Orly Genger's installation 'Whole' at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Orly Genger's site-specific installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art appears ominous and intimidating despite its springy softness. Hand-knitted from thousands of feet of nylon climbing rope, "Whole" is painted black and stacked into imposing towers throughout the IMA's Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion. The rope's black coating heightens the installation's imposing presence and adds a level of association which critic R.C Basker summed up in a Village Voice review of a similar installation staged by Genger in 2007 at the Larissa Goldston Gallery: "Genger crochets her thick coils into floor-covering mats and topographical heaps that convey a sense of lava flows, or maybe a tire dump," Baker wrote. "Yet there is something engaging about climbing over this writhing mass, as if it is dumbly alive... it's not hard to think of those sci-fi golems that rise up from ecological disasters to avenge nature."
The elaborate installation that "Whole" represents is an extension of themes that the New York artist has addressed throughour her work. After graduating from Brown University in 2001, Genger exhibited with the Stefan Stux Gallery in New York and at the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel. She had her first solo exhibition at the Elizabeth Dee Gallery in 2004, and was featured in "Young Emerging Artists" at Socrates Sculpture Park. In a performance at the Haifa Second International Installation Triennale in 2003, Genger stood in the center of a knit "map" made of variegated sections, wearing a knit headdress with long snakelike "tresses" that draped down to the ground. Later, at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, she presented "Mr. Softy," a site-specific installation of thousands of feet of multicoloured nylon rope carpeting the ground between the museum's historic "Old Hundred" building and the recently opened new museum facility.
Using only her fingers as tools, Genger crochets chunky yarn and heavy industrial elastic into abstract shapes which link back to two seemingly opposed twentieth-century traditions. Even while Genger's sculptures visually evoke references to the stiff, strict, muscular and macho minimalist traditions pioneered by Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Carl Andre and their peers, her choice of a medium and her manner of manipulating it undermine the conventions and clichés of that tradition. Similarly, her use of fabric evokes comparisons with feminist traditions of textile- and craft-based art. Genger's own petite size and lady-like appearance add an element of daring to the accomplishments of her physically intense technique, which could lead some viewers to assume she is undertaking to challenge or undermine assumptions about the "gentler sex." Yet she evades direct narrative associations or didactic interpretations that could be placed on her abstract work. Instead, the work covers a lot of ground yet remains compellingly open. Here we talk about "Whole" in relation to her overall body of work.
Orly Genger
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: Why did you decide to have the entirety of "Whole" be black?
ORLY GENGER: I painted all the pieces black in this case because essentially I was trying to use colour the way artists used steel in the 1960's and 70's. It all looked the same. The steel cubes or squares or monoliths we've seen hundreds of times had this way of keeping us out like security guards or big bouncers at the door. Only allowing a select few in. It's a visual reference to seriousness, which I'm trying to poke a little fun at.
AFH: You wrote on the museum's blog that people often mis-assume your process is meditative, when it's actually physically like "wresting an octopus." Do you think that mistaken assumption leads to other, more profound, mis-readings of your work?
OG: Yeah, many people assume my work is meditative or relaxing. I guess because they associate it with knitting a scarf or grandma's crocheting. But as I said, the work is physically challenging. I suppose that assumption does lead to other mis-readings of the work. But you would know what they are better than I would.
AFH: How did you initially become attracted to your medium?
OG: I first started working with this process when I was stuck with other work I was making. And picked this up simply as a way to keep my hands moving. I kept crocheting all these different shapes with whatever material I could get my hands on. At the time, I wasn't thinking of it as a way to make sculpture but rather a way to get me through a tough time. After few months I had accumulated many pieces made of different shapes, sizes, colors, yarns, and decided to connect them. As I finished attaching all the pieces, I saw that the work had an unexpected muscularity. And I thought for the first time that this could be a way to make sculpture.
Orly Genger's studio
AFH: Do you find responses to your work overtly obsessed with your process or is the process really that central to understanding the final product?
OG: Responses to my work are probably just as obsessed with my process as I am with it. It weaves in and out of the foreground. Process is central to understanding the final product in all work. It's not that process necessarily justifies the final product but it's important to understand how things are made and where they come from. Work doesn't just magically appear. I'm interested in how someone gets to where they are or why someone might have a certain opinion about something. What makes someone think the way they do. It's like getting to the bottom of things. Some people prefer not to know. I want to know everything.
AFH: How different is the experience of viewing your outdoor and indoor pieces?
OG: People have a hard time keeping their hands off my work. Literally. Whether it's outdoor or indoor. When it's outside people feel like they have more permission to touch the work or even climb it. People feel like public art has somewhat of a shared ownership that they are invested in. As it turns out, people don't feel all that different in a museum setting. By the end of my show there will probably be about fifty "Please do not touch, sit on, or climb" signs around the work. But I think it's cool that people want to touch it. It's like being at the grocery picking out fruit - you really don't know how good it is till you have it in your hand. In fact, when I showed an outdoor piece in Riverside Park in New York a few years ago, I saw a group of school children climbing all over it and touching it in a way that I hadn't seen before. Then I realized they were blind. I feel lucky to have witnessed that.
Orly Genger
Until 14 June
IMA
Indianapolis
To watch a film of Orly Genger's installation 'Whole' on Saatchi Online TV click here.
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a Berlin-based critic and curator. She writes on contemporary art and fashion for publications including Artforum.com, Sleek, V, TANK, Art in America, Artnet.com, Art Journal, Whitewall, The National, Dazed & Confused and British Vogue. As a Senior Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine, Ana contributes exhibition reviews from Berlin, New York and elsewhere, as well as an interview series. To contact her, email anahonigman@hotmail.com
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