Mel Chin
Spirit
permanently installed at the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH

       Originally part of the "Landscape as Metaphor" exhibit back in 1994,Spirit by Mel Chin is a permanent installation piece at the Columbus Museum of Art. It consists of a barrel, or cask, constructed by the artist out of white oak, steel, industrial patina, and sheet rock. The barrel is twelve feet long with a diameter of nine feet. It is suspended from the ceiling so that the bottom of the barrel comes to about waist height. No wires are visible--it might be bonded to the ceiling directly. Underneath it is stretched a rope constructed from prairie grasses, extending from one side of the room to the other, and fastened at both ends above the two doorways. It has enough slack so that the barrel rests in the trough of the rope. The lighting is very dim, with one placed in front and behind of the barrel, so that its shadow falls directly below itself, in between the dull circles of light on the floor. The room was specially constructed for the exhibit: the walls running lengthwise bulge inwards, and incline in as well towards the ceiling. Though no exact information was available, the room is probably the same dimensions as the one that previously housed Spirit at the Denver Art Museum, being twenty feet wide and fifty feet long, with a ceiling thirteen feet, nine inches high.
      Much of my experience of this piece was determined by its shock, by the fact that it can't be seen from a distance, but instead you are directly confronted with it once you turn a corner and enter a doorway. Once I approached the installation space, the atmosphere of the room was immediately obvious to me. The dim lighting produced a sort of off-limits atmosphere, as in a room that is not in use or still under construction, and so energy is being conserved. It could also be viewed as a solemn space where bright light would be an offense, a disruption. The low-level lighting helped to separate the space from the rest of the museum, where other works are placed under bright, revealing spotlights, and also seen in the context of one another; the use of the entire room for this installation further serves to make it a world apart. This atypical gallery setting, as well as the overblown scale of the objects, serve to create for the viewer an ambiance that is separate from the outside world of bright lights and manageable objects. In this setting, the viewer is subordinated to the logic of the piece. With this accomplished, the impact of the objects is made even greater; the precarious balance of the barrel upon the rope startles and even intimidates. The rope is attached directly above your head as you enter, and the barrel "aimed" so that you might even fear that it will roll and crash into you--images of the boulder scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came to mind. With that visually uneasy balance of such a large, bulging shape poised on such a narrow rope, along with the dim atmosphere that seems wanting to exclude invasion, a viewer might be afraid to even enter the room. The barrel might topple from its resting place from your actions, or perhaps its sheer overblown scale might reduce you to insignificance. It does more than dominate the space--it presses everything else out from it, an effect created by the object's enormous size, and the inward bulge of the walls that make the barrel's sides swell out even more. I believe it is possible to read this power of the form as a visual metaphor of spirit: larger than life, ever-expanding, ever crowding out anything that might oppose it. Furthermore, without any obvious supports, it could be said that the massive form of the barrel is balancing itself through its own will, through an act of self-determination that keeps it almost hovering upon a rope that seems to ragged and thin to even be able to hold it. For myself, the installation was also a test of spirit, almost daring me to enter the space and abandon myself to its own rules, to confront that which I am afraid of disrupting, of invading, or of reducing me to insignificance through its indomitable presence. The emotional effect of this installation is something that can't be ignored, and incredulity at the forms remains even on repeated viewings.

postdlf
1997

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