Philadelphia Introductions: Louise Barteau Chodoff

Louise Barteau Chodoff, top, String Theory: Neural Net (detail); bottom, String Theory; States of Matter and Energy (photo: Jessica Griffin, ©Philadelphia Daily News)

Philadelphia Introductions:
Louise Barteau Chodoff

by
Andrea Kirsh

January 24, 2007

Rags, plastic netting, bubble-wrap, paper, and light are the raw materials of Louise Barteau Chodoff’s ephemeral installations. She transforms this humble and quotidian stuff into art that evokes natural forms at astronomical and sub-atomic as well as human scale. She rolls, stuffs, wraps, bunches, ties, and pulverizes the masses of her chosen materials to create magical environments that envelop the visitor with sensual, organic forms and subtly-modulated light.

In 1999 Barteau Chodoff began a series of works that she titled collectively String Theory, after the grand, unified theory of contemporary physics. While on one hand the title is a pun on her use of string-y materials, it also points to her attempt to create environments that refer to life at an elemental level. In String Theory #6 (1999) she filled a 29' x 10' gallery with segmented ropes made of rags, ten to fifty feet long and knotted at one end, which hung from the ceiling and spilled onto the floor. The intersecting waves of the vertically-suspended ropes were intertwined with clouds of white netting of the sort used to wrap trees for transit. With its soft, pendant forms and loose arrangement it owed a clear debt to Eva Hesse’s work, and indeed, Hesse would be a major inspiration for much of Barteau Chodoff’s work. But the interest in the light-responsiveness of the materials and scientific metaphor marked the piece with her own vision.

The next work, String Theory: Hanging by a Thread (2001) consisted of a large mass of the same white polymer netting in a twenty-foot long hollow form; it hung in a double-height room, suspended five feet off the floor. Viewed from a distance, it resembled a waterfall. It could also be viewed by standing below and partially within the light-diffusing central core. String Theory: Balls to the Wall (2003) consisted of a grid of more than 50 donut-shaped coils of netting affixed to a wall with push-pins. A skein of netting spewed from each ball and the mass of skeins formed a loose arcing canopy in space before being gathered and attached to the ceiling in another grid arrangement.

String Theory: Neural Net (2004) filled a gallery with skeins of netting, draped, and interweaving the space in three dimensions. It was like a more open version of Marcel Duchamp’s string installation for the First Papers of Surrealism exhibition (New York, 1942). The netting was bunched at points to create nodes within the web of the skeins; the work played with linear elements versus three-dimensional forms, transparency versus opacity, the fine web of the netting versus the larger-scale web of the installation. Barteau Chodoff said she wanted it to evoke neural connectivity; while the title refers to a more recent physical theory of sub-atomic physics (string theory), the piece might also have been a model for the tension between waves and particles in standard quantum mechanics.

Later that year she brought these last three pieces together and added another, Mitosis, in which she attached clumps of netting to the wall in a grid pattern. She called this larger installation String Theory; States of Matter and Energy. The entire work was made of the same polymer netting. On a physical level it was a pattern-book of the many ways the material could be handled; metaphorically, it suggested the physical world, which in all its variety is composed of standard units at the sub-atomic level. Moving from one part to another, the viewer not only became aware of the extraordinary, repetitive hand-work involved in creating the pieces, but also aware of her own embodiment. It was lushly sensual; parts of it dripped, other parts danced in the air and one could walk around and between the curved, bunched, and threaded forms. While fashioned entirely of white material, the work cast shadows on the walls and ranged from almost translucent, where the light was behind it, to dark grey where it was densest. It played with how light affects color and form.

The next large installation was Bubblewrapture (2005), created from eighty fronds, five to six feet in length, made from bubble-wrap wound over metal armatures. These fronds or tendrils were arranged in clumps on the floor, with their free ends writhing out and upwards so they resembled giant sea anemones. The bubble-wrap created patterned surfaces of surprising and organic-looking beauty. The under-water effect was strengthened by blue theatrical lighting which saturated the gallery and fans which made the light-weight fronds move.

Barteau Chodoff discussed her interest in Agnes Martin’s paintings. While her own work takes an entirely different form, it is easy to see her admiration for Martin’s rigor and ability to create endless variation within a very narrow chromatic and formal range. Barteau Chodoff’s work builds upon feminist practice since the 1970s in its use of soft, often domestic materials, its emphasis on organic forms which often take on masculine/feminine associations, and its impermanence. I am thinking not only of Eva Hesse’s work but of Yayoi Kusama’s, and of Carolee Schneeman’s recent installations. Two near-contemporaries working in a parallel vein are Petah Coyne and Mona Hatoum. Barteau Chodoff is also particularly interested in light and visual phenomena, and draws from the work, although formally very different, of artists such as James Turrell and Robert Irwin.

While the organic forms and impermanence of her previous installations inevitably invoked living things, Barteau Chodoff is working on a piece that will actually incorporate a life cycle. It is planned in two parts: a gallery installation, In an instant, everything changes… and an outdoors project, Its always hard to say goodbye. In the gallery, video footage of light moving through the forest will be projected onto a forest of treelike forms. The hollow “trees” are being constructed of papier-maché made from banana-pulp paper (abaca). The video was shot in the winter, so its chromatic range is narrow and the visual effects are subtle. The artist knows that few people are likely to enjoy looking at the subtly-changing effects of light on leaf-less trees for as long as she does, but she hopes to bring the intensity of her observation into the gallery, to help us savor the moment.

For the second part of the piece Barteau Chodoff will fill the trees forms with compost and place them in one or more natural sites; she is looking for locations where invasive plants need to be cleared. Once they have disintegrated she will plant native trees where they stood. She plans to document the process of siting, disintegration, planting, and subsequent growth.

If her earlier work centered on the transformative power of art and celebrated the sensuality of form and light, this work in progress also celebrates the power of living in the present, with the full appreciation for the changing cycles of life.

See Louise Barteau Chodoff's InLiquid artist page

Back to InLiquid's Commentary section index