ward shelley drawings 06 @ pierogi 2000

Re-Materializing Art
10 March - 10 April, 2006
Scroll down for press release

Arto Lindsay ver.1a, 2005, Oil on mylar, 40.5 X 24 inches

Arto Lindsay ver.1a (Detail), Oil on mylar, 40.5 X 24 inches

Addendum to Alfred Barr, 2005
Oil on mylar
26 x 40.25 inches

Addendum to Alfred Barr (Detail)

Carolee Schneemann ver.1a, 2005, Oil on mylar, 54 X 24 inches

Carolee Schneemann ver.1a (Detail), 2005, Oil on mylar, 54 X 24 inches

Pat Oleszko ver.1a, 2005, Oil on mylar, 60 x 22 inches

Pat Oleszko ver.1a (Detail)

Williamsburg Timeline, 2002
Serigraph (silk-screen) print, Edition of 250

Williamsburg Timeline (Detail), 2002
Serigraph (silk-screen) print, Edition of 250

Press Release

Pierogi is pleased to present the first comprehensive exhibition of Ward Shelley's Timeline paintings—elaborate works that describe art-historical narratives using illustration, data plotting, and graphical conventions.

Central to this exhibition are three new works in a series titled Re-materializing Art about important careers in the so-called "dematerialized" or "live" art forms. Subjects include the life and times of Carolee Schneemann, Pat Oleszko, and Arto Lindsay. Other pieces will address Underground Film and the Velvet Underground, the Four Walls story, and Jack Smith.

Another piece in this series, the "Williamsburg Timeline Drawing" is available as a limited edition print.

Ward Shelley is best known for his installation / performance work, notable among which are his two previous exhibitions at Pierogi: We Have Mice and The Cube; as well as Mir2 at Smack Mellon, and W.A.S.P. at the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna.

Ward Shelley is a 2005-06 recipient of the Prix de Rome.

The Genesis
In 1991, I bought a reproduction of a Victorian book called the Wall Chart of World History, by Edward Hull. It unfolded into a 30 foot long illustration of the progress of human cultures, from creation (based on the Bible), through written history, up to the time in which it had been drawn in 1890. The cultures were depicted as parallel rivers, flowing from left to right through time, nudging each other, swelling or diminishing as they became dominant or subjected.

Four years later, I drew my "Autobiography," which is in this exhibition and owes much to Hull, as well as several other diagramatic text pieces (which are not here). In all those pieces, the intention was to explain some idea I had that had already risen to the level of language but to flesh them out with the muscle of graphics rather than narrative text. I tried out lots of things, only some with a timeline structure. As I showed them around, I was guided by friends to similar kinds of works, including the "dying tree" cartoons of Ad Reinhardt and a series of books by graphics guru Edward Tufte which contained amazing works from the history of quantitative graphics.

I presented my work to the curators at the Drawing Center and, a few months later, my sense of originality was somewhat blunted when I saw the fully developed Mark Lombardi masterpieces there. In time I found other important works of this ilk from decades before by the likes of Alfred Barr, George Maciunas, Öyvind Fahlström and Giulio Paolini. Gerhard Richter too, in the late 90's, made a piece called "Survey." This is a vein that has been well mined.

I've looked at all that stuff very carefully and am inspired by all of it. You might find it worth your time searching it out. But I believe Hull's Wall Chart must be the major influence on my work here. You can still find it on the web.

—Ward Shelley, 2006

The Hold-In-Mind Disclaimer
These are artworks about history and, as such, they attempt to understand the world, or part of it.
Our apprehension of the world always fails. This is because we need not only witness the world, but understand it as well, and understanding always requires a radical simplification of what really is to what can be held-in-mind, and used.

This seems to be an unavoidable problem, but becomes a large player in the human tragedy because we are unable to accept the limitations of our point of view (in fact we cling dogmatically to the points of view that support our interests) and think of them as truth. The human can hold-in-mind some facts, but the human can not hold-in-mind truth; truth is a wholeness, infinitely complex and irreducible. We never can see more than a part. We need to understand and accept this with humility.

It is important to realize that when you understand something, you have AN understanding of it. There are others, and they likely function quite well too. We need to understand things, obviously—it is how we work and survive in the world. But this world would be immeasurably improved if we could also hold-in-mind how limited and various our understandings are. This would add to our respect for creation, our tolerance for others, and a sense of personal humility, virtues that often fall out of favor.

It is, hopefully, with a dose of this same humility that I offer this work, which purports to relate histories of real people and events. And the Disclaimer is for emphasis: These pieces are not the truth! Yet they aspire to an understanding.
The attempt is to organize a mass of interrelated facts on a single "page" so that the scope of their relations and connections can be seen in an interesting and revealing way.

All historian's are editors. As such, they must face the problem of throwing the baby out with the bath-water. This is even more my problem. These diagrams are radical reductions of written history for which I have had to choose who and what to include, who not. Incredible amounts of information are jettisoned.* Even the people and works I use are reduced to symbols. But, in their coming together in this different form, new information is revealed, and nearly always a new insight for me.

The advantage is that you can get it "all" in one shot, at least the "all" that I have, with the best intentions and limited abilities, selected. Perhaps also, we exploit different strengths of our brains by seeing than by reading and for some of us, at least, this may be a clearer view. But diagrams are not substitutes for books, and if you have a growing interest in any of these subjects, you will be pleased to know there are many books, fantastic books, on all these subjects and people. While you are at it, you should try to see the artworks we are talking about too.

Lastly, each of these pieces represents a work in progress. As I learn more, (and knowledgeable people can be quite forthcoming and helpful—but please be polite), I can amend these works, and produce revised versions.

—Ward Shelley, 2006

*(For years I have imagined a software that could convert these diagrams into limitless links of information, but that may be someone else's job.)

see Ward Shelley's We Have Mice installation

see Ward Shelley's interactive Cube installation

click here to see more of Ward Shelley's work (external link)