In Which What Does Not Include a Painting of a Whale is In Fact the Memory of the Story of a Whale
CATALOG ESSAY FOR SUSANNA BLUHM’S SOLO EXHIBITION, THE MONKEY ROPE, AT J. RINEHART GALLERY, SEATTLE, JULY 2021
What follows is an excerpt from an essay that was originally printed in a beautiful hardbound coffee table book published by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle, Washington. This publication features full-page full color images of the artwork in Susanna Bluhm's solo exhibition, The Monkey Rope, for which this essay was written. You can purchase your copy here!
THE SUBVERSIVENESS OF QUEER SUBLIMITY
... This is a marked difference in Susanna’s approach to the sublime, and the way the sublime has been previously handled. The historical sublime reflects the deep influence of colonial capitalist mythologies that sever humans from nature, forming a chasm. Nature, as an Othered entity, disrupts humanity’s idea of belonging or place within it. The sublime occurs because we become fearful that we are unnecessary. We’re confronted with our mortality at the prospect that nature endures, beyond us, without us, irrespective of us; a colonial, patriarchal, and disconnected reaction. In an attempt to control and subdue this fear, we create a false reassurance of safety through the illusion of order and hierarchy.
Susanna’s lens as a queer woman in the United States subverts this illusion. Rather than severance, the sublimity in these paintings is an immersion, an awareness of smallness and the assertion of vulnerability. Neither queerness, nor smallness, carries any assurances of safety. But to be present in spite of it, is key. Immersion is queer. Vulnerability and rough edges are queer. We are fully here, in a question; that is queer. Queerness is an angle, an adjacency, a parallel, or a polarity. Queerness is the space between lines.
This inherent, underlying backstory illustrates a tethering of nature to humanity. Though she may feel she doesn’t belong there, Susanna is still a part of these landscapes; her insertion of self and symbols into these spaces shortens the chasm between them. There is no hierarchy or figure onto which we can project our sense of sublimity; we cannot disconnect. We are actors, participants, motivators, and catalysts in nature. We are there alongside these forces, continuously shaping, and shaped by them. Susanna’s inherent subversion in painting the things she lives conveys this existence of simultaneity to be embodied, if only for a moment, by the viewer.
Susanna’s lens as a queer woman in the United States subverts this illusion. Rather than severance, the sublimity in these paintings is an immersion, an awareness of smallness and the assertion of vulnerability. Neither queerness, nor smallness, carries any assurances of safety. But to be present in spite of it, is key. Immersion is queer. Vulnerability and rough edges are queer. We are fully here, in a question; that is queer. Queerness is an angle, an adjacency, a parallel, or a polarity. Queerness is the space between lines.
This inherent, underlying backstory illustrates a tethering of nature to humanity. Though she may feel she doesn’t belong there, Susanna is still a part of these landscapes; her insertion of self and symbols into these spaces shortens the chasm between them. There is no hierarchy or figure onto which we can project our sense of sublimity; we cannot disconnect. We are actors, participants, motivators, and catalysts in nature. We are there alongside these forces, continuously shaping, and shaped by them. Susanna’s inherent subversion in painting the things she lives conveys this existence of simultaneity to be embodied, if only for a moment, by the viewer.
Susanna Bluhm, Snowy Road To Twin Falls With Shapes From A Lace Curtain In Hailey And Side Triangle (Surmises), 2019 oil and acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches. Image courtesy of J. Rinehart Gallery and the artist.
|
Susanna Bluhm, Snowy Road To Twin Falls With Sky Tongue (The Spirit Spout), 2019 oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x48 inches. Image courtesy of J. Rinehart Gallery and the artist.
|