Meditation on a Microbe:
Carter Hodgkin's New Work
By Catherine Redmond (1996)
Can an image have meaning if we don't know what it is? This is the question
we are forced to answer over and over again with Carter Hodgkin's new work.
Is it necessary to know that her evocative forms are digitized images of
molds, fungi and viruses? Well yes and no. Hodgkin, one of the first
artists to stride deep into the digital frontier, has grappled and refined
artmaking using society's love-hate object, the computer, and with this she
forces
questions upon us with the consummate skill of a seasoned provacateur. It
is not so much that Hodgkin's work is pioneering, which it is, as it is
that these strange pieces evoke a nascent and thrilling remembrance of both
things mysterious and things mundane at a time in our history when
technology and art seem at odds with each other.
Unframed, the paper pieces ride on the wall rather than becoming one with
the wall. The warp and swell of the paper makes for a disconcerting
relationship to the wall so the wall itself starts to become as meaningful
as a presence. Taken together the effect is strange and uncalibrated. The
evocative nature of the materials hints at temple offerings and Asian
prayer flags. The breathing skin of the paper surface suggest the mandala,
but it is nothing so simple as a mere transcription. The idea flits in and
is gone as the viewer remembers it is a mold, not a mandala.
The power of her work beyond sight is its ability to build contradictions
of meanings. Although Hodgkin claims to see the computer as merely another
tool, it is clear she also relishes the tussle between the artist's spirit
and the will of the machine. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, Hodkin
subdues the technology's tendency toward slickness and graphics-shop
finish. She insists on her own purpose and stays in that space between
resplendent possibility for its own sake and the urgency of her vision. The
works are not only good to looke at, but they are finally, like all good
works of art, objects of meditative regard. Could it be that examining
these viruses, fungi and molds we see into the mystery of like itself
unhampered by a species-driven survival goal? The Buddhists would answer
yes. Taking the means used by science Hodgkin, the artist, has given us the
meditative gift of the sage.
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