Leave No Trace
Clare Gallery
Fransciscan Center for Urban Ministry
Hartford
Through March 15, 2024
Clare Gallery has become one of my favorite galleries in Hartford thanks to the friendly people and the simple, easy to understand flow of the space. Their first exhibition of 2024 is Leave No Trace, which features monotype prints by Sariah Park. I went to check it out, and see if I’ve learned anything about understanding visual arts in six months of reviewing.
One point that I keep coming back to in regard to visual arts is the communication of purpose. In many of my previous reviews, I’ve either ignored or even disagreed with an artist’s stated intent, instead choosing to talk about what the art makes me think and feel. It may simply be a personal failing, but I can’t derive an artist’s meaning from the images themselves. I need the words that come with it — the artist’s statement, the gallery’s description, anything.
What if those words don’t exist? If I imagine for a moment that there’s no way to understand a piece of art outside of what I see, then how do I make sense of what the art is trying to say as opposed to what my internal voice is saying?
This thought occurred to me because, for the first time, I realized that Clare Gallery is inside of a church. That informs the curation choices of the people who run the gallery. It’s a safe bet to assume that the gallery wouldn’t host an exhibit rooted in nihilism or anger or iconoclasm.
Does that necessarily make the work spiritual?
When I look at Cradle, I see light and shadow, two interesting shapes diametrically opposed to each other. One is black, set high and to the left, and the other is white, set low and to the right. It reminds me of the taijitu, the yin and yang symbol, which I know to have spiritual meaning in its original context.
So maybe building understanding is an exercise in context and reference, extrapolating meaning based on combining a bunch of other knowledge and experiences. I wouldn’t have thought to consider the spirituality of the piece if I wasn’t in a church while viewing it.
But what about a piece like Suppression, which doesn’t have such an easy visual landscape to take in?
Not to be flip, but the closest spiritual reference I can compare it to is the old joke about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which may in itself have spawned an actual religion.
Maybe that’s the point then: spiritualism doesn’t have to reference anything in particular or take any shape that’s familiar. The exercise of creation itself is a spiritual act, to bring something new into the world for others to interact with.
That’s not to make a “humanity as God” argument, but to say that we create the same as God does; after all, we were created in God’s image.
I think I’ve moved from, “Did I get this right?” to “That was an interesting intellectual exercise.” And in this case, an interesting spiritual exercise too.
NEXT
The Clare Gallery hosts Leave No Trace through March 15th, with a closing ceremony on March 14 at 6 PM.
