Suellen Rocca was one of many unique six artists who comprised the Bushy Who. The Chicago artist group exhibited thrice within the metropolis between 1966 and ’68, then, in 1969, Walter Hopps curated the ultimate Bushy Who present on the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. Practically six a long time later, what continues to impress me about these artists is that they every developed a person visible language, and began tracing this trajectory on the outset of their careers. Whereas they might have shared sources of inspiration, their artwork was as completely different from each other’s as Spanish and Italian.
The 20 work, drawings, and objects within the exhibition Suellen Rocca: Good Issues and Dangerous Issues at Matthew Marks Gallery span 1964 to 2014, practically her whole profession (she died in 2020), and vary in dimension from greater than six ft tall and 5 ft large, to work on small leatherette and plastic purses. By 1964, Rocca had developed her foundational visible language, which could be described as a type of “picture writing,” through which a simplified graphic picture of a slim mattress is used to convey some type of which means. The repeated placement of a hand-painted determine with different figures establishes a pictographic area, inviting the viewer to learn into it. Deciphering Rocca’s artworks is a part of the pleasure of encountering them.
Suellen Rocca, “Untitled” (2020), oil on canvas, 4 panels
Amongst Rocca’s main visible sources are mid-century advertisements — these reflections and options for the nation’s middle-class, conformist wishes: get married, purchase a diamond ring, elevate a household. When Rocca lastly homed in on that topic, she added shocking components to her compositions, comparable to a palm tree, an individual asleep inside a bubble, directly protected and remoted, and two open arms reaching by means of slits, as if they’re inside a headless human physique, the latter being one of the vital unsettling of her linear photos.
“Untitled” (2020), which options this picture in considered one of its 4 abutted panels, pushes us to a extra ominous studying of seemingly benign iconography — an empty mattress, birds perched or in flight, a pair of legs, and a home — transporting us into an space of hypothesis. An untitled watercolor and graphite work (additionally 2020) composed of 4 rows of repeated gadgets equally unsettles acquainted imagery. The highest three rows present a home, a nude girl on a big rock, and a hand alternating with a leaf. For the underside row, Rocca renders a physique melting on a mattress.
Set up view of Suellen Rocca: Good Issues and Dangerous Issues at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. Foreground: “Purse Curse” (1968), oil on plastic purse
Together with these enigmatic work, through which the repetition of photos is crucial to the composition, Rocca created others that don’t match into this mildew, comparable to “Lamp Poem” (c. 1969), whose edge is made from pleated material. If she had repeated this in a number of items, she would have diminished the facility of this work. On the shade of a blue lamp on the heart, Rocca has depicted a home with smoke popping out of its chimney. Strains lengthen out of each the home and the lampshade, denoting gentle.
In every nook of the portray, Rocca has written out “ohh,” “ahh,” or “mmm.” What do these pause fillers imply? What do the black strains radiating from “mmm,” and matching these of the home and lamp, signify? What seems at first to be a portray of a lamp turns into unusual and incongruous the longer we take a look at it. Is it about collective aspirations for domesticity and luxury in america?
Suellen Rocca, “Lamp Poem” (c. 1969), oil on canvas with material
Within the largely black and white drawing “Hidden Danger Lady” (1984–2012), Rocca portrays a creature sitting cross-legged, with house made by overlapping legs and outsized pink arms, the one colour within the work. The pink differentiates the house established by the determine’s legs from the black and white floor, complicating the studying of this drawing.
On this and “Lamp Poem,” Rocca broadens her physique of labor, and conveys her artistic breadth and her restlessness to do one thing new. If this drawing is any indication of what she will be able to obtain with graphite, an exhibition of drawings by her or the entire Bushy Who artists, for whom drawings type a definite physique of labor, is warranted.
In her pictographic works, particularly these with home photos (e.g., beds, homes, and diamond rings), Rocca evokes a conflicted world. The objects, and the profitable middle-class life they symbolize, is each desired and stultifying. Rocca might see the banality of the American Dream.
Suellen Rocca, “Hidden Danger Lady” (1984–2012), graphite and coloured pencil on paper
Suellen Rocca, “Ocean Ladies” (1988), oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca, “Untitled” (2020), graphite and coloured pencil on paper
Suellen Rocca, “Clean and Unclean” (1983), oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca, “Untitled” (2020), oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca, “Untitled” (c. 1983), oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca: Good Issues and Dangerous Issues continues at Matthew Marks Gallery (523 West twenty fourth Road, Chelsea, Manhattan) by means of April 19. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
