Carol Szymanski at Elga Wimmer

Art in America, April, 2005 by Sarah Schmerler

Carol Szymanski is something of a shape-shifter. She's painted "portraits" of letters of the alphabet and fabricated weirdly twisted musical instruments based on the shapes our mouths make to form certain sounds. A curious artist in both senses of the word, she seems to want to use art as a methodology, not simply for making tangible things, but for better investigating the world around her. That said, from nine to five Szymanski inhabits a rather stable and powerful position as a big-shot corporate banker handling billions of dollars' worth of deals for a London-based firm (hardly the sort of day job your stereotypical bohemian holds down to pay the rent). And from that position, she seems to have hit on the perfect subject matter: her day job. Via a whole lot of transcribed, mundane details of her daily grind, a portrait of the creative life emerges.

Primarily, Cockshut Dummy (the title is an obscure, Thesaurus-derived synonym for the title Evening Standard, a London daily) takes the form of e-mails sent out to a mailing list on almost every working day for the past year. On display at Wimmer, the missives were individually printed out, framed in standard Lucite "tombstones" of the sort that encase entrepreneurial awards and wall-mounted in long rows around the room. Short texts that the artist either wrote or "found" and copied verbatim are accompanied by low-res photo attachments that she took with her cell-phone camera. Szymanski never reveals her sources for either words or images; still, each missive offers a narrow, but, we sense, honest window into the artist's previous 24 hours.

The texts can border on absurdist poetry. March 29: "We are completely puzzled then, and you must clear up the question for us, what you do intend to signify when you use the word 'real.'" March 30: Szymanski simply includes a photo of a "document" that reads, "This page has been left blank intentionally." At times you get a delicious sense of Szymanski as artist/ spy, surrounded by a bunch of corporate types who carry on oblivious to her shenanigans. April 21: "Private-equity firm Carlyle Group ... will invest up to $1BN in China over 18 months ... Also on the payroll today are George Bush, Sr., James Baker, and John Major...."

Szymanski keeps us guessing. What does a blurry image of a woman working at a computer (April 13) have in common with a shot of Jeff Koons proffered the next day? In a large photo that was hung in the back gallery, Szymanski stands in her office, gazing straight at the camera, with the words "She hasn't changed positions in a while" beneath her. Does "position" refer to Szymanski's posture? Or to her standing in the firm--which might slip if she didn't move up the hierarchy? Clearly it's a tricky business, this straddling of the worlds of art and commerce. Making art on the clock must help Szymanski keep her balance.