ART-PRESENTATION: Suellen Rocca
Suellen Rocca enjoyed a long and distinguished artistic career, which began in the 1960s as a member of the Chicago-based group Hairy Who. Their six members were closely associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and labeled as Chicago Imagists who, as opposed to prevailing trends on the East Coast, bucked both the austerity of Minimalism and Pop Art’s cool detachment to develop a grotesque figurative aesthetic influenced by Art Brut and Surrealism.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Secession Archive
Suellen Rocca’s installation, in the “Grafisches Kabinett” of Secession, in Vienna, is the last exhibition the artist conceived herself, which has been realized posthumously with great respect for her work. New paintings and drawings are presented together with paintings from recent years in a setting composed of a folding screen and a simple bed that cites Rocca’s pictorial vocabulary. Presenting the actual objects next to their figurative representations blurs the lines between exhibition and pictorial space and supports the sensation of virtually being able to step into the pictures’ landscapes. Rocca’s oeuvre is characterized by a distinct personal iconography, which she continuously expanded in tune with and reflecting transitions in her private life. This pictorial grammar is apparent in her figurative drawings and paintings and draws on repetition, the use of a grid, text and icons. It is informed and inspired by a broad range of visual culture, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to Surrealism, indigenous art, pre-reader illustrations and illustrated catalogs as well as comics. At the center of two expressive, dynamic paintings with vibrant, contrasting colors “Departure” (2012) and “Sunset” (2013), is a torso amid a watery realm inhabited by fish and serpents. Connected by flowing lines, the torso blends in with its respective surrounding. While the images appear pulsating, at the same time the symbolic language suggests things are in a state of flux, slipping away. The palette in the painting “Night” (2014), which can be regarded as a “hinge” work, has turned from vibrant to dark. Again, a torso fills the canvas; its shape, however, no longer indicates any connection to the exterior world but, as in Rocca’s latest paintings too, instead describes a closed, self-contained form that serves as a reservoir for a sort of inner landscape. Here, the image may suggest a kind of arrival, with birds sitting in a tree that branches out like the circulatory system above an empty boat resting in the crook of the arm. Suellen Rocca’s latest paintings (which, due to the artist’s unexpected death, remained untitled) repeat the self-contained, closed form of the torso, the arms folded in front in a meditative pose. One picture seems to address unease and turbulence with icons of beds, chairs and other generic domestic furniture scattered wildly on a pale green torso set against a background of clouds with hands reaching out of them. In contrast, the pink torso in another picture offers a home for bodies and empty beds enclosed in womb-like bubbles that are placed out alternately and evenly within the body’s bounds, forming a repetitive pattern. The painting radiates a sense of peace and tranquility, almost as if a circle were completed. Subdued colors enhance the quiescent tenor of these static images.
Info: Curator: Jeanette Pacher, Association of Visual Artists – Vienna Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, Vienna, Duration: 3/7-8/11/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 14:00-18:00, www.secession.at
