In dreams begin responsibilities: when Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader was lost at sea in 1975, he left behind a slim body of mostly photo-based work. Now posthumous editions of some of these pieces are raising provocative questions - Issues & Commentary - Critical Essay

Art in America, Feb, 2004 by Wade Saunders

We see him traversing L.A. on foot at night, from inland to shoreline. He's generally shown from a distance and from behind. He carries a powerful flashlight. We feel we've lived some of the pictures or seen them in movies. Each image bears a phrase handwritten in white ink across the bottom. The phrases are lyrics from "Searchin'"--the Coasters' 1957 hit, lyrics by Jerry Lieber and music by Mike 8toiler--and provide continuity and a slight narrative. Ader is on a quest hut in an urban environment, a pedestrian in a city designed for cars, searching for a woman when night has rendered everyone inaccessible, traveling alone but accompanied by a classic L.A. party tune. He juggles all manner of references in his "cover" of "Searchin.'" Like his best pieces, it is serious and funny, offering gravitas without gravity.

At Copley, he also exhibited a continuous 80slide projection, coupled with an audiotape, showing a nine-person chorus singing sea chanteys with a pianist accompanying them. (The singers came from the University of California, Irvine, where Ader was then teaching, and they sang live at the opening.) Typed chantey lyrics were shown on a wall under glass. I remember knowing around that time that Ader planned to carry sea songs from the New World to the Old World. He was reperforming the history of European maritime exploration and his own first transatlantic voyage, but running the geography backward.

The third part of the exhibition was slated for the Groninger Museum, close to where Ader had grown up. He planned to include the pieces from the Copley show, documentation from his second Atlantic crossing and possibly a new One Night piece to be done in Amsterdam. In the triptych, he was perhaps trying to link two parts of his experience: his upbringing in a country he habitually described as cold, gray and bleak, and his 12-year artistic coming-of-age in warm and sunny L.A. Ader's own development had synced with that city becoming an important art center.

Much art depends on what is left out, and Ader perfected an esthetic of elision and lightness, paring each idea down to its essence. Some of his pieces began as their titles, the physical work then following. He struggled with presentation, putting aside early versions as he tried to decide how each piece should exist. Although he twice performed his work The Boy Who Fell over Niagara Falls (1972), he didn't repeat his installations: they were made and documented, and then they disappeared. While some Conceptual artists conceive and sell pieces as sets of instructions for the buyer to execute, Ader didn't work that way. (lie did once mail out a simple proposal for a one-week show in a noncommercial venue.)

When Ader was alive, the comic and the downhearted stayed perilously balanced in his works. But the manner of his dying now disturbs that delicate equilibrium. His perishing shadows our present seeing, especially given Ader's predilection for themes of falling, failing and disappearance, and his frequent depiction of solitude, absence and loss.