print January 1998

Celia Rumsey

Many of the stories we tell about medicine have to do with acute situations, miracles performed in ERs and ORs, people on the verge of death brought back to life. But the more once-fatal conditions our technology allows us to survive, the more our problems tend toward the chronic rather than the acute. Celia Rumsey’s sculptural installation “Chronic,” which inaugurated Plan B (formerly the Center for Contemporary Arts), documented her lifelong medical condition. The wonder here is that Rumsey, who was hospitalized with diabetes by the age of three, should make something so grippingly lovely out

print December 1997

“TRUCE”

The title of curator Francesco Bonami’s installment of the second SITE Santa Fe Biennial—“TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusions”—waves a white flag and suggests that viewers approach the exhibition with an olive branch. Neither grand conclusive claims nor particularly new strategies were to be found. Leaner than the first SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 1995, this year’s installment featured an international cast of young artists—so young, in fact, that South African William Kentridge, born in 1955, came across here as an elder statesman—working within the frameworks of strategies

print May 1997

Patrick McFarlin

In December 1996, the work of Santa Fe resident Patrick McFarlin was on view at three venues in his adopted hometown. This versatile transplant from Arkansas who first exhibited his funky cartoon-style paintings in San Francisco during the late ’60s was showing the full smorgasbord of his expressive talents. The big enchilada that inspired the smaller side shows was titled “Portraits from Pat’s Downtown Club,” the name of a congregation of motley portraits installed at SITE Santa Fe’s warehouse, the city’s international Kunsthalle in the rail yard district. In 1993, Patrick McFarlin began inviting

print March 1997

Gert Rappenecker

It seems that German artists raised on Hollywood Westerns can’t resist the American Southwest. A recent show of overpainted photocopies by Gert Rappenecker included two series: the first based on banal shots of sublime landscapes from travel brochures; the second, on the flatfooted, bad-color images of residential properties typical of the franchised real-estate brochures found in most tourist centers. Of the eleven thickly painted grisaille landscapes, two images were shown in different sizes—medium and medium-large. These appeared to be of the Krazy Kat landscape of Monument Valley and the

print November 1996

Erika Wanenmacher

As the Center for Contemporary Arts crumbled around her, Erika Wanenmacher self-produced a twenty-year midcareer survey of her openhearted sculptures. While most artists would have folded their tents, especially after the entire staff of CCA was dismissed during the run of the exhibition, Wanenmacher’s show not only went on, but was one of CCA’s most well-attended visual art exhibitions in its seventeen-year history. Appropriately, Wanenmacher’s The Boat, 1976–77—a four-foot-long, three-dimensional, open-air wooden craft outfitted with an extra-large red centerboard—was the oldest piece on view.

MaLin Wilson