It is a challenge to build a broad exhibition around the work of artist Gala Porras-Kim. Her pieces — more like projects, really — can be complicated, process-driven, abstract and unfinished all at the same time. They read like ongoing science experiments where the results are not quite complete yet.
Porras-Kim’s objects are in constant motion, growing, decaying, dripping right before our eyes — and that makes capturing any one of them at the perfect instance for viewing difficult, and it makes freezing a moment in her career seem impossible.
But the new retrospective of Porras-Kim’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver does a very neat job of sizing things up, in a compact and compelling way. Organized by the museum’s associate curator Leilani Lynch, “A Hand in Nature” is a fascinating dive into the mind of an artist who is not afraid of big ideas or the dare that it takes to transform them into actual objects.
It helps that the concepts themselves are intriguing and speak to the moment we live in, hot topics like our relationship with nature and, perhaps a bit more insider, the repatriation of museum artifacts to their original owners. Indeed, Porras-Kim is easily described as one of the most in-demand artists of the day. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1984, and of Colombian-Korean descent, she is entering the mid-career stage with a loud bang.
Her CV lists no less than five current exhibitions of her work on three different continents. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is represented by the gallery Commonwealth & Council, which is enjoying its own, much-deserved moment in the international art spotlight.
It is to the credit of galleries and museums who exhibit and sell her work that they support the effort because it is not easy to put into any single category, nor does it warrant easy consumption. It needs to be explained, understood, and then consumed on its own terms.
Take, for example, the first piece visitors to the MCA encounter at the show. The work is basically a large chunk of pinkish alabaster that has been placed on a pedestal. Positioned a few inches above it is a clear, plastic tube that drips water onto the top of the rock. Things move slowly; one drop falls and must completely dry before the next drop is released.
The untitled piece, we are told in the accompanying text, will be complete when the water has carved a hole straight through the alabaster. One assumes it could take centuries for that to happen.
Adding a layer of interest to the piece is the fact that it is driven by local conditions in the museum. Temperature and humidity inside the gallery are measured so that the pace of the drips is just right. That makes the Denver museum — and, by extension, the visitors to the exhibition — partners in the process of making this art. In that way, it is very involving.
Of course, it requires patience — and a bit of reading — to comprehend exactly what Porras-Kim is doing. Another work, for example, appears to the viewer as a simple, thin slab of concrete, about 4-feet-by-4-feet square, which sits flat on a wooden pedestal about 2 feet high. Not much going on from the look of things.
The text explains: The concrete is infused with Epsom salt and so it is actually active and decaying over (a long, long) time. The process mirrors earth-friendly concrete building demolition techniques that the artist witnessed in Mexico.
Some of Porras-Kim’s works are beautiful to gaze at, even if that is more a byproduct of their purpose rather than an effort by the artist to make pretty things. For example, the piece titled “Out of an instance of expiration comes a perennial showing” is an appealing abstract painting in browns, golds and yellows that stretches about 5 feet along the wall.
Again, reading reveals there is more here than meets the eye. The marks are actually living spores that the artist collected from the storage area of the British Museum in London. Spores, which eat away and discolor materials, are the enemy of museums, which work tirelessly to preserve art in its original state.
But here, they are elevated to the level of art itself, framed and hung on a wall, accepted as a part of the objects they devour. The piece asks us to consider the natural lifespan and evolution of the works of art that are kept by museums. What if, instead of trying to keep them perfect, we allowed these objects to have agency over their own fate, to evolve on their own terms, perhaps to live and die. The piece is a grand challenge to the way all museums, of every type, operate.
Curator Lynch keeps things flowing. The text cards are necessary to understand the objects, though they are not demanding to read. The same sharp editing goes into the show itself. Porras-Kim covers a lot of ground in her artistic mission, but we get just enough here to understand her thinking.
And the show ends with a bang in the MCA’s largest gallery space, where the piece “Forecasting Signal” is installed. The work consists of a large piece of burlap, which is suspended horizontally from the ceiling and coated in deep black graphite. Beneath that, directly on the floor underneath, is a white wooden panel.
A dehumidifier installed in the room pulls natural moisture out of the air and funnels it on top of the burlap. From there, gravity takes over. The water seeps through the fabric and drips onto the panel below, taking the black graphite with it. The process creates something like a monochromatic Jackson Pollock painting, lots of random dribbles and drops.
Porras-Kim has repeated this same work at several previous exhibitions and hanging on the walls of the gallery are pieces she created with this same process during shows in Spain, California and Mexico. This enables MCA visitors to simultaneously observe the new piece being created while examining what the final product will look like from previous installations.
There is something very satisfying about being so intimately involved in the process, to be observers of the action as much as viewers of completed works. And it gets right to the heart of Porras-Kim’s overall efforts as an artist. They are ongoing, complete and incomplete at the same time, and fascinating.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer who specializes in fine-arts coverage.
IF YOU GO
Gala Porras-Kim’s “A Hand in Nature” continues through Sept. 1 at the MCA Denver, 1485 Delaney St. Info: 303-298-7554 or mcadenver.org.