houseWARNING

DREAM DISSECTED Works focus on downside of American notion of homeownership Sunday, August 15, 2010 03:01 AM BY CHRISTOPHER A. YATES

2010-08-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

How often have you heard that to own a home is to live the American dream?

The notion is deeply entrenched in the American psyche. Yet, in the wake of the recent real-estate collapse as well as concerns about climate change, the expectation seemingly doesn't align with economic and environmental realities.

During a Greater Columbus Arts Council residency in Dresden, Germany, artist and curator Melissa Vogley Woods was surprised to discover that many people she met live in large apartment buildings and don't wish to own real estate.

Her conversations with German artist and eventual co-curator Tina Beifuss soon became the basis for a show.

On view in the Hopkins Hall Gallery at Ohio State University, "HouseWarning" features works by 22 artists - 14 from the United States and eight from Germany, where the exhibit will travel in the fall.

The exhibit taps individual perspectives on the idea of home yet is predominantly fixated on loss. Ideas of absence vs. presence and expansion vs. decay are stated repeatedly. Many works examine the boom-bust dichotomy in American culture.

Scott Hocking of Detroit documents blighted neighborhoods and abandoned industrial sites. In a series of 12 photographs titled "The Zone," vast stretches of open land are crisscrossed by empty roads. Soon, viewers realize that the roads define city blocks that once contained the homes - the American dreams - of countless families.

In Dream Home I, Ryan Mandell of Bellefonte, Pa., overlaps several photos of newly constructed houses. The result - blurred but readable - calls attention to the fact that such structures are often similar. Documenting the illusion of individual choice, Mandell exposes the home as a product - a corporate manifestation of desire.

Barriers and warning signs are the subjects of Cleveland artist Amy Casey. In the painting Guarded Premises, fencing and orange barrels create a strange nest filled with houses. The piece, which is imbued with multiple meanings, suggests protection and prison.

Columbus photographer Fredrik Marsh explores the similar appearance of construction and destruction in Apartment Building, Demolition Site, Guangzhou, China and Apartment Building, Construction Suspended, Outskirts of Guangzhou, China. Both images feature skeletal masonry walls.

In the drawing Parzelle 1-34 II, Maja Linke of Dresden depicts a series on public outdoor furniture. Parzelle roughly translates as "parcel of land." The implication is that anywhere you sit can be home.

The artists in the show seem bent on making sense of the human capacity to build, destroy and let go.

In the weighty and thought-provoking exhibition, they trace the poetry of lives lived and those slowly vanishing from view.

reception

2010-08-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

reception more pics

2010-08-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

some more shots from the reception.

artist reception housewarning

2010-08-14T20:32:00.001-07:00

What a great reception! It was so nice to see everyone out!

artist reception housewarning

2010-08-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

What a great reception! It was so nice to see weveryone out!

Gallery View

2010-08-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Gallery View

2010-08-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Gallery view

2010-08-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

Mi casa es su arte, Columbus Monthly feature

2010-07-27T04:06:00.000-07:00

Artist Melissa Vogley Woods was in Dresden, Germany, for a Greater Columbus Arts Council residency when the U.S. housing bubble began to burst with a vengeance. It was fall of 2008, and Vogley Woods and German artist Tina Beifuss began discussing just what the concept of “home” really meant.

“It was really interesting to me how the people I met all rented homes in large apartment houses—families, elderly, young adults—and that the idea of ownership was not a concern or a desire,” says Vogley Woods. It was such a contrast to how “owing a home and making that investment is such a way of life in the U.S.”

The duo has since built from those conversations “houseWARNING,” a showcase of art that seeks to address space and place and just how our definitions of those terms are ever changing, ever multifaceted.

The exhibition, which features work from 22 international and national artists, opens Aug. 2 in the Hopkins Hall Gallery at Ohio State. It will travel to Dresden, Germany, after its Oct. 7 closing in Columbus.

Vogley Woods spoke with Arts Beat about what to expect from the exhibition.

How do you think our understanding of the word “home” has changed since the recession?

I think the idea of home has gotten more realistic. I think people are realizing the power of your home, as well. Home can become the first place we can make changes—environmental, economic and personal. Perhaps we can start to think of our homes not as an economic investment, or an idealist dream come true, but what it really is, simply a private space.

“houseWARNING” is going to Dresden after Columbus. How is the study of home a universal issue?

In Dresden, you could read different phases of construction, layers of building and traces of destruction. You could read the way Dresden went through changes due to policy, war and governing power shifts. The people of Dresden see this on a daily basis as they walk to and from work. We decided to reflect the historical perspective the Dresdeners have with the current situation we are dealing with in the U.S., with a focus on Columbus, but also Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia, each a place with its own distinct housing crisis, each with different causes and at different stages. Columbus with it’s boarded up houses, Cleveland with its falling down houses, Philadelphia with whole blocks vacant, Detroit with green spaces where neighborhoods and houses once were. Together these layers and phases animate a portrait of our changing Midwest.

The exhibit is billed as speaking to the “cultural understandings of what constitutes a home.” Can you give some examples of how certain works address this?

Ardine Nelson photographs “schrebergartens” or “small gardens” of Germany, and in these images we see how people make a personal space outside of their modest living accommodations on land that is usually large, unused area next to roadways, dried river beds, former trash dumps and the like. Ardine’s work is one of the few with actual people represented. It illustrates an important German sub-culture: the community of gardeners from many backgrounds and economic circumstances, who, with ingenuity, make their garden space their own.

Eckehard Fuchs, one of our Dresden artists creates realistic digital models of the three places he dwells. They are stark and a bit empty in feeling. The image leads the viewer to see the space, yet never really enter it. I found this exciting because this is just how it is when you visit or come to a home that is not yours—you feel like an outsider looking in. The people make the home; without them the space is a just a shell.

The work of Scott Hocking and Tim Portlock show a sense of documentation and dismay at the loss of neighborhoods in their community. Scott Hocking’s photographs of Detroit are documents of a neighborhood now virtually all green space. Occasionally in view are bits and pieces left behind from the former thriving neighborhood, leaving you to wonder, “Where did the people go?” Tim Portlock’s digitally reconstructed urban-scapes of Philadelphia—void of life, the aerial views of abandoned buildings and homes—seems to be a rusty salute to the death of an old system.

The work of Helma Groot focuses on what we put in our home, what we think we need to be comfortable. She piles a small figure high with every imaginable appliance, gadget, book and knick-knack, thoroughly bogging the figure down.
Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 10:33 AM EDT
Jaqueline Mantey
Assistant Editor, Columbus Monthly

michael Litzau

2010-07-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

"changeling"

cut wallpaper

Ryan Mandell, Bellefonte, PA

2010-07-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

Susan Vincent, Cleveland

2010-07-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

2010-06-22T06:33:00.000-07:00