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Listening to Your Fears
John Haberin New York City
Jennie C. Jones and Tomás Saraceno
Were you ever tempted to dismiss Minimalism as a little too quiet? Not to worry, for Jennie C. Jones is listening. So is Tomás Saraceno, but even more willing to touch. Thanks to Saraceno, I may never be afraid of spiders again. I might, though, be more aware of my fears facing a work of art.
For all its spareness, Minimalism offers plenty to see for those who take time to look. No, make that because of its spareness, which gives one time and space to see. For Jones, that means time and space to hear as well. You may not hear anything right away, though, for you will be busy enough at the Guggenheim with her paintings and works on paper. Her installation's sound component may catch up with you only gradually, when you realize that you have been listening all along. It allows you to feel as if you are alone with the art even in a museum. As the rubes in Shakespeare's The Tempest say to one another, in hope of reassurance, "this isle is full of noises"—but then Saraceno would understand their fears. 
From the very start at The Shed, one plunges into darkness, and I could only wonder if I would make it out safely, if at all. The feeling only grew as I ascended to the next floor, for nearly half a million cubic feet of air and mist soaking up the light. I had barely found my footing when this, too, went pitch black for a very long eight minutes. A museum world of track lighting and precious objects seemed further and further away. Each time, I was trapped amid simulated spider webs, but that part is nothing short of exhilarating. For Saraceno, those webs are gateways to nature's resilience and the entire cosmos.
Relishing the quiet
Jennie C. Jones prefers quiet noises, just as her paintings relish the quiet. She nurtures it, by working not with paint on canvas, but rather the materials to eliminate unwanted noises, felt and acoustic panels. You may never have noticed before their contrasting texture or their similarity to Minimalism itself. Jones titles one work for Agnes Martin, and her influence is unmistakable in the simple divisions of a work between panels or along horizontals—and the gradations of dark and gray. When a red panel or gray diagonal intrudes, it is all the more resonant. When a red slice tops a panel, so that you can barely see it, its "aura," as she puts it, is the visual equivalent of the hum.
Jones has the lower floors of the ramp, just after another woman with a feel for quiet, Etel Adnan. A musical score, the form of her works on paper, is for her what landscape is for Adnan. Music has long had a place in Minimalism as well—an entire genre of music with such composers as John Adams and Philip Glass (also the subject of portraits by Chuck Close). While most definitely not a Minimalist, John Cage recognized the visual potential of a score, and he will always be famous for less than five minutes of silence. Cage also embraced chance, while Jones leaves nothing to chance, and she is not one to count off the seconds. Still, the staff lines in her scores are compositions in themselves.
Is the parallel between art and music only a metaphor? It may be only figurative language, but it has entered English. One does speak of a quiet composition or go to a museum in search of quiet. Jones finds the parallels in technical and informal language alike—most often in digital music and analog art. Titles speak of Soft, Pitchless Oxide Edge and Toward the Pedal Point, while a bright red painting is a Tone Burst. The show's title, "Dynamics," refers to music's gradations in volume, but dynamics in physics (as opposed to statics) is the study of forces and motion. And she does think of her paintings as "active surfaces" and the "physical residue" of sound.
Panels like these are also elements of architecture, and their interdisciplinary art extends there as well. The view down from the ramp onto the two-level High Gallery offers a glimpse of red accents on the top of paintings that one might otherwise have missed. When (rarely) curves enter a drawing, they pick up on Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim. Quiet being what it is, one might find oneself talking around another point of reference, too. Jones is black, and past shows have been eager to find markers of African American identity in her art. They have also featured objects that this small show takes pains to omit.
She contributed a SONY Walkman to a show of "conceptual art and identity politics" and looped audio cables to a tribute to Romare Bearden, both at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She appeared there among the emerging artists in "Freestyle" as well. One of her scores turned up just last year in "Grief and Grievance" at the New Museum, a show about white grievances and black grief. Is Jones out to leave all that behind, in favor of recent work and an homage to Martin? The Guggenheim quotes her dismissal of black abstraction as bombast. Her visual and sonic aura is anything but that.
Still, she seems like the last person to indulge in apologies or evasions. If she minimizes the references, it is to maximize what she finds in music and an installation. They exist both in the moment and in an extended time, the "sustain" of a pedal point, and that alters how one perceives her painting as well. Like Adnan before her and Cecilia Vicuña to follow, the walk up the ramp leads to another abstract painter, Wassily Kandinsky. His late work seems busy and bombastic by comparison, but again Jones is listening. Adds Shakespeare's Caliban, "When I waked, I cried to dream again."
Natural and ultra-high tech
Tomás Saraceno judges well to open in near darkness. Like many an idealist, he can be a bit sure of himself and more than a bit pretentious. He gravitates toward big installations in public spaces. When he built Cloud City on the Met roof for 2012 summer sculpture, its windowed polyhedron paid tribute to Buckminster Fuller. Like Fuller, he was out to remake the modern city while taking off into space—and I invite you to read my review back then for a better sense of his aims. Now, with "Particular Matter(s)," I could not question his commitment to the art object, and it is not nearly as dark as first appears.
