Erick Swenson
James Cohan Gallery
- Micah J. Malone -
In natural history museums, animals are presented in highly controlled, cliché circumstances: bears stand on their hind legs, birds sit calmly on perches and dinosaurs are often the main attraction because of their freakish scale and the wonder that surrounds their extinction. Such presentations attempt to display the particulars of a species in shorthand, revealing clues about an animal’s nature by illustrating its behavior in typical scenarios. From these displays, onlookers are led to believe that they can grasp the very nature of “bear,” “bird” or “dinosaur” at a glance.
In Erick Swenson’s world, handy phylum distinctions are blurred by an unnatural white plastic finish and slightly skewed proportions. More importantly, viewers are privy to concise moments in the private struggles of the artist’s odd, sub-categorical species. Swenson’s creatures have no time to show off for the viewer; they are too involved in their own, very real survival dramas.
For years Erick Swenson has garnered praise for his highly crafted beings. In his recent show at James Cohan Gallery, a deerlike creature’s frame is torqued by extreme winter conditions. This drama plays out on an anonymous cobblestone road. The animal, lying on its side with hind leg askew, is clearly vulnerable and dominated by the forces of nature that threaten to obliterate it completely. Long icicles drape off its antlers, implying this struggle has been going on for some time. It could be that this creature is rising out of a frozen slumber and trying to gather its bearings. Or perhaps the storm was only moments ago, and it is recovering from the onslaught. However one chooses to enter the narrative, it is clear that this creature has succumbed to the forces of nature and is negotiating its very survival.
In most of Swenson’s work, elements that make up the scene are entirely fabricated. Ice, slush and snow cast in plastic create a remarkable likeness to the real thing, making the scene almost more believable than if the artist had used real materials. The cobblestone road, also masterfully crafted, converges seamlessly into a white pedestallike riser. This feature clearly signals the scene as a display and creates a separation between the narrative and the space of the viewer.
Erick Swenson, Untitled (detail), 2004
Polyurethane resin
2 x 14 x 24 feet
But this is not the same as a typical natural history display. Swenson’s deer in the snow does not behave like an object of study but rather as an actor fixed in a culminating point of tragedy within a larger narrative. In this sense the sculpture is much like a film still. Viewers are divorced from the action of the scene and are left to mentally project themselves into the deer’s predicament.
Perhaps the separation between scene and viewer could be read as a metaphor for the dichotomy between nature and culture. While the deer is somewhat emblematic of nature, it is nonetheless caught in the web of culture as indicated by the cobblestone road. But even outside this particular narrative, Swenson’s reference to traditional natural history displays and museum dioramas reveals the real dichotomy: culture resides in the museum, the location where one can “know” nature through the tidy categorization of beings. Swenson blocks the notion that this knowledge is wholly revelatory by confronting his creatures with elements larger than themselves—elements that natural history museums do not display. The most enjoyable aspect of Swenson’s work is his ability to imagine and flesh out the elements one rarely sees—the forces larger than all of us—that usually seem unimaginable but are always present.