Mitzi Pederson: I Think I Was Looking At That Before

Indefinite Objects, Temporary Stability

A sculpture by Mitzi Pederson is an alluring paradox. Transparent cellophane twists brittle paneling into a gentle curve. Heavy blocks attached to a thin strip of molding ground it at one end and cause it to bow at the other. Glitter flickers on broken cinder blocks. In many of her works, Pederson balances the palpable tension between slight and weighted elements, transforming their offhand qualities into compelling and spare abstractions.

Pederson locates much of her materials in the aisles of the hardware store and in scrap heaps. She prefers to use the objects as she finds them; the occasional application of silver leaf, sand, or glitter lends reflectivity and texture. Her economic means (directed somewhat by chance) meet equally restrained gestures (informed by trial and error). While Pederson lets her chosen items be what they are, she tests their inherent strength by bending, folding, stacking, or suspending them. What initially appears to be a formal exploration of structural questions yields contemplative, often graceful works that investigate the containment and dissolution of energy as well as sculpture’s thorny relationship with time.

For her exhibition at World Class Boxing, Pederson continues to explore these concerns. Yet here she has engaged them more expansively with distinctive, contrasting bodies of work. A large floor work comprised of cinder block fragments acts as a counterbalance to smaller, multipart sculptures of wood remnants, strips, and slats. With these, she sets up several oppositions — horizontal, vertical; heavy, light; durable, ephemeral — that move back and forth between the illusion of permanence and the impression of transience.

In conceiving the new cinder block sculpture, Pederson envisioned a wave breaking across the floor. Blue-gray glitter painted on the broken edges reflects light and evokes a rippling movement amidst the jagged forms. The allusions to water bring to mind the build up and dissipation of energy as if the forms have come to rest after a crest has subsided. Pederson describes the work as a “ground drawing,” which resonates with this impulse toward fluidity. But the overall grid pattern brings order, redoubled by the inherent structure of the basic building blocks. This perspective gives the work another, more literal reading as a “floor plan.”

By virtue of their architectural function, the cinder blocks readily imply this connection. Pederson embraces this inevitability. For instance, her 2005 sculpture untitled (ten years later or maybe just one) is another large-scale assembly of cinder block fragments resembling a dilapidated wall. No mortar holds it together, as one might expect for such a sizable construction. Instead Pederson puzzled the pieces together like an elaborate house of cards held together only by gravity. Though the weight of each block solidifies the structure, the daubs of glitter along the broken sides invite the perception of weightlessness. Variability comes into play as well. Because there are no precise instructions for assembly, each time the work is put together it takes on a slightly different arrangement.

Pederson, in discussing her intention for the new floor sculpture, contrasted it with this earlier work. Then, she was focusing on the broken edges, attempting to make the parts whole again. Now, the new work spreads out rather than builds up. This shift from a cumulative approach toward an outpouring of energy is reminiscent of a previous generation’s fascination with similar forces. These artistic explorations of entropy, especially those of Robert Smithson in the late 60s, aimed to give form to a scientific theory that outlined nature’s tendency to move from order to disorder. Smithson and his peers wanted to negate the rigidity of their predecessors’ formalism by introducing elements that would reflect degenerative processes. This conceptual framework pushed sculpture out of the realm of absolutes, away from the monumental and toward changeable, transitory states of being.

Entropy is temporal by nature — energy and time have a dynamic relationship. Pederson muses that, with some of her work, time will eventually take its toll. One of the signature traits of Pederson’s work is the use of lightweight, flexible materials like thin strips of wood, plastic sheets, and finely gauged string. Several recent works combine slender molding with counterweights of wood or concrete, all resting in states of balanced tension. This equilibrium is tenuously poised, fending off the potentially chaotic moment when the art object returns to its banal, if now broken, parts.

Some of her wood sculptures propose another way to examine states of impermanence. Take, for example, a serial sculpture composed of five skinny wooden slats leaning against the wall. The components are simply propped up and easy to move. This kind of fundamental portability communicates the sculpture’s essentially relative and transient existence. Without a doubt this work functions in a thoroughly different way than a conventional sculpture that resides solidly and singularly within a space. For Pederson’s work, the status of “sculpture” could be viewed as a temporary designation for the object’s ultimately indefinite nature.

Pederson’s humble pre-fab materials and her straightforward means of painting, arranging, and installing them are blithely egalitarian. In both spirit and practice, her approach aligns with the strategies of postminimalist and process artists of the late 60s and early 70s. As philosopher and critic Arthur Danto has written of this art: “the works wear the history of their production on their surfaces in such a way that viewers could tell how they were done ⎯ or, for that matter, do them themselves. And the materials were chosen primarily… to preserve the visual record of the process.”

As several observers have noted, the sparseness found in Pederson’s art is akin to works by Richard Tuttle, a prominent figure working in the postminimalist vein. In describing one of his works, Danto explains, “Tuttle draws a skinny pencil line on the wall, then nails a thin piece of wire at various points along it so that a skimpy shadow is cast. The work is then line, wire, and shadow, and there can be no mystery how it was made, for it is not a virtuoso line or an intricate bit of nailing.”

The radical nature of Tuttle’s work, according to Danto, is its unequivocal embrace of the sum of its parts. This quality is significant to Pederson, too. Yet a compelling aspect of her objects, and perhaps Tuttle’s as well, is the energy resonating between what is and what is not there. The silver leaf Pederson applies to the five wooden slats and the glitter atop the concrete create faceted, reflective surfaces that add ambiguity, even mystery, to what the objects are and what they might represent in spite of their abstract appearance. The otherwise stark pieces take on an imaginative dimension.

Many artists today are well versed in the use of discarded objects and everyday materials. They create works long in “unmonumental” qualities that express sentiments rooted in our rapidly changing, throwaway times. What sets Pederson apart is a space for wonder that opens when she sincerely and carefully alters her selected materials. This little sliver of the imaginary allows for a momentary leap away from function and form. The affective sensations Pederson achieves through simple gestures might even inspire an uncanny feeling in viewers: a recognition that the precarious, yet determined, equilibrium gamely staving off a creeping uncertainty is a familiar and deep-seated human condition.

MITZI PEDERSON was born in Florida and lives and works in San Francisco. Recent Shows Include: Hammer Projects, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2008), No Information available, Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2008), Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2008), timefolding, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York (2007), thirty three days, Ratio 3, San Francisco (2007). Mitzi Pederson is represented by Ratio 3, San Francisco, California. Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, New York

Sara Krajewski is Associate Curator at the Henry Art Gallery where she organized the group exhibitions The Violet Hour (2008) and Viewfinder (2007) and solo projects with artists Matthew Buckingham, Walid Raad, Liz Magor, Steve Roden, Kelly Mark, and Santiago Cucullu. Her writing has appeared in Art on Paper, ArtUS, and other publications. Krajewski has held curatorial positions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Harvard University Art Museums.