Kirkland@ Reston

Last Friday my bride and I attended the reception for J.T. Kirkland's show in Reston and were glad we made the trek up 29 to see the work. Kirkland made the most of a difficult space and presented his subtle and strong work in a surprisingly effective way.

The space in Reston is essentially a hallway with neutral-colored textured walls. Hallways and other functional spaces are terribly difficult to show work in - large pieces can't be seen, and small ones can disappear into the surroundings of light switches, drop-ceilings and exit signs.

Kirkland's work survives this atmosphere - in fact it thrives there. One would think that "organic minimalism" would need a white cube and no distractions to prosper, but this work is hardy enough to hold its own even in a functional corporate space. I was amazed at how his pieces could take the tasteful but bland surroundings and, while integrating and stealing from their aesthetic, transform them into art - from semi-sterile corporate habitat to viewing pleasure. I would guess this isn't something Kirkland intended with his work at all, but it shows the strength of the work that it can stand up to this Reston space.



And the work is strong - better even than when I viewed much of it in his studio a couple months ago and much, much better than the images on his website. Describing the work as "holes in wood" misses all the subtle and careful decisions Kirkland makes - choosing the wood, making precise patterns, deliberately creating relationships among pieces of wood, their scale and the patterns. Kirkland's term "organic minimalism" fits well - this is a thoughtful but playful aesthetic. In (R)Evolve, he "joins" three pieces of wood by "drawing" a circle in holes over all three. In Bulbous he makes a small wood chunk come alive with a simple shape and small hole-size changes. In Bulge he creates one axis with the tilted wood piece and another almost invisible one with the size of the holes. These all have a schemey, sneaky quality - a joy in making something beautiful and fun. I laughed more than once just looking at holes drilled in wood.

A few months ago I emailed Kirkland about how his work is a descendant of cubism and one idea of cubism - that a work of art can be an autonomous object in the world, a point made with Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning. Picasso was saying "Yes, this is a representation of something, but it's also a thing itself, not just a window." Picasso said he wanted work that competed with the world, that didn't just represent it. Kirkland continues this tradition, passed down through a line of greats like Mondrian, Stella and Judd. This isn't work one enters into, its work one exists alongside.

Kirkland continues another Modernist tradition - the artist as blue-collar worker. The cubists were scandalous when they dressed in work overalls and acted "lowbrow" as opposed to the more genteel "painting in a suit" atmosphere prevalent in European art at the time - picture the photos of Matisse painting in a three-piece suit. Kirkland's method of drilling wood from Home Depot is about as blue-collar as one can get - and as far away from the rarified clouds of hot air that surrounds so much contemporary work. Kirkland only asks us to do the easiest and hardest thing - to look.



We bring to the work our knowledge of art history, of theory, maybe even of woodcraft, but in the end the work is democratic and accessible because it only needs us to look for it to come alive, and by looking we start to see Kirkland's way of seeing the world and all its intricacies and potential, which can then transform the way we see everything around us. Driving up to the show I was concerned that the hallways in Reston would neutralize Kirkland's work but what I saw was the opposite - that his drilled wood chunks transformed their bland bloodless surroundings, charging them with life by showing us another way to see.