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Indepth Arts News:
"Sky-Wreck, a Large Site-specific Textile work by Chicago-based Conceptual Artist Helen Mirra"
2001-05-06 until 2001-06-24
Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago
Chicago, IL,
USA United States of America
Given the disparate nature of her practice and her interest in language, the
label conceptual artist suits Chicago-based Helen Mirra well. The components
of her installations are often extremely simple combining a textual element
with a minimalist textile form. In addition, she has produced a sizeable
output of film, video, audio recordings and artists books all of which bring
to mind Fluxus. Mirras wit, however, is largely at the service of poetry, a
sensibility befitting her favorite subjects; the sea, the landscape and
childhood.
For her exhibition at The Society, Mirra has created Sky-Wreck, a work based
on the geodesic designs of Buckminster Fuller, utopian engineer, inventor,
cartographer and architect, best remembered for the geodesic dome. Sky-Wreck
consist of 110 triangles with 330 edges of a polyhedral form cut from a
coarse indigo cloth which is flattened to cover a large portion of the
gallery floor. Mirras form functions as one of Fullers dymaxion maps in
which he converted the globe into a triangulated polyhedron. Instead of
representing the surface of the earth, Sky-Wreck represents the firmament,
or the sky in its role as support for the heavens. On a formal level,
Sky-Wreck corresponds to the interior architecture of the gallery which
consists of an elaborate series of origami like folds configured to resemble
a neo-gothic church. Conceptually, Mirra drew her inspiration for Sky-Wreck
from a variety of spiritual, artistic, and scientific sources ranging from
Paul Celan (from whom the exhibition derives its name) to Dr. Bronner, from
Marcel Duchamp to the Milesian philosophers of Ancient Greece.
Mirra has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, as well as
in New York, Los Angeles, and at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in Germany. She is
an adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
where she has taught painting, drawing and art history theory and criticism.
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