Wonderful Pussycat
Peter Noever
Q: - Liz, earlier we had discussed your position as a sculptor and you had
pointed out that your work is a sort of an anomaly in today's context. You
said that sculpture today is dependent on culture - populär culture - that
it makes references to objects and images in the culture and the formal
alterations or re-contextualizations of these. Your work, however, relates
to the tradition of sculpture and works primarily with the elements of
scale, volume, weight, material, gravity, color etc. These elements and
their use in American sculpture is connected to Minimalism and the work
of Judd, Morris, Smith, etc. Your sculpture, however, breaks from these
artists by breaking some of the rules that became the Standards for how
to deal with "real'’ materials and "real" space i. e. in your work, scale does
not equal gravity, mass does not equal density. Your sculpture operates in
the "blind spots" of Minimalism, and shows that Formalism in sculpture
has not been fully investigated. This isn’t like exploring some overlooked
corner of Formalism, really this is showing that Formalism has vast
unexplored possibilities. Would you agree?
LL: - Of course, this is very insightful.
Q: - Today in sculpture the issues have moved on to something eise?
LL: - Well, they haven't moved on for me. And that's what gives me room
to work, l’m fortunate. If the questions of Formalism were answered
already or if they were already addressed it wouldn't be that interesting.
The exploration of these questions hasn't been completed and I am sort of
surprised that more people aren't working with this. It is an interesting
phenomenon: Judd and Morris were so succinct, and not only them but
also Michael Fried and much that was said and done at that time. It see-
med to come to a point of resolve and they became masters and they are
masters. The next point of departure that was taken in the seventies was
to leave the gallery, to leave the object, and then once that had happened,
it was again sort of to negate the object for a kind of content that was
outside the object, a cultural content that is now mostly engaged through
representation.
What Pussycat tries to address is that it is easy to think the real is the
most accessible in the physical realm. That might not be the case: You
can’t really rely on your perceptions if visual information is complicated.
What's real then is your perception of what you take to be real, but it
might not be the thing in front of you. I am not saying that the physical
isn t real but you can't rely completely on your physical perceptions, like
the sense that something is solid isn't necessarily trustworthy either.
That's why I bring up illusion because I think there can be illusion in
things that are three-dimensional. This doesn’t just occur in painting, or
hallucinations, Cartoons or dreams.
Q: - You are really speaking of a very American position that's not so true
for Europe. If I look at the lineage in European sculpture, the 19 ,h Century
canon, Modernism, fhe Bauhaus, DeStijl, Cubism - sculpture was the
royal discipline and never stopped here as an autonomous and steady
tradition.
I am however interested in the question of illusion and color in your sculp
ture. Your use of color leads to very specific questions that make me think
of Flavin, Turrell and the Light and Space tradition. Can we talk about
that?
LL: - The corridor piece (Corridor Red/Green; Corridor Yellow/Purple;
Corridor Orange/Btuel is about color. It came from a two-dimensional
idea namely that there is a Vibration - a visual buzz - between opposite
colors and so I wanted to make a three-dimensional space with that idea.
The sculpture was around that space. Pussycat creates an illusion with
color in three-dimensions. You can't really see it...
One of my favorite painters is Bridget Riley. She makes paintings you can't
see, and l've always been intrigued by this. You can't really focus on a
Bridget Riley painting. It exists as a phenomenon of how it makes you see.
This is something that has typically been experienced visually in art
through painting and other two - dimenional art forms. l’m saying it does-
n't have to be a flat experience - it can happen in three dimensions.
Q: - Describing your work, you talk about form, volume, color.
l’m wondering why you're not talking about space?
Interview with LIZ LARNER
LL: - I guess I thought I was talking about space. It seemed implicit but to
be more clear, space is where all of this is occurring. Pussycat effects
space and the perception of the space around it. What interests me is the
ways color is and isn't used in sculpture. In sculpture color is generally
used to reinforce form. Form is one of the tenets of sculpture. But it's not
necessarily indispensable to artwork about space. The Light and Space
artists use space without an object in the space. The object or form is
around the space - more like architecture. I still want to have an object
but I don't want a recognition of the form - the external shape of the
object - to be the primary element of my sculpture.
Q: - This sculpture does so many things at once. It's a mess, but there is
Organization. It relates to scatter pieces which were a direct reaction to
form, but Pussycat doesn't present itself oppositionally to form, it pre-
sents itself affirmatively about something eise.
LL: - Yes, I hope it is another way to use form. Scatter is about randomn-
ess, spontaneity, and the dematerialisation of the object. Pussycat has a
random quality and a seriality that goes a little more crazy than repetition
but it has a very particular position in the MAK Gallery. It can be arranged
in many different ways but it does have a boundary, it has a limitation. It
takes up a certain amount of space although the form will not always be
the same. It's not infinitely random, although it might appear to be, it has
a pattern, you just can't see it or maybe you see a new pattern that hides
the structure of the pattern that holds it together.
Q: - It isn't an installation but a sculpture that is installed.
Q: - It wavers between chaos and control...
Q: - For me the color aspect is not something that has always been in
your work.
LL: - You are right, for example the chain works (Wrapped Corner -
Chained Between Walls] are really related to this work but without the
color. They're both made with links, they're both open, they let you see
through them, they take up space but without being Volumetrie. The
chains are what got me here.
Q: - Well yeah, I think in a very wonderful way Pussycat links the color
issue with the form issue and the space issue. These are the three ele
ments it brings together. The color is something very specific, it's not
surface color, it's not something you can take away and still hold the form.
LL: - For me it was important that the color wouldn't be a surface but for
the material to be the color. The color isn’t only on the surface, the color
is the form. You can see the back from the front, maybe it's surface all the
way through. This also has a lot to do with the formal element of volume
and how it has been used in solid or apparently solid sculptures - I love
messing around with that.
Q: - Do you have a favorite color?
LL: - I love black and darkness, darkness deeper than death, the black
abyss of my tormented soul.
Q: - I think the balances in this piece are very fine-tuned and they make
the poetics of it. It's very open intellectually at a certain level and it's very
beautiful, but it is also very stringent formally, minimalist in a way, and it
deals with color and light in a very experimental way. It also has the tech-
nical perfection that is so apparent in your work, but the technical aspect
is not overpowering.
Q: - l’m really curious about the familiarity of plastics, its sort of every
day-ness that makes the piece not be so super amazing or precious.
Q: - Plastic is very un-auratic. It doesn't have the sort of aura of art
material. It doesn't have the aura of anti art material either - like toothpa-
ste and tinfoil. The genius of this work is the material.
LL: - The material is also the cultural part.
Q: - Culture!? From a formal and visual point of view it had to have this
material, you had no choice.
LL: - l’m dealing with scale and weight without using volume. How do you
make something large scale but light and not be a magician?
Liz Larner, Peter Noever, Daniela Zyman and Evan Holloway
Vienna, May 24, 7 998
