This past weekend, I went to visit Joan Jonas’s exhibition of three collection works in Dia Beacon, NY. I learned that she was born in New York in 1936 and is Professor Emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. The exhibition was placed in the lower level of the gallery. It was dark and the sounds of her video productions created a serious tone throughout the exhibition. In other words, it set the tone of her message which was mysterious and rustic.
One of the first collections that was introduced was the Mirage, a series of tall white cones in a circle with a video monitor in between playing her video May Windows. The video monitor was an old television set that was laying on it’s side and it displayed a highly contrasted black and white shot of her moving in front of white windows. Adjacent to this art was the After Mirage (Cones/May Windows), which had metal cones with a duplicated set to the first one. The video playing on the old television set on its side. These pieces of artwork reminded me of royalty as they stand tall with a stage light aiming directly down.
On the right side of the exhibition was Stage Sets. Jonas created this in 1976 where temporary walls that looked like canvases were suspended from the ceiling creating a silhouette on the ground with the stage lights. In front of it was a drawing that could be interpreted as an animal or heart. Below was a canvas that acted like a desk that had a drawing in red ink or marker. The drawing appeared to be a pathway with numbers and blocks separating them as it turned into a circle. In addition, there was a drawing with the similar style suspended on the wall in an angle creating a 3D look.
As one moved further into the collection, her work expanded to experimental footage that played in a continuous loop that complimented each other as they played everything at the same time. This became one of my favorites of Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things. This project, (2004) is a video color projection that incorporated props that were also displayed in the museum. The first video is suspended, and she acts like a wolf by walking around with her hands and feet in her vicinity. She is also wearing a wolf mask that was referenced in the following video that was projected in a large screen. Although the first video was short, the second footage was a recording of a play. The speakers were on the pole of the museum and the seating were white benches. There was a man on the left front of the stage and a woman dressed in rags had a journey with a wolf. The wolf was taxidermies and was displayed in the props section. In total, there were five screens where the stories visuals of the videos were unrelated but the references were interconnected with one another. One of them was comical as two women with tutus were fighting each other with wooden swords. It was very childlike and the props for their survival brought a mature touch to the piece.
What made this work astonishing was that every prop, performance, actor, dog, and clothing were interconnected in good timing. In other words, when one was introduced to her footage, the storyline of the next one would oddly make sense. This exhibition wasn’t jarring and the western style brought the screenings, art work, and paintings together as it is a refection of her style.