Mr. Wall has had a long career as a photographer, but also as an art-historian, writer, critic, and philosopher. His thoughts have been insurmountably important to the understanding of contemporary photography in relation to the rest of the fine arts. My original attraction was to his early work, in which he would directly reference historical paintings and interpret them into contemporary settings. The intellectual prowess involved was magnetic. As I matured, I found those unappealing and heavy-handed, preferring more understated color works such as The Flooded Grave. As I recognized the importance of emotive response in my own work, I began to respond to his black and white images which had previously seemed sub-par. Mr. Wall has been a constant influence in my work, which is why it was terrible to enter the gallery, stand in front of his art and feel decidedly indifferent.

The first two rooms meandered in intention, feeling unresolved. All the images were done in Mr. Wall’s near-documentary style, but their underlying ambitions struck wide. Emotionally distant, the pieces ranged from near-theatrical with House Search to strict neo-realism with Moving A Carbonator. Others, such as Knife Throwing, fell somewhere in between these two images, but failed to bridge their differences. His most successful pieces concentrated on unsustainable in-between actions. Polishing, from 1998, depicts a man in an awkward position, polishing his shoe. The viewer feels the man’s discomfort, recognizes that in a moment, he will be awkwardly twisting out of his uncomfortable stance. There is an immediate physical response to the image that convinces the viewer to consider it for a few moments longer. But most of his images avoid this tension, instead catching people mid-stride or mid-bite; capturing one moment of an act that by its nature will be immediately repeated.

Jeff Wall, Marian Goodman Gallery, September 22-October 30, 2009

Graphite becomes sentient in its imperfection. A pencil traces over paper, giving way to fibers in the surface. It changes over the short time it takes to draw the line; becoming blunt, shifting tone. In these ever-evolving lines, the artist is preserved. Mood and personality are contained in the weight and the brevity of the mark. Ree Morton’s drawings are no exception, and her pencil sketches at the Drawing Center hand us the keystone to understanding her work.

The first room in the Drawing Center is devoted to Morton’s drawings. Small in scale and sparse in content, the line becomes monumental in importance. Morton is quoted saying that, “three ideas interest me almost equally: structure, geometric shapes, modular repetitions, grids; light which can glow and be reflected, be absorbed; and surface which, in the case of the drawings, means integrating the quality of the paper with the marks made on it.” Morton’s pencil work explores these three themes extensively. Each sketch takes a singular motif and examines it by means of opposing forces. Light duels with dark, empty space wrestles with occupied. The pencil with its subtle intricacies is an expressive force itself and an intriguing tension arises from the these three instruments converging. Simple patterns flit across pages and feel, somehow, voyeuristic in nature. They describe the psyche of the artist uncomfortably well, but yet remain indefinite in their terminology.

As you enter the second room, pencils are ditched for blunt crayons. A line of large drawings pull from an ancient botanical treatise and reference, so the informative text claims, grand human themes such as life and death. But the works are inaccessible, the meaning impossibly concealed behind unappealing wax lines. The room is almost entirely devoted to the botanical project and would be a complete disappointment if not for her final sculpture, Devil Chaser. In this she incorporates the themes she had been exploring in her crayon pieces but ditches crayons and takes up wire. Her lines feel similar to the lines in her pencil drawings, more personal. They coax the viewer into the piece and with organic-looking draping give enough texture to convince one to linger. The viewer is able to experience an intuitive understanding and connection with the piece that is impossible with the crayon-drawings.

The show continues with varying degrees of success, worth seeing for the odd moment when Morton takes a line and skillfully makes it express more than itself. In this, she speaks in a universal tongue. As she said, “the mental pictures are always changing. You can’t make them concrete. There is no frame of reference, story line, or location.” They become timeless.

Ree Morton: At the Still Point of the Turning World, The Drawing Center in New York, October 2009