Enter Slowly,

The title of the current exhibition at The Lab, Enter Slowly, is less a warning than it is a reminder to see the spaces, both real and virtual, that knit this show together. In each piece, space slips attention, repeats, is ignored, shifts, is noticed again, and then metamorphoses yet again. The show is a study of space that is both there and not there. This idea is succinctly introduced by Maud Cotter’s modular piece More Than Anything (2004). It greets visitors at the door, then sprawls organically through the exhibition, disappearing overhead only to descend in another place. The piece itself is made of perpendicularly intersecting small squares of birch plywood that are reminiscent of a complex game of PlayPlax. By defining individual spatial planes, the squares, despite small gaps, create a space that exists alongside us, a space that is real but denies entry.

A pair of drawings from Alexandra Navratil’s series Untitled (2010) are startlingly complex, despite their apparent simplicity. Her chiaroscuro studies of cubes in space are simple enough that they could be assignments from any fundamental drawing class. The haptic nature of the cubes makes the spatial illusion appear navigable, but a green circle in the left-hand drawing and a red circle in the right-hand drawing countermand this trompe l’oeil. The spots of color reify the two-dimensional nature of the surface, and the go/stop abstraction coaxes viewers in, even as it holds them out on the proper side of the screen. Once again, they articulate a space that cannot be entered.

Anna Barham. Proteus, 2010 (video still); video projection; dimensions variable. Courtesy of The Lab, San Francisco. Photo: Matthew Marchand.

One space that can be entered is redefined: Anna Barham’s (Tangram) Posture (2010), a large wooden architectural intervention, transforms the entire gallery from a mere container into a work of art. Projected onto one area of (Tangram) Posture is Proteus (2010), a video that uses Leptis Magna, the name of a Roman ruin, as its seed phrase for a cryptic and ever permuting anagram. An audio recording of Barham reading her experimental anagrammatic book of poetry Return to Leptis Magna aurally accompanies the video anagram. Simultaneously listening to and watching distinct anagrams pollinates both senses and submerges the viewer in a space created and defined by linguistic dissonance.

This creation of space frames and permeates Enter Slowly. In this exhibition, space and language alike dawdle and deceive, estranging viewers by virtue of their familiarity.

Enter Slowly, is on view at The Lab, in San Francisco, through February 19, 2011.

Matthew Marchand, an artist, writer, and educator, is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Rutgers University. He lives and works in San Francisco and is currently searching for the perfect dessert recipe.