Review: Tamsen Wojtanowski at Napoleon

by C.J. Stahl

Tamsen Wojtanowski’s new show, imprint, Lost/Found -or- “To make a long story short, I love you.” , is comprised of two small bodies of work. The first, a series of 4”x 5” cyanotype prints, cover a long wall in a hodgepodge of miniature abstractions that Wojtanowski refers to as “maps.” On the wall opposite is a series of 15”x 15” black and white digital, photo-constructions that document the production of the previous series.

Upon first walking through the show and intentionally not reading any of the gallery’s text for the work, I couldn’t help but be bored to death by the cyanotypes. I have a slight aversion to episodes of “forced whimsy”, and the playful geometrics resting on blue fields just weren’t doing it for me. They felt silly and naïve, yet I knew something was not right because the photo-constructions opposite of them were so alluring. So dark in their nature with areas of subtle grey backlighting black silhouette, the white in these pictures was barely there, as if your eye had mistaken the glare from the gallery lights as the work itself.  Sliding in and out of focus, these works were elusive rather than allusive. They brought to mind the question of what it means for a young artist to be self-reflexive.

As a young artist myself, the territory of self-critique feels close to home. We are taught in art schools to be hyper-aware of our media, practice, and contemporary theories of interpretation to almost a point of paralysis. Wojtanowski’s work begs the question of how is a young artist to operate within the contemporary art world while fulfilling, what can be perceived as, the artist’s responsibilities. While this may be a weighty question to levy, Wojtanowski is successful in showing us what the fruits of this circumstance might look like. The cyanotypes begin to take on a richer meaning while remaining blasè, their value residing not in themselves but separate. They are the young artist, doomed from their inception to exist as an anti-fashion, while across the room are the photo-constructions pointing back at the goofy maps saying, “Look what you’ve made me do!” The feeling that this is all a joke about one big un-joking matter pervades.

Yet I don’t believe in this joke. The works read as sincere, a commentary on their uncomfortable position. Maybe renegotiating our critical values would have a benefit for not only the young artist, but for artists of all professional levels. It is hardly appropriate to consider the moment an artist enters the commercial system as the moment they are capable of presenting their most sophisticated works. It is not Wojtanowski’s cyanotypes that are dark and gloomy, but the constructions that revel in the presence of self conscious anxieties. We’ve been taught to lust for critical jabs, to romanticize the pain. I learn that I am guilty too. Wojtanowski has offered herself as if in ritual, to expose what unchecked aggression can look like.