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Johanna Unzueta. Iron Folklore, 2009. Felt. Variabale dimensions.
  

  Solo Show
Johanna Unzueta
Queens Museum of Art
Issue #75 Dec - Feb 2010
United States, New York
Institution:
Museo Queens

Rocio Aranda-Alvarado


At the Queens museum, a viewer might glance up and catch sight of an exposed pipe. Industrial, unexpected, nearly anti-aesthetic, the object stands out as an anomaly in a highly finished space. A closer examination, however, reveals an object not made from metal, not rigid, not actually an exposed pipe, but rather a carefully crafted handmade work designed to mimic a pipe. This pipe, hand stitched from red felt, runs the length of the upper gallery, close to the ceiling, like a real hot water pipe. Indeed, the artist has purposefully chosen a series of ¿non-art¿ spaces within the museum for the exhibition of her work, as though to underscore their connection to real objects and the culture of industry.
As a child, Johanna Unzueta made clothes. Her love of the hand-made object transformed itself first into garments that eventually morphed into moveable and wearable sculptural objects. Now, they find themselves on the walls of the museum.
Ms. Unzueta¿s project is titled Iron Folklore and makes direct reference to the nearby ¿Iron Triangle¿ neighborhood of Willet¿s Point, a 62-acre area of auto body shops, junkyards, and small manufacturing businesses on unpaved roads. The New York Times has described the area as ¿a gritty, sloppy eyesore of slapdash shops and workers lingering in dirt streets trying to flag down drivers to offer them on-the-spot repair deals.¿ (New York Times, 11/19/08) Directly across the street from the modern coliseum of the New York Mets, the location of Willet¿s Point seems even more ironic and poetic. This mix of grittiness, unpaved road, and the work ethic that pervades the entire area became important to the artist as she developed this project. Each of the objects in the show pays homage to some humble tool or car part. Throughout the artist¿s work, the functional and unassuming are given the status of work of art; the normally invisible becomes the object of our gaze.
This body of work comes after a long and serious consideration of the place and function of art and of the possibilities represented by large-scale work and works placed in public spaces. Working initially with cardboard, the artist began to sew felt because of its sensibility, its link to industry but also to physical warmth and energy, to history and to modern art. The artist acknowledges both Josef Beuys and Robert Morris as important figures and as influential to her consideration of materials.
The initial encounter is with the elevator¿s walls, which are covered in pieces of mismatched ¿corrugated metal¿ fashioned from felt. The even curves of the felt ¿metallic¿ surface perfectly mimic its actual counterpart, composing one wall of the elevator with felt of two different colors, the artist underscores the haphazard nature of small constructions made from this industrial material that is often associated with temporary structures (and with third world locations). Outside the elevator, the long red ¿hot water¿ pipe traces the spaces between the tall, slender columns of the museum¿s balcony, appropriately overlooking the museum¿s renovations. Following this work is an installation outside the museum¿s theater wall.
Among the carefully juxtaposed works in the installation are a hand truck, a selection of (¿fancy¿) auto rims coveted by aficionados of car culture, a smorgasbord of hardware, a ladder, a shovel, and a selection of car doors, all hand made from felt. Playing with scale, Ms. Unzueta also pays homage to the works of Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen by occasionally supersizing her hardware. A mammoth hinge hangs on the wall and, on the floor, we see a pile of colossal screws, nuts and bolts. This aspect of play in the work is important because it underlines a note of humor within the artist¿s work.
The selection of car doors includes a significant element of realism represented by live feed. The artist has installed a speaker that is broadcasting the favored radio station of the workers at auto parts and services stores in Willet¿s Point. This purposeful link to the reality of those who spend their working lives in this area is important because it also points to the informal economy of the area. In the manner of Zora Neal Hurston, the artist acts as a kind of cultural anthropologist, a recorder of this unique landscape and its contemporary inhabitants.

Rocío Aranda Alvarado
 


 

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