Presence-Absence

Abstract

HADLEY HOWES AND MAXWELL STEPHENS: DELETED SCENES CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY VANCOUVER, CANADA MARCH 31-MAY 28, 2006 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What is absence or emptiness, and what form does it take when it is described physically or conceptually? Uta Barth s photographic series of blurry compositions of empty rooms adequately renders emptiness both emotionally and psychologically. Barth removes the subject matter in her work, forcing the viewer to re-examine assumptions about photographic representation and content. The subject matter in Andy Warhol s films Empire (1964) and Sleep (1963) are removed as well. One film simply depicts the building s iconic facade and the other pictures an unknown resting man; both are void of activity and represent a radical departure from the traditional linear narratives found in movies of that era. Artist collaborators Hadley Howes and Maxwell Stephens focus on similar ideas involving absence, nothingness, and loss as seen in their recent show, Deleted Scenes, at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. Although they have been working together since 1997 and have exhibited in Australia, Canada, and the United States, this is their first solo exhibition in a public art institution. Their conceptual rigor and acute formal awareness continues in this exhibition of six installations created in 2006. A thematic premise based upon deleted scenes runs throughout each piece. One of the most humorous and appropriately linked is Language to be Looked at, a syncopated three-monitor video. The left screen depicts Hadley rocking out while listening to music through headphones, intermittently squirting liquid soap from a bottle and tossing various objects, including a live cat and a flower. The items are projected toward the right of the screen and then travel out of the monitor s frame. The right screen installed a few feet away is synchronized so that the blindfolded Maxwell is pelted in the back of the head with the items. However, when the items reach the screen, the flower is a fabric version and the soap has become bubbles. The audio component to this piece is available to the viewer through headphones. The song Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie, 1981) remade by the Blood Brothers (2002) corresponds to the first monitor and Maxwell s voice, calling out the items tossed, links to the second. The installation refers to Robert Smithson s Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read, a document written in 1967, which proposed speech as an intermediary point between literal and metaphorical signification. (1) The gap between the monitors highlights the absence of time and action from one moment to the next. Furthermore, the void describes an empty space during conversation: the transaction between speech and understanding. Consistent with the theme, Withdraw is a projection of two hands on one side of a white cube. The projection aligns with a series of drawn and erased marks on the surface of the cube, roughly at the horizon line. …