tracing Thought
Terri Friedman: The first thing that struck me about the show was all the space and emptiness in the pieces.
Marcie Begleiter: There appeared to be three mini-shows each treating space differently. The paper in the large drawings functions as negative space, in the mirrored work space is equivalent to the space of the reflected room, and in the small paintings the negative space disappears at times.
TF: His old work was full. Filled with layering and drawing. More figurative.
MB: Some of this work referenced figures, others the inside of figures, and still others were mind figures-what it would look like to follow thoughts. The lines in-between thoughts.
TF: Yes, there’s a sense of journeying taking place, a wandering. It’s like he’s an alpha state.
MB: That’s how you can begin to read a narrative into the work. If you read it as a journey, then the marks tell the story of movement from place to place. There is a subject. But I can also experience the work as it flips out of that read, and the hand, the wanderer, disappears. It can then be seen as very objective, as traces removed from someone’s hand.
TF: Like organisms, they’re breathing.
MB: They have a life of their own, as if they grew there, which is very different from thinking of them developing from a linear sequence-this opens up the question of the relationship intent and accident.
On Gender: The Materiality of Such
TF: I don’t see a lot of deliberate intent. To me, this addresses the issue of gender. An organism has no intent-it grows of itself.
MB: But an organism isn’t an accident.
TF: Maybe not an accident. What’s the opposite of intent?
MB: Wait, I don’t want to leave this notion of “accident.” The basis of the mirror paintings are accidental landings of material, the relationship between paint and gravity.
TF: Jonathan Lasker makes international accidents, but this is different. Pally makes accidents and plays with them. I find it so refreshing that at a time when so much work is pre-conceived, even over-conceived, that there is a consciousness, a mindfulness in these splashes, but there is also a letting go of control.
MB: He splashes, then he goes into the splash with drawing. The pencil marks are intentional, but the paint can, and does, move on its own.
TF: Do you see these works as drawings or paintings?
MB: I see them as occupying a very exciting space between the two. They’re an amalgam. The largest pieces are the most intentional, they’re pure drawing. In terms of scale they have an inverse relationship to the paintings which are small, even intimate. This is just the opposite of what we classically expect. Paintings are usually heroic, and drawings are considered the “sketches” that precede them.
TF: Going back to gender, I think he’s playing with the idea of yin/yang, masculine/feminine properties. Control/out-of-control. Graphic/intuitive. Archetypal, very yin. They’re vulnerable, sensual, lacy, decorative.
MB: Translucent. You can pass through them.
TF: Yes, they’re not impenetrable. They’re not periods, they’re question marks.
MB: Questions are based on language. I see them more as environments. They give you a place to hang out. A world.
TF: Okay, Some are is generous. Some didactic spectacle. These are open and ambiguous. You can’t really tell whether a woman or a man made these.
MB: But the relationship of his gender to the work is not central to my reading of it.
TF: Yes. But I’m interested more in the gender of materiality.
MB: As far as that goes, Marc is over in a place where a lot of women hang out.
TF: Delight, humor, and conversation. And birth. They seem very pregnant to me.
MB: Pregnant and giving of life, not just contemplating it.
TF: They’re like a big Hawaiian woman who weighs four hundred pounds. They just sit and are revered. That’s all they have to do and that’s valid.
MB: Queen bee. Lick me, feed me, birth me.
TF: They don’t have to go anywhere.
MB: And … they’re funny.
On Humor: “If a coconut falls…”
TF: But not ironic. There’s physical humor here. The odd colors, the drips, the edges like cake frosting. The doodling.
MB: It’s like comedy which has a circular narrative. The work lets the material fly in a dangerous way. Say, like a coconut falling from a tree. The coconut hits the monkey’s head and she may lose her balance, but she always pops up and keeps going. That’s comedy. The result is accepted. The artist says, “OK, I can make that work,” Not only the form is circular, so is the process.
TF: Humor as displacement. Anything surprising can add delight and humor. A white middle man making these lacy lines.
MB: So, do you feel that gender necessarily appears in the work?
TF: No, but it is intrinsically different for a man to use these colors and forms in his work thatn it would be for a woman to access them.
MB: I agree that is affects who we are, but I’m not convinced that it affects the read of the work.
TF: I don’t think anyone’s read of the work is that important. It’s so unpredictable. I bring my baggage. Then my baggage mingles with his baggage and new baggage is formed.
MB: They’re not trying to convince you of anything. They have a space of ambiguity. If we can at all talk about narrative in connection with this work, Marc leaves behind the question of ending. There may be history in the layering, breaking through on the surface so you can see the past coming through. But there is also the idea of a continuous history, wandering, unending.
On the Here and Now: The Importance of Being Earnest
TF: I also think that they’re very intelligent and referential. It’s interesting that I feel a need to clarify that, but it’s because our culture doesn’t value the “being.”
MB: It’s work which challenges analysis. It engages me to be and be with it. I find it some of the most engaging work that is being made today. Certainly it’s central to a wealth of work that’s being made in Los Angeles at century’s end. A very ‘90s, post-ironic stance.
TF: What do you value? Cynicism in art, or humor and sincerity. It’s a political stand to say I value something. This cynical irony keeps us all at a distance.
MB: And that brings us back to the Zen-ness of it, the Pacific rim nature of the work. The lightness, the present nature of the work is valued out here. Who’s going to get this on the Atlantic?
TF: In most cultures art is made to affirm belief. It’s very strange to be in a culture where art is cynically based, based in a critique and theory. It’s so disconnected from the personal and spiritual experience. That’s what is so beautiful about the Pacific Rim. It’s a place where contemporary theory and practice can co-exist with spiritual and personal traditions.
Marcie Begleiter and Terri Friedman
Los Angeles, CA
1997
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