by Cory Dugan
ale Chihuly
isn't dead.
The report of an artist's continued presence upon this mortal plane would hardly be remarkable except for one fact: An exhibition of Chihuly's artwork opens Sunday, June 22nd, at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, that bastion of distinguished but altogether deceased Parisian pre-moderns. The Dixon has occasionally pushed its self-imposed envelope, tentatively testing the waters of the early 20th century -- a toe dipped in social realism a la Jacob Lawrence, a fingertip in les fauves -- but "Dale Chihuly: Installations 1964-1997" marks the first featured exhibition of contemporary artwork in the museum's 20 years of existence.
By
engaging the Chihuly machine, the Dixon is entering the 20th century at
its full-blown fin de siecle, with all the incumbent technology and
blockbuster accoutrements. Most museum shows these days are traveling exhibitions,
moving around a national circuit like a rock band with a new record deal
and its first video on MTV. By comparison (and sticking to the analogy),
the Chihuly exhibition is the Rolling Stones. Except, unlike geriatric rock
stars, Dale Chihuly is always on tour.
Ten days prior to the exhibition's opening, the Dixon literally resembled the backstage of a major concert or touring Broadway production. Five tractor-trailer loads of artwork (complete with spares; breakage is a fact of life with glass) and installation hardware were in various stages of unpacking and assembly, cardboard crates stacked 6 to 8 feet high in the ballroom and spilling into the lobby. The Dixon staff mingled with the Chihuly staff, all sporting chartreuse security badges (backstage passes?) and busily unpacking and sorting and drilling and cleaning and polishing and assembling and hanging. In the midst of this dizzying activity, one becomes aware that Dale Chihuly is not just an artist, he is an industry.
Chihuly is inarguably the preeminent glass artist in the world today. For three decades, he has expanded the aesthetic boundaries of the medium and challenged the fine line between decorative and fine arts. Chihuly and his Pilchuk School outside Seattle still produce singular glass sculptures for widespread sale and exhibition; many Americans have undoubtedly seen his work without knowing it -- his Cerulean Blue Macchia with Chartreuse Lip Wrap, a scallop-shaped bowl form in the White House collection, is often featured as a prominent background focal point during those "informal" TV news chats with Bill and Hill. But in the art and museum communities, Chihuly is best known for his installations -- arrangements of glass sculptural elements, sometimes site-specific, that create environments of light and color evocative of flower gardens and underwater fantasia. The exhibit at the Dixon will also include HDTV video installations and slide projections of other exhibits and permanent commissions.
Video? Sculptural environments? At the Dixon? Before the purists and puritans get nervous, Chihuly's temporary residence in Hugo and Margaret's old homestead isn't likely to inspire Papa Monet to attempt any underground pirouettes. Dale Chihuly isn't Damien Hirst; this isn't ugly or shocking art concerned with life and death. This is work about light and color -- elements, after all, near and dear to the departed Impressionists.
Wandering
through a Chihuly exhibition could be compared to being inside Monet's Waterlilies.
Or inside Tiffany's on acid. The Macchia Forest installation, for
example, offers a collection of dramatically lit vessel-bowl forms perched
upon varying heights of steel-frame pedestals; clumped in a corner and winding
along an adjoining wall, they suggest an underwater garden of undulating
plant and animal forms. The Persian Pergola, an arbor-like structure
with a clear glass ceiling -- allowing an underneath view of scores of brilliantly
colored blown-glass vessels and orbs -- is particularly effective in its
Dixon incarnation, completely spanning the museum's central hallway. The
walls of a small side gallery erupt with Anemone Clusters, spiraling
plantlike forms in blue, yellow, orange, and chartreuse glass.
One of Chihuly's more recent forms is the Chandelier, multicolored glass globes or "anemones" arranged en masse upon towering steel armatures, creating an effect somewhere between the namesake light fixture and an artificial Christmas tree on steroids. The Dixon exhibit offers several examples, including an outdoor version greeting visitors in the front courtyard, and a new site-specific work installed in place of the museum's outdoor fountain (just to the rear of the main gallery). Also planned for the Dixon show, taking advantage of the museum's gardens, are several "surprise" installations -- clumps of glass Reeds "planted" unannounced at various points along the garden's paths.
The Dixon has broken new ground with this exhibit of a contemporary artist (it's not a trend, I'm told), and pushed a rather sizeable rent into its cozy little envelope. It's a definite stretch of the museum's mission statement. The cynical purist may despise the corporate-monster/crowd-pleasing/blockbuster/beautiful-object marketing mentality behind the Chihuly machine. But, as machinelike as the exhibiting entity may be, there's something reassuring about the allure of man-made objects -- blown glass, for chrissake, almost as ancient as it gets technology-wise -- in this day and age. On a very simple level, it works.
Dale Chihuly:
Installations 1964-1997
The Dixon Gallery and Gardens
June 22nd - September 14th
Admission: $7 adults; $6 seniors;
$5 students; $3 children