"In Cairo, you'll find that the back of every taxi cab is stamped with a red hand print of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. It's the ultimate auto insurance. If you die in an accident, she'll lead you to paradise."
When Don Hanlon, this term's artist-in-residence, speaks about his work, "the why and the how" of it, he takes the listener to a variety of places with stories and ideas that have captured both his imagination and analytical mind.
This combination of the ancient red hand print and the modern yellow taxi cab is the stuff that fascinates him. The mind traveling back and forth, making some kind of connection and finding meaning in the "interference between two patterns" -- between the familiar and the unfamiliar; that which is apparent and that which is hidden; the conditional and the unconditional.
"Realism resides in neither one nor the other pattern, but in their interference. That's where the energy is, giving rise to a new pattern." This game of oscillation and controlled distortion governs the strategy of his sculpture.
Hanlon talks about strategy because that is what he is interested in. What the sculpture looks like in the end is of little importance compared to the morphology that takes place when two patterns are set in motion together.
Describing his work in terms of strategy, Hanlon abandons the notion of trying to reach an end or a "truth." "Truth is an endpoint and the ultimate paralysis. What's the point of doing anything if we've reached the end?"
Authenticity is Hanlon's chief concern and he describes it as "that which seems to work." The mind's oscillation between an archetype (chair, ladder, bed, wheelbarrow) and an unfamiliar object is what is working in his current sculpture exhibit in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery. That, in itself, however, is no destination, for each piece has what Hanlon describes as "several layers of density".
On the first layer, we travel between "what is familiar and what is strange; what is seductive and what is repellent; what is simple and what is complex."
We continue to move through the layers to naming the archetypal object ("this is a boat") and eventually, if we are paying close enough attention, (or are even conscious of some of the numeric and geometric patterns he is working with) we find that the rim of the boat is actually a vesica, a shape formed when two circles intersect in a special way. In many cultures, the vesica is a symbol of fertility.
At the more advanced layers of density, Hanlon's work inhabits a coded realm where the patterns are less apparent. In his lecture at the Loew auditorium last week, he presented slides of the Sonahim Monastery in Armenia which, on first glance, seems to be a "corporeal, gutsy composition." Looking more closely, however, one can see how the entire design is a "controlled deformation" of a nine-square pattern.
"If you're going to deform something, you can't lose the quintessential pattern. Losing the archetype means chaos and meaninglessness." Thus, it becomes a design game of balance between the hidden geometric formal structure and its visible distortions.
Beyond the analytical aspect of his mind and work (attributed to his Quaker education), Hanlon has a deep appreciation for that which remains hidden. Myth, for instance, "never tells you the whole story. It disguises its true meaning."
This is where Hanlon's mythic imagination (the benefit of world travel and growing up without a television) combines with his analytical mind to play something of the trickster coyote.
"The easiest way to hide something is to make people think that they've found it." And so he misleads us with the bed, the chair and the chopping block which have nothing to do with the meaning of his work beyond the first layer of perception.
As patterns give way to patterns and thoughts give way to thoughts, this is a game of endless possibility.
It begins somewhere in Bolivia when a little boy notices bullet holes in his white stucco house. Curious, he sticks his fingers into the holes. He feels the horse hair insulation and discovers that he is living inside of a benevolent monster.
