Bat parts. Iowa Research Online. University of Iowa. Robert Thomas Caputo University of Iowa. Theses and Dissertations.

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1 University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Spring 2014 Bat parts Robert Thomas Caputo University of Iowa Copyright 2014 Robert Thomas Caputo This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: Recommended Citation Caputo, Robert Thomas. "Bat parts." MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Art Practice Commons

2 BAT PARTS by Robert Thomas Caputo A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2014 Thesis Supervisor: Professor Isabel Barbuzza

4 Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL MASTER'S THESIS This is to certify that the Master's thesis of Robert Thomas Caputo has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art at the May 2014 graduation. Thesis Committee: Isabel Barbuzza, Thesis Supervisor Craig Adcock David Dunlap James Snitzer

5 For Samantha ii

6 Austerlitz went on to tell me that he himself, looking for a labyrinth used in initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons, which he had heard was in either the basement or the attic story of the palace, had wandered for hours through this mountain range of stone, through forests of columns, past colossal statues, upstairs and downstairs, and no one ever asked him what he wanted. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz iii

7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to Isabel Barbuzza, James Snitzer, David Dunlap, and Craig Adcock for their gentle and generous oversight of my project, and to Samantha Chang for her insight and support. I m also thankful to the late Tom Aprile for his encouragement of this work in its early stages. iv

8 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES... v BAT PARTS... 1 v

9 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Self-Portrait (2012) Portraits From Life (2011) The Age of Small Ghosts (2012) Fount (2013) The Lost Art of Painting (2013) Heart of The Andes (2013) Map Room (2011) Bookshelf (2012) Truck (2013) The Personals (2014) My Dog Is No Better (2013) Bat Parts (2014) vi

10 1 BAT PARTS Enclosed within each of my sculptures is an unannounced thing, a secret of sorts. Sometimes, it is a latent action that one discovers through touch: a lever, button, or crank is pulled, pushed, or turned, and the work responds in some small, often counter-intuitive way. A paper bag at the top of Self-Portrait (2012), (Fig. 1), for example, unexpectedly collapses and re-inflates when a Figure 1. Self-Portrait (2012)

11 2 metal lever attached to the side of its cardboard base is moved. Similarly, small handles on Portraits From Life (2011) (Fig. 2) and Agir (2012), both of which feature IPods, allow one to scroll forwards and backwards through a series of photographs, Figure 2. Portraits From Life (2011) activating simple animations. At other times, the thing is a section of the sculpture itself that is hidden or partially hidden from view. A hand-painted plaster replica of a coffee cup at the heart of The Age of Small Ghosts (2013) (Fig. 3) is concealed, for example, behind a façade consisting of a book cabinet, a false mirror, and a real coffee cup. The replica s existence becomes apparent only when one chances to look behind the work. In two site-specific works, both installed at the University of Iowa s Studio Arts

12 3 Figure 3. The Age of Small Ghosts (2012) Building, it is the work en toto that is hidden; Fount (2013) (Fig. 4) is apparently a puddle surrounded by three yellow safety cones and not a work of art at all; The Lost Art of Painting (2013) (Fig. 5) is a small box which has been fashioned to closely mimic the tone and semblance of the building s electrical infrastructure, into which it has been insinuated and where is sits, even now, largely undetected. Both pieces perform a silent,

13 4 Figure 4. Fount (2013) Figure 5. The Lost Art of Painting (2013)

5 inert, and ultimately empty parody of the building s aesthetique naturelle. As often as not, however, the unannounced thing is a physical space recessed somewhere within the work.

