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For A Limited Time
Only
The
Tennessean, July 13, 2003
For centuries, serious artists have sought to create works
that withstand the ravages of time. It's there stab at immortality,
their shot at being remembered beyond their own death. Jim
Haynes, a former Nashvillian now living in San Francisco,
is a serious artist, and certainly an ambitious one. But he's
interested less in making things last than in staging their
deacy. He isn't even concerned about his work lasting forever,
preferring instead that it be "completely obliterated"
within his own lifetime.
With Magnetic North, an installation now on view at
The 12th and Demonbreun Building, Haynes seeks to give visual
and aural form to the natural process of decay. "My interest
in decay is based on how life progresses, and that there is
a birth and a death to everything," says Haynes, a 31-year-old
Nashville native who graduated from Montgomery Bell Academy
before going to Oberlin College. "That is how I view
the world."
In the making for 18 months, Haynes' project begins with 99
photographs gathered and organized into four grids. Though
the artist believes the subject of the images isn't particularly
important, they were taken, for the record, at a New Mexico
radio relay station; looking overhead, during a visit to Seattle,
at telephone wires and the vapor trails of jets; and in Barcelona,
Spain, where Haynes shot an image of TV antennae on the rooftops
and a massive "circular structure" that Haynes says
looks like part of a circus tent.
To these images, which are mounted to the wall, Haynes has
applied a chemical mixture that begins to degrade what was
originally visible on the fiber-based paper. Depending on
the amount he applies and the length of time the images have
been exposed, the photographs begin to take on different appearances
in ways that Haynes himself can't precisely direct.
Also in Magnetic North, Haynes uses an eight-channel
sound system that broadcasts the sounds of shortwave radio
and various electronic disturbances, with very little thatc
an be understood as traditional, decipherable communication.
Is this the sound of decay? "Maybe," says Haynes,
a connoisseur of alternative music who writes free-lance pieces
for various publications.
A critical point here is that Haynes, who earned his master's
degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, does not wish
to convey any particular message: "I don't care for didactic
work," he says. This artist for one, is not making a
political statement about environmental pollution, not making
a case for renewed spirituality out of the detritus of modern
life. "I have created these things that reference decay,
then I leave at that and don't force the issue too much. One
of the problems with contemporary art in general is that you
feel you need to have this broad knowledge of art history
to understand what it's all about. Maybe you don't need that.
The more untrained interpretations are, the more interesting
they become than the trained ones, because they are more raw
and immediate."
Ultimately, Haynes says, he thinks his work has an upbeat
"benevolent" message touching on the cycle of life
and death. That's not to say, though, that he overlooks the
melancholy quality of the piece. "Darker themes are part
of the natural world and part of the emotions intrinsic to
the human experience," he says. "But I don't think
that my goal is to build this dark, oppresive type of environment,
but to allow these things to speak without the intrinsic threats
that some people see in decay and rust."
To help this exchange between artist and audience take place,
Haynes says, he feels it's essential to keep the viewer in
place longer than the usual 8-15 seconds that some studies
have shown people spend looking at artwork. "I'm really
hoping the subtleties of the sound will capture and seduce
the audience into stopping and listening. The act of listening
is something that requires a longer period of time to understand."
Haynes' Magnetic North is the second installment in
the Art on the Edge series launched earlier this year by Zeitgeist
gallery. The point of the series, says Zeitgeist curator and
artist Lain York, is to shake up the traditional gallery show
and help put before the public work we otherwise wouldn't
see. That means work that doesn't fit usual gallery requirements
for such reasons as size, unorthodox medium or conceptual
difficulty.
But this is work that still needs a home, York says, and the
idea came up to place the work in different, more or less
unexpected spaces, such as a section of the third floor of
The 12th and Demonbreun Building. The developers of that building,
as well as Manuel Zeitlin Architects, whose offices are home
to the Zeitgeist gallery in Hillsboro Village, have supported
the effort.
York's own vision is for a new arts district in or near The
Gulch section of downtown. The district could take advantage
of many existing buildings with wide-open spaces perfect for
stylish artwork. As for the Haynes work, York says he's a
big fan. "As an artist, I love it. He's trying to quantify
something you can't quantify. It's reaching beyond language,
and I think that's what we do as artists." |
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