“It has been the glory of modern science that it has
been able to emancipate itself completely from all such anthropocentric, that is, truly humanistic, concerns.” – Hannah Arendt
The concluding show in Richard Saltoun Gallery’s year-long program dedicated to the writings of Hannah Arendt, The Conquest of Space will present paintings and works on paper by Sylvia PLIMACK MANGOLD (b. 1938) in the UK for the first time and pivotal early works by Elaine REICHEK (b. 1943) from her first solo show at Rina Gallery, New York in 1975. It will also include a focused selection of works with two new photographs by Carey YOUNG (b. 1970).
Hannah Arendt’s essay “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man” was first published as “Man's Conquest of Space” in The American Scholar in autumn 1963. It appeared later that year in a special edition of the magazine The Great Ideas Today, before being added to the revised and expanded second edition of Between Past and Future in 1968. For The Great Ideas Today, Arendt was invited to contribute to the section “A Symposium on Space” which addressed the question: Has man's conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?
With characteristic vision and incisiveness, Arendt’s contribution avoided the aggrandizement of science. Instead, it conjured a dark picture of the human race’s journey into outer space, where our established methods of understanding and engaging with the world are rendered inadequate. She argues that the role of the scientist is to stand outside and beyond anthropocentrism; and that debates on the nature and status of humankind only constrain scientific inquiry.
Inspired by Arendt’s preference for defining herself as “a kind of phenomenologist,” the exhibition moves between theoretical and phenomenological considerations of space and its explorations by three remarkable artists.
Elaine Reichek’s paintings in GALLERY 1 are notable for their materiality and texture, which involves gesso, acrylic, thread, and graphite on canvas. Unlike her Minimalist predecessors, Reichek embraces illusionism and ambiguity. For instance, her use of needle and thread to pierce the surface of the canvas produces an illusory effect that makes each fiber line difficult to distinguish from their painted counterparts. The works in the Untitled (1973) series are objects that defy our expectations and confront us with deliberate inconsistencies. They engage their viewer in physical and tactile ways, blurring the boundaries between Minimalism and more material pleasures.
GALLERY 2 displays several important works by Sylvia Plimack Mangold, each of which engages with the apprehension and representation of space. Plimack Mangold was one of a generation of artists who turned to questions of space and its perception in the 1970s. Her trompe-l'œil, photorealistic paintings elliptically engage with Minimalism’s exploration of space. Their subject matter could be described as sculptural. For instance, Thirty-six-and three-quarter inch of Rule with light (1975) uses something as mundane as a wooden ruler to study concepts of measurement, geometry, and light. These subjects would seem to align her with the language and aesthetic concerns of Minimalism. However, her painting technique—which creates the illusion of a real object in space dappled in light—brilliantly contradicts Donald Judd’s concept of the “specific object.” Study for Opposite Corner (1973) features a vertical mirror propped up in a corner that is reflecting the inverse of the corner in front of which it stands. This work further extends the sculptural characteristics of Mangold’s paintings, actively manipulating the space she is painting rather than merely depicting it. The exhibition also includes The Locust Trees 2/87 (1987) and Winter Maple and Pine (2007). These paintings, which were painted from observation through the window of her studio, reflect Plimack Mangold’s lifelong interest in nature. The trees enabled her to continue her interest in abstraction, the problem of space, and the struggle to accurately represent it.
GALLERY 3 presents a selection of works by Carey Young including Obsidian Contract (2010); Report of the Legal Subcommittee (2010); and Contracting Universe (2010); along with two new photographs Faculty of Law, Oxford University (2022) and Prison Yard, Beveren, Belgium (2022). Contracting Universe is a large-scale print applied directly to the gallery wall, depicting a digital rendering by NASA of the surface of Mars. The work has a magnitude or intensity that evokes the sublime, while at the same time suggesting a certain poetic futility inherent in the human desire to comprehend or manage the infinite. Report of the Legal Subcommittee is a framed print featuring a celestial map combined with a found transcription of a United Nations meeting, in which various international delegations declared frustration with their 40-year-old efforts to devise a legal definition of outer space. The exhibition also debuts two new photographic works by Young. These photographs document a noticeboard in the Law department of Oxford University and a section of wall in the exercise yard of a prison in Belgium. The images have been captured in such a way by the artist that they fool us into thinking they are images of the night sky or astrological charts of some kind. One black and one white, they echo and reverse one another in aesthetic terms. But the images also have a dialectical tension, a darkness, obscurity, privation, in which the role of a law schools in constructing the criminal justice system is placed alongside the day-to-day functioning of a prison, posing questions about the complex relationship between the two. In 2023, Young will have a solo show at Modern Art Oxford.
On Hannah Arendt: The Conquest of Space is the final part in the gallery’s year-long program dedicated to the writings of the German-born, American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, which takes its title from the eight chapter of her 1968 book Between Past and Future. Accompanying the programming is a new series of sound pieces by Brazilian artist and musician Laima LEYTON, who responds to each essay in Arendt’s book Between Past and Future. Collectively titled Infinite past, infinite future and NOW, the works are available to experience via ‘Saltoun Online’ on the gallery’s website.
A video introduction to ‘The Conquest of Space’ by Roger Berkowitz, academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, is available to watch on the gallery’s website.
In partnership with the Hannah Arendt Centerfor Politics and Humanities at Bard College, a wide-ranging public program of online talks, interviews, lectures, and a virtual reading group is available to view on the gallery’s website. With special thanks to the artists, Alexander and Bonin, Paula Cooper Gallery and McClain Gallery.
A comprehensive catalogue including photographic documentation of all eight exhibitions in the series and works by the twenty-two participating artists is forthcoming. It will include contributions by some of the world’s leading thinkers dedicated to the writings of Hannah Arendt. Edited and with a text by Gavin Delahunty, contributors include Seyla Benhabib, Columbia University; Roger Berkowitz, Bard College; Judith Butler, The University of California, Berkeley; Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley; Ken Krimstein, The New Yorker Magazine; Ann Lauterbach, Bard College; Shai Lavi, Tel Aviv University, Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds; and Lyndsey Stonebridge, University of Birmingham.