Galleries make awkward theaters, and rooms for video are often scary, as with John Akomfrah and his invocation of global warming and the refugee crisis just last fall. Saraceno favors static media instead, but with a heightened awareness of the body in motion. At least half a dozen vitrines break up the space, but with no obvious path from one to the next. Each, glows with its own seeming inner light—as his art cannot in a more traditional presentation at his Chelsea gallery. The light picks out carbon fibers and spider silk. Sculpture here is at once all natural and ultra-high tech.
Some of it takes the shape of a biped, on the scale of the viewer. Others may suggest human heads. His sense of beauty is clearer still in a second room, bathed in red light, and a final gallery, with large glass and metal spheres. If you are still scared of spiders, they never once put in an appearance. Could spiders, then, be models for what it means to be human? They are for Saraceno, but models for something greater as well.
In between comes a room for what he sees as his place in history. Documents find antecedents of all sorts for his experiments, including a proper meeting of art and science. Back in the 1940s, Bell Labs in New Jersey was making music from equipment that responded to the ambient air. Later, it played a key role in the discovery of the cosmic microwave background left over from the Big Bang. Sure enough, Saraceno also describes his work and the work of spiders as universal cosmic webs. He incorporates sound art into his larger installation as well.
He is not through with you either—or through with the allusions. As puns go, "Particular Matter(s)" may sound like corporate speak, but it also describes smog. One remaining gallery gets around to that, too. Rows of shaded circles map the air quality in different cities. The longer the row and the larger the circle, the dirtier the city. As the title has it, We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air.
Is politics out of place in cosmic time? The artist could not conceivably have manufactured all this alone, and he sees himself as a collaborator and community activist. One artist collective, Arachnophilia, helped with the cool stuff, while another, Aerocene, has a studio on site. Its work in progress looks like a grounded blimp, of recycled plastic bags. It may not help much with toxic waste, but its limpness and logos update Pop Art for the luxury of Manhattan's Hudson Yards. Saraceno calls it a "portable flight starter kit."
The spider or the fly?
All that, though, is a mere prelude to the really big show. The Shed has had trouble from the start using its vast space—even with its "Open Call" to art from New York City or Drift's "immersive performance." Credit Saraceno with letting nothing go to waste. His installation sure takes up space, and one can enter on either of two levels, one twelve feet above the galleries and another a full forty feet above. He has stretched woven rope as twin platforms, ninety-five feet in diameter. Each has a slightly more solid walkway as a periphery, but not by much.
As Free the Air, the work reflects his native optimism and concern for breathable air. It also sums up his concerns from the galleries below. He has filled the air with black carbon, which accounts for the mist and its aura under strong light. As air currents buffet the carbon mist, it stimulates sensors to produce a not quite regular beat. The flooring brings the web back into the picture. As a subtitle explains, this is How to Hear the Universe in a Spider/Web, which highlights the role of sound and chance.
You may not notice the sound at first, with so much else going on, only starting with the chamber and the light. Depending on which level you choose, you can see people seemingly suspended in midair high above or far below. (Timed tickets are required, no more than ten people at a time.) They are finding their own way and enjoying every minute of it. Some use their weight to bounce gently—although the curators, Emma Enderby with Alessandra Gómez and Adeze Wilford, warn you not to use the platforms as trampolines. Be polite to neighbors who can barely stand as it is.
You will have plenty of time to lose your balance as the lights descend. Yes, it can be terrifying. On my visit, a woman cried out for someone to turn on the light before she could fall. (Assistance came quickly.) I envied people young and athletic enough to bounce. I found my way back to the surrounding circle for surer footing, but the vibrations extend there, too.
And then I found my way back to the rope. It was just too central and too far beyond my experience to resist. The work may be most convincing under bright light, but Saraceno himself prefers the darkness. Spiders, after all, are tactile creatures and nearly blind. He wants one to lie at full length, with one's fingers through the rope, to share their discoveries. For him, those eight minutes are the work.
His rooftop installation was a carnival ride as much as an ideal city, and this show, too, has its cheap thrills and unconvincing connections. It also takes waiting—waiting for a reservation, waiting for one's time slot, waiting to sign a waiver, waiting to check one's phone and loose change, waiting for one's place in line, waiting for the sound, and waiting for the light. Spiders webs have their victims at that, and you may feel more like a fly. That, though, opens onto other metaphors and another Hollywood entertainment. Still, there is an emotional resonance to the returning light. Like the light in the vitrines, it makes up for all the fears.
Jennie C. Jones ran at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through May 2, 2022, Tomás Saraceno at The Shed through April 17 and at Tanya Bonakdar through March 26. A related review looks at Tomás Saraceno on the Met roof.