Carolee Schneemann at Lisson Gallery

Carolee Schneemann, Video Rocks (installation view) (1987). © Carolee Schneemann Foundation. Image courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery.

In September 1986, Carolee Schneemann wrote to her friend, poet Clayton Eshleman, about the process of making Video Rocks (1987–88): “I have been building—since returning from LALA—the dream/vision space I described to you.” Inspired by a vision the artist had while visiting Los Angeles in 1985, the multimedia installation offers an unexpected foray into Schneemann’s process and concerns in her practice post-Interior Scroll (1975). Recently on view for the first time in Los Angeles at Lisson Gallery, Schneemann’s lesser-known installation work teased the numerous ways in which the late artist employed her transformative interrogations of unconventional materials: TV monitors, lights, cement, ashes, sawdust, urine, and ground glass. Schneemann pushes the boundaries of strict definitions of traditional forms of art and into the realm of the real—for Schneemann, the real is expansive and includes the experiences and materials of everyday life.

Comprised of five television monitors, 180 hand-cast “rocks” about the size of a standard cobblestone, and five (approximately nine-foot-long) glass light rods, Schneemann’s installation touches on her exploration of kinetic sculpture, and the tension between the melding of the body and technology. Across the five monitors, people and animals are shown from the knee down, walking across the rocks against a manipulated green screen background. The resulting installation engages with the formal interest of minimalist sculpture through the use of repetition to underscore the relationship between form and meaning: The monitors, beams, and rocks suggest the earth, light, and space. The walking figures become a meditative, almost ritualistic action. In her letter to Eshleman, Schneeman described the rocks as “‘unearthed,’ ancient,” and this primal quality is felt in the hum of the monitors’ static and the glow of the plexiglass lights.

Around the time the work was made, Schneemann had begun to explore melding of her film and video work with sculpture. War Mop (1983), for instance (which debuted at Max Hutchinson Gallery, New York), incorporated a motorized mop and video monitor depicting coverage of the war in Lebanon. Similarly to War Mop, Schneemann’s Video Rocks utilizes unexpected materials of everyday life, juxtaposing and arranging them to reveal an aesthetic language otherwise “unearthed.” Schneeman’s work of this time continued her logic of emphasizing the primacy of the materials of daily life, whether her own body, clothing, photos, dirt, or a mop to emphasize the aesthetic value of otherwise overlooked objects. For Schneeman, using these materials expands the possibilities of making art beyond the confines of traditional painting and sculpture and underscores the aesthetics of everyday life as holding artistic merit.

First and foremost a painter, Schneemann’s installation-based work exposes her interest in and desire to push the boundaries of her medium beyond their usual constraints. In the exhibition at Lisson, several works on paper that refer to the installation were included, which exemplified Schneemann’s particular interest in the medium of video related to television as a sculptural object. Pixels Escaping T.V. (1987) and Images Escaping T.V. (1987) are energetic and frenetic drawings depicting television screens that explode with form and color through gestural marks in vivid pinks, yellows, and blues. Alongside these drawings was a nearly 31.5-foot-long tempera painting on paper. Described by the gallery as “pink and yellow floral forms,” the backdrop-esque painting reads as more of an impressionistic sketch of the rocks nestled together to form a path. The shape of the rocks in this work on paper and the sheer scale make clear the visual similarities between the 2D forms and the final iteration of Video Rocks, pointing to drawing and painting as key steps in Schneemann’s working process.

As seen in Scheemann’s expressionistic visualizations of the installation through her works on paper, the rocks themselves become impressions of a landscape. In his essay for the New Museum iteration of the installation, Dan Cameron described Video Rocks as Schneemann’s “semi-concealed paean to Impressionism” and noted the risk the artist took in creating installations of this scale from her position as an American artist (and as a female artist).¹ Throughout her career, Schneemann has discussed her early influences, noting Cezanne in particular. Describing her interest in Cezanne’s paintings, she praises his works for being “structured and formally tough.”² This influence is clearly at play in Video Rocks. Similarly to the post-Impressionist’s project, Schneemann’s work breaks down, distills, and re-formulates the landscape into three formal moves: the foreground of the earth as the hand-formed rocks, the background as the television screens, and the midground with depth created by the formation of the plexi glass rods signifying light. As such, the installation comprises the formal qualities of a painting, pushing forward Schneemann’s project of breaking beyond the dimensionality of painting and expanding into the realm of reality. Revisiting Video Rocks in the installation at Lisson Gallery reveals the late artist’s longstanding investigation of remixing the materials of everyday life to transform them and reveal their aesthetic potentials, pushing forward her interest in underscoring the visual currency of such untraditional materials and breaking open the expansive possibilities of art in the age of postmodernism.

Carolee Schneemann, Pixels Escaping T.V. (1987). Paint and crayon on paper, 23 × 35 inches. © Carolee Schneemann Foundation. Image courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery.

Olivia Gauthier is a writer and gallery director based in Los Angeles. Her work has previously been published in Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, and Hyperallergic. She holds an MA in Art History from CUNY Hunter College.

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