THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408120102
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: ART REVIEW
SOURCE: BY VIRGINIA VAN HORN, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
ALL ARTISTS create new worlds, but only installation artists create worlds you can walk around in. An outgrowth of sculpture, installation art constructs total environments on a grand scale. ``Treading Water,'' the new work by Norfolk artist Laurel Quarberg, is a site-specific installation designed especially for the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts. It fills an entire gallery at the center; the whole room and its contents comprise a single work of art large enough to encompass its viewers.
Quarberg transforms the gallery. Its walls are cobalt blue; its floor is covered with 30 tons of rock salt. A 52-foot-long trough made from PVC pipe is suspended in mid-air down the center of the space. Gray on the outside and gold on the inside, it is filled with a combination of oil and water.
Five lighted votive candles in glass containers are spaced evenly along its length.
The trough is supported by a system of slings and cables running to a series of 12 counterweights, six on each side of the vessel. Each counterweight is made from an oil-filled concrete basin lined with gold leaf, resting on a thick steel disk.
The disks' shadows are cast on the salt like flying saucers - or like the dark twin counterparts to the bright basins.
This duality is characteristic of a number of the materials used in the piece; the symbolism behind these substances is important to the work's meaning. Quarberg is sensitive to the essential nature of her materials, and to their histories.
The crunchy salt underfoot would represent a fortune to a 15th century Venetian trader; it was once considered a very valuable material, a sign of wealth and status. Salt is a necessary element for life, but is destructive in abundance. The salt, the oil, the gold leaf all have connotations of affluence and destruction - millions made in oil and oil spills, the value and beauty of gold and the love of money that is the root of all evil.
Gold also has a religious aspect. For the alchemist, it signifies spiritual perfection as much as monetary treasure. The reflection of heavenly light, it is the precious medium of Catholic icons and reliquaries.
Christian symbolism is one of the underlying concepts for the exhibition. The gold and the votive candles both connect to rituals of the church. Twelve counterweights could signify 12 apostles surrounding the long, horizontal form of Jesus, with the five candles representing the five wounds of Christ.
But the 12 circles could also indicate other things. Twelve items in a dozen, 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac - all systems of order and balance that refer to ongoing cycles of life and time.
Balance is the key to ``Treading Water,'' both literally and figuratively. The balance of weight and counterweight, in an impressive engineering feat, maintains the actual structure. Its precarious harmony depends on the relationship of all the parts. Each component is equally important; the failure of any one would result in the ruin of everything. The physical properties of the work in turn illuminate philosophical ideas.
Like the environmental sculptor Mary Miss, Quarberg is concerned with making a very clear situation that is a tangible manifestation of abstract thought. Through the use of raw industrial materials, these abstract concepts are made concrete.
As metaphors, balance and the interconnection of parts cast a wide net of implications that include the psychological, the ecological, the political and the spiritual.
From the very human sensations of vulnerability and support to the more global concerns of co-existence within a delicate framework, ``Treading Water'' is a meditation on equilibrium whose presence is both spectacular and serene. by CNB