The Happiness I Seek

Sculpture has kind of been through the ringer the last few decades: knocked off her base, fragmented into tiny pieces, and scattered about into installations. Her role has been called into serious question by the demands of being generous. She’s had a rough go, having been the follow for several waltzes around the dancefloor. In fact, she is actually the dancefloor itself as well as its sprinkling of sawdust. She’s been the chandelier, the pumps, the top hat, white tie and tails.

Its tough being deconstructed and having to speak for everyone, but from the looks of things, sculpture may have found some solace. She has forsaken wallflowerdom, backed away from the wall, and centered herself on the parque. But picking up, dusting off and starting all over again can be tough; sometimes you need that perfect partner.

Sculpture has been letting herself go, so she can’t help but bring along those sundry elements from installation’s chorus, dragging everything along for a twirl on the dance floor. Ganged-up, piled-up, draped-across and leaning-in, these elements suggest a free-standing sculpture, but she isn’t tied up in a knot. No, she cuddles closer. It’s a pas de deux and trois and more. It’s a mobile, amenable, responsive sculpture, capable of switching partners depending on the music. Sculpture isn’t back on her base yet, rather, she is quite happy where she is for now, drink in hand, arm-in-arm on the floor. Each of the artists’ work in The Happiness I Seek exemplifies this musicality. While not fully unified objects, there is definitely some chemistry and wit at play among the pipe cleaners, cardboard, yarn, balloons, sticks, and Styrofoam of this kind of sculpture - a certain je ne sais quoi – that makes them a decidedly good match.

Mike Andrews’s assemblages of silly string, acrylic yarn and plastic-coated fibers, for example, have focused their architectural hopscotch from floor to wall to corner into singular mid-wall hangings, lofted sculptures and crowds of floor-bound snarls. Meanwhile, Andrea Cohen’s stacks of styrofoam and other debris, something like a vast galactic landscape dotted with waterfalls, reach up towards the ceiling rather than out across the floor. Utilizing a formal synergy, Clinton King’s compositions marry humble sticks, paper, cardboard tubes and other unremarkable materials into subtle works that suggest an underlying mystery or magic. Lively, intuitive and abstract, Loul Samater’s cardboard, paint and glitter assemblages challenge architectural space with playful chicanery. On the other foot, the sculptures of Ryan Swanson choreograph furniture, various textures and even the human body itself into subtle hoofers creeping into air ducts or slinking up stairs. Though Andrews, Cohen, King, Samater and Swanson each employ these strategies for their own intentions, The Happiness I Seek highlights a human scale and material longing common to all these practices.

The whole made up of the parts is underscored by the rippling effect of the exhibition and its strategy of domino openings. Five Chicago exhibition spaces participate in a coreography pairing one artist to each exhibition space: Andrews at 40000; Cohen with ThreeWalls; The Suburban sweeps King off his feet; Fraction Workspace saunters up to Samater; and The Chicago Cultural Center makes room on its dance card for Swanson. The Happiness I Seek makes partners of artists and galleries, galleries and galleries and audiences and artists therby enhancing the artworks’ mood of attraction and dancing cheek-to-cheek.

Like leaning in for a kiss, there is a certain kind of magneticism –a magical sensation that makes the heart beat a little faster –to all these practices. It’s a feeling that this is where we belong, and it’s exciting. After years of mismatches and misplaced affections, of suffocating relationships and disappointments, the thrill at having met one’s match gets everything ticking again. Humming, tapping, singing, dancing – when it clicks it clicks. But not all great partners are lovers, and this sculpture doesn’t want to dance every dance with the same fortunate object. Sculpture may have just made a great friend, a winning lead, some fellow to duet with and another bird with whom to get drunk on cheap wine and smoke those small cigars. But /E-[th]&r/ or /I-[th]&r/ way, sculpture’s intoxicated with herself again. She’s “in heaven...


...I’m in heaven
and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.
And I seem to find the happiness I seek.
When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.



- Shannon Stratton and Jeff M. Ward