14 5 inert, and ultimately empty parody of the building s aesthetique naturelle. As often as not, however, the unannounced thing is a physical space recessed somewhere within the work. Since many of my sculptures take the form of boxes, this Figure 6. Heart of The Andes (2013) typically means simply that the boxes contents are imperfectly disclosed. Thus Map Room (2011) (Fig. 7), which features a weathered wooden box displayed next to a photograph an industrial interior, perhaps a warehouse, invites one to draw conclusions about the box s contents, none of which can be confirmed. Two other box-like sculptures, The Known World (2010) and Heart of the Andes (2013) (Fig. 6), allow one to explore, via remote cameras, the interiors of rooms an unfurnished bedroom with pine flooring and amber walls in the former; a gymnasium inside of which sits a van-sized biomorphic form, a work of art, apparently, in the latter. Short texts make the claim that in all three

15 6 cases the rooms in question are actually located as one may come to suspect inside the sculptures. Figure 7 Map Room (2011) Literary critic James Wood has used the word recessed a term borrowed from the domain of sculpture to describe the exquisite hollowness that characterizes the

16 7 novels of W. G. Sebald. 1 In these works, voices collapse into each other and echo together Figure 8 Bookshelf (2012) 1 James Wood, Sent East, London Review of Books, V 33 N. 19,

8 through the narrative s empty spaces: From time to time, so Vera recounted, said Austerlitz, Maximilian would tell us the tale of how once, after a trade union meeting in Treplitz in the early

17 8 through the narrative s empty spaces: From time to time, so Vera recounted, said Austerlitz, Maximilian would tell us the tale of how once, after a trade union meeting in Treplitz in the early summer of The words travel across such a chasm of repetitive attribution that by the time they reach us their meanings have been largely occluded by the ambient hum and atmosphere of great distance. I often think of recession in the making of my own works, of the forging small concavities or recesses into which something might be gently pressed and there remain hidden, or of the encasing of one thing within another. I think often, too, of the corresponding space within the viewer that this practice might allow, a space about which I can know little beyond the fact that it constitutes the principal element of my project. My graphic works, such as Truck (2013) (Fig. 9), a collection of twenty-one paintings of cargo trucks housed within a wooden box, foreground my interest privacy. Figure 9. Truck (2013) 2 W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (New York: Library, 2001), 167.

18 9 Since the trucks themselves necessarily contain unseen spaces, displaying this work involves the enactment of a kind of self-cancelling reveal. Similarly, the display of The Personals (2014) (Fig. 10) a series of five paintings of the same Figure 10.The Personals (2014)

10 small pepperoni pizza which is stored, again, in a wooden box, one that might comfortably hold one real pizza involves an initial revelation that is repeated, unhelpfully, four additional times in

19 10 small pepperoni pizza which is stored, again, in a wooden box, one that might comfortably hold one real pizza involves an initial revelation that is repeated, unhelpfully, four additional times in a small cycle of recessions. Likewise, an ongoing series of black-ink drawings depicting hypothetical book covers offers interiors that are merely promised. These works include My Dog Is No Better (2013) (Fig 11), Bat Parts (2014) (Fig. 12), Promised Salads (2014), and, most recently, More Bat Parts (2014). Figure 11 My Dog is No Better (2013) Like their sculptural counterparts, these graphic works bend toward ambiguity, emptiness, and silence. They similarly foreground the personal and the private, the

20 11 Figure 12. Bat Parts (2014) interior and the ulterior, even. In the poem Go, Youth (1994) James Tate writes, Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Others are dreary, distasteful, and can disarrange a shadow into a thing of unspeakable beauty. 3 It is a description of an incandescent inner-world, one that is enfolded within, and unfolds onto, the real. It is also, not coincidentally, an admonition 3 James Tate, Go, Youth, in Worshipful Company of Fletchers (New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1994), 3.

21 12 against disclosure, against uncovery. My project, likewise, argues for the primacy of such interior spaces.

Paleo-Sentio. Iowa Research Online. University of Iowa. Arden Roessler Hendrie University of Iowa. Theses and Dissertations.

Paleo-Sentio. Iowa Research Online. University of Iowa. Arden Roessler Hendrie University of Iowa. Theses and Dissertations. University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Spring 2014 Paleo-Sentio Arden Roessler Hendrie University of Iowa Copyright 2014 Arden Roessler Hendrie This thesis is available at Iowa