A room with a view … of nothing

You’ll find no frames or display boxes in Flashpoint Gallery’s Site Aperture—instead, the gallery itself serves as the canvas. In the new exhibit, four artists have attempted to use their installations as a “response” to the ordinary gallery space.  Dirt, styrofoam, insect drawings, and fabric fill the rooms.
The artists—Margaret Boozer, Mia Feuer, Talia Greene, and Mariah Anne Johnson—each find personal inspiration in the specific media they use.
Boozer is responsible for the 59-foot trail of dirt and rock that runs the length of the gallery space, an installation that prompts the gallery’s poor receptionist to warn every visitor to avoid stepping on the art (there is a designated bridge). Boozer sourced materials from a local construction site as a reflection on the nature of soil strata. One of the most effective pieces in the exhibition, Line Drawing succeeds in drawing the viewer’s attention to what lies beneath his or her feet (if only from a practical perspective).
Feuer, the sculptor behind a tangle of styrofoam animal-head tubes hanging from the ceiling, finds her own inspiration in manmade structures. For this particular piece, entitled Rebirth, she references Egyptian tombs and Tahrir Square. The piece, however, is less of a response to the gallery space than an occupation of it—it’s a chaotic mess that sheds no meaning on the space it is supposed to illuminate.
The far wall of the exhibition space holds wallpaper covered in a paper trail of ants. Fascinated by human relationships with insects, Greene attempted to juxtapose a traditional wall space (as well as a portrait of an unknown man sporting a beard of ants) with the influence of these tiny creatures. The trail of trompe-l’oeil ants weaves its way across the wallpaper, but does little to recall the natural world, and even less to reflect the space the insects inhabit.
In the last installation, Johnson recalls domestic life using secondhand bed sheets and pillowcases. Stacking layers of folded, meticulously color-coordinated sheets and draping them across ceiling piping, Johnson captures the gallery’s space. Teasing in its hidden placement, Johnson’s installation is successful in drawing attention to typically overlooked corners and nooks. In this way, it is effective as a “response” to the given space in that it leads the viewer to focus on what is already there. Nevertheless, the value of what is already there remains unclear.
Installation art is a fragile form of expression, often holding the most meaning for its creator while the viewer struggles with blatant ambiguity. Piles of dirt, styrofoam tubes, ant trails, and stacks of fabric fail to take on meaning unless used in a striking way. Site Aperture not only fails to do so, but also takes the risk of combining multiple works, ending up with a disjointed artistic collaboration that resembles an incoherent quartet. At the end of the day, the responses to the exhibition space that these installations claim to provide fail to warrant even the slightest response from their audience.