Barry Krammes
The Collector as Artist
By Christina Valentine
In our current contemporary moment, where we live and die by our cultural expressions via the digital cut/paste, Barry Krammes is an unapologetic assemblage artist. I know that in some art circles the term is now regarded as an old school art practice, or at the least considered as an analog version of how we communicate today. But as we are so thoroughly saturated in the pixelated surface of the screen and the appropriative, hash tagged, 140 (now 280) characters per tweet, it is refreshing to pronounce explicitly what Barry has been doing all this time. My last essay on Barry’s work that I wrote for Image magazine over a decade ago was an exercise in reevaluating his practice within the framework of psychoanalytic theory. While his work does have an affinity to Freud’s uncanny and the effect of the double, or the doppelganger, (an analysis which you can read further in the previously mentioned essay), Barry’s assemblage objects, right now, have a renewed presence as an analog practice that serves as a counter-aesthetic to the seamless, slick surfaced, RGB screen interface that we are obsessively and constantly immersed in.
The dynamics of meaning created by the assemblage gesture parallels the way in which we digitally express ourselves. The gifs, memes and viral-ness of our visual objects are conceptually similar to the assemblage artist’s practice of gathering and remixing things from their intended purpose. However, as we live in a world where the visual norm is the digital aesthetic, Barry’s collection of physical objects have shifted my contemporary sensibility. The rarity of tactile experiences (that do not reference the digital counterpart) and the realness of obsolescence (as an actual finite condition as opposed to designed) have become an opportunity in style and expression since it is not a given any longer. There was once a time when the thing that was banal was the tactile experience and the passing of an object’s functional value. But as we currently live in a moment where all things of the past are now mined for its potential as fashion, the actual, sincere experience of the feeling of tactility or obsolescence is difficult to come by. When viewed in this circumstance, Barry Krammes’ work has cycled back to being a new kind of experience because there is a feeling within the materials that hints of an actual obsolescence or finality in its circulation of meaning. While we now generate appropriative acts of communication that is infinitely distributed digitally, Krammes’ work stays meaningfully slow and deliberately out of the circuit. It is a beautifully anachronistic gesture that was perhaps unintended but nevertheless has become integral to the work that will only build in significance in years to come.
Much of this beauty lies in the way Krammes collects materials for his work. The German theorist, Walter Benjamin, when discussing his love of collecting books, has said of the collector as having a “relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value – that is, their usefulness – but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage, of their fate….for a true collector the whole background of the item adds up to a magic encyclopedia whose quintessence is the fate of his object.”[1] For Krammes, as an artist, the manipulation of his medium comes from the art of placement, arranging and grouping his forms. Similar to Benjamin’s description of book collecting, for Barry Krammes, it is the scene and stage that simultaneously displaces and redefines the object’s quintessential fate.
There is a particular kind of slowness in looking at the artwork that reflects the meticulous and time-consuming manner in which the artist collects his medium. As the accumulation and placement of the objects coalesce into subtexts and loose narratives, our eyes have to slow down from their usual pace of observation (the speed of the digital scan -our web surfing speed) to a fixed gaze. While I would propose that all visual art meaningfully slows down our manner of looking, there is something particularly entrancing about the assemblage object. Within the practice of assemblage, reference to an object’s origins (its use value) lingers; the materials are often placed as they are or are only modified slightly. The transmission of meaning between the materials’ past as commodity and present state as art object creates a frisson in meaning that is gradually arrived at. The objects that comprise Barry’s work are a collection of varied things (wooden puppets, vintage Indian fabrics, the wayward off-brand Barbie doll) that over time went from being passé discards to “vintage” and finally “antiques.” As the objects age and their commodity value degrades over time, the sense of the artifact takes form and the artworks that are comprised of these collected materials begins to shift. Their outmoded cultural meanings give way to deeper subtexts that reference archetypes, legends and myth. They move from a kitsch value to becoming mysterious or ancient objects. There is an art to collecting ready-made goods that, when initially selected, are without obvious intention. Barry has an amazingly reflexive understanding of objects as they lie precariously between the state of meaningfulness and their gradual erosion into a state of cultural obsolescence. An astute collector of things, Barry is able to select objects that are at the edge of their significance, on the verge of becoming culturally empty in meaning and open to being redefined.
The materials collected are not limited to physical objects but to memories, ideas and images that grow together in Krammes’ studio. Their co-habitation over a long duration of time (sometimes it will take years before one of the objects in Barry’s collection becomes part of an artwork) serves as a kind of semiotic fermentation. As they occupy the artist’s space, the collected objects seem to organically grow with and upon him so much that there seems never to be finality to the works but always are in a constant state of negotiation. The pieces that I’ve written about in the past have been reworked and will be renegotiated in the future as the visual conversation between the artist and his collection continues. This organic relationship is noticeable in the way the assemblage pieces live in his home studio. What you will see installed in the gallery exhibition is somewhat of a technical feat as the pieces were created without consideration of their portability (some of the art works are created and housed in rooms with doors too small to move them out). Moreover, as Barry has related to me in our conversations, his process is a “way of life” through which he interpolates the complexities of living and the condition of being. The artist Joseph Cornell in describing his own art practice referred to his habit of collecting cuttings and photographs as “a clearinghouse for dreams and visions” that is “part research project, part devotional act.”[2] Cornell’s sentiment resonates with Krammes’ own practice of collecting and reconstructing objects. His work method and the materials are in many ways organic to him so much so that to take them out of their place of origin would be akin to a surgical removal. When viewed in this light, the exhibition of Barry Krammes’ work becomes an intimate excavation (or perhaps dissection) for the viewer into a deeply personal state that is laid bare before us.
The practice of collecting, living with and negotiating physical objects as a means of remixing their meaning is something that is seemingly anachronistic in our time. The taxing care and labor that is involved in housing large and unwieldy materials, the accumulation of dust and grime that creates a beautiful patina of age in the works on display in this exhibition, can only be arrived at by the sheer physical presence and condition of the objects. The way in which we consider physical materials has shifted in our cultural consciousness. In the ten-plus years since I’ve critiqued Barry’s work, the object’s presence and materiality have taken on more significance as we have come to preface our physical world with our digital one. This dissonance between objects and their material significance has always been an integral part of the artist’s work as the gap between the two generates a sense of longing or loss.
For Barry, the idea of longing is best encapsulated in one of his favorite essays on allegory by a writer named Isabella Willinger (The Politics of Sentiment vs. a Poetics of Sentiment). It describes longing as “savouring different possibilities, about swaying back and forth in reflection, yet never quite arriving.”[3] In many ways, this condition of longing is the ever-present struggle for an artist to make meaning. For an artist like Barry it is the theme that runs through his practice and work: the intense focus and investment in objects at the twilight of their cultural currency, his loving embrace of obsolescence and even in his unwavering dedication to the art of assemblage in the digital age. All of this maintains and cultivates longing. For in longing, the condition of objects and their meaning remain unfixed and full of possibility. It is a means of heading toward a horizon and relishing the journey getting there rather than anticipating its conclusion.
[1] Benjamin, Walter, Hannah Arendt, and Harry Zohn. 1968. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
[2] Laing, Olivia. “Joseph Cornell: How the Reclusive Artist Conquered the Art World – from His Mum's Basement.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 July 2015, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london.
[3] Barlow, Deborah. “Art and Longing.” Slow Muse, Wordpress, 21 Mar. 2011, www.slowmuse.com/2011/03/21/art-and-longing/.
Christina Valentine is an independent curator and writer. She resides in Pasadena, California, and is an associate professor in the humanities and sciences department at Art Center College of Design, She blogs at www.horizontalA.com.