Michael Wilson on Goshka Macuga

ArtForum, April, 2007 by Michael Wilson

As the Sao Paulo project suggests, Macuga's engagement with the institution has naturally led to a deeper and deeper engagement with architecture. While the "condensed" Niemeyer pavilion is the most ambitious example of this aspect of her practice, it was preceded by another large-scale architectural installation at A Foundation's Greenland Street space during the 2006 Liverpool Biennial in England. Sleep of Ulro, 2006, constructed in association with If-Untitled Architects, was formally inspired by the iconic Expressionist set of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919) as well as by Italian Renaissance design--an unlikely melange that recalled the counterintuitive juxtapositions of the Wunderkammer. It constituted a dizzying complex of rooms and chambers within an intricate layout that echoed that of the Natural History Museum in Paris; the artist even tracked down the same brand of fiber-optic lighting for a darkened corridor that mirrored the French institution's room of extinct animals. The installation featured projects by contemporary artists such as Olivia Plender and Melvin Motte; works by L. S. Lowry, Paul Nash, and Matthew Leahy; a selection of Victorian botanical specimens; and Macuga's own artworks, including a life-size carved wooden figure of Cesare, Caligari's somnambulist sidekick, titled The Sleeper, 2006. A series of platforms functioned as an arena for performances and lectures (including a "materialization of the spirit") by scientists, magicians--and artists.

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Macuga's installations tend to stand in contrast to her more object-based gallery shows, as necessitated by spatial and economic restrictions, reflecting her interest in archives via more concise formal structures. The investigation of somnambulism and spirituality initiated in Liverpool and Sao Paulo was extended in Macuga's solo debut in the United States last month. In "What's in a Name," at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, Macuga presented a varied assortment of objects and images. Her own carved wooden life-size figures of Madame Blavatsky, one of the founders of the spiritualist Theosophical Society in 1875, and the sleepwalker from Sleep of Ulro were presented alongside wall-mounted display cases containing found images and objects obliquely related to theosophy and a table of theosophical literature. Devil's Sonata, 2006, is a mirror etched with a vintage illustration of a story about the eighteenth-century Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini. The composer claimed he was visited in a dream by Satan, who commanded Tartini to write a piece of music; when he awoke, he transcribed the composition, which he appropriately titled Devil's Sonata. "What's in a Name" was perhaps Macuga's clearest allusion yet to the artistic process itself. The dream state is a metaphor for the creative process; the archive is a literal manifestation of artistic influences. Rather than simply present her own finished objects, Macuga foregrounds how they came to be.

This June, Macuga will be featured in Tate Britain's "Art Now," a series of exhibitions showcasing contemporary British artists. She has already begun plumbing the depths of the museum's archives to research British Surrealism, unearthing thousands of artworks that have never been displayed as well as letters between artists, such as Paul Nash and Eileen Agar. The project ties together the artist's major themes--relationships between artists, unconscious and dream states, a preoccupation with history, and a fascination with what she calls "the birth of the creative thought." Macuga has much in common with other excavators of cultural history, from Haim Steinbach to Carol Bove, and with devotees of the archive, from Gerhard Richter to Walid Raad, but her focus on the diverse and dynamic connections to be made within collections--rather than on consumerism or politics, per se--marks her practice as distinct. While the academic appeal of her work is clear, it is when, as here, it not only admits outside intervention or collaboration but also feeds on the element of chance (who knows what she'll unearth at the Tate?) that the potential for curatorial alchemy it invariably contains is most fully realized.