I was transfixed, frankly, by the art from Marc Handelman in a new exhibition at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, an art gallery in New York City.
The uniformly sized paintings, which are part of a much larger series, recreate a collection of plant life assembled across much of what is now the United States by the early 19th Century expedition led by, as they’re often known, Lewis and Clark.
Their trek across what, at the time, was becoming the United States was part of the nation’s early confrontation with and onslaught against the people and ecosystems already in these places, and Handelman’s artworks capture a startling glimpse of those environments’ plight.
In the paintings, the resurrected, delicate images of these plants sit against backgrounds of consistent but churning, gnawing, even grueling color. For each remembered plant, it’s as though we see its moment of existential genesis combined with the illuminated strain of its demise. Here, the background — in which, for those of Lewis and Clark’s day, the future in which we live would eventually come — is watching and waiting.
There remains something of the original, though, in these artistic visions. Handelman’s visual representations of the early 1800s plant life he’s referencing are specific and relatively precise — though normally pigmented relatively uniformly, so we’re ultimately left with a recognizable, visual shell.
But these images look as though they could further fade. Their contents pulse quietly and gently against the growing, stormy winds of their own dissolution, like a flower in a rampaging ice storm.
Below, I also wrote some poetry while considering Handelman’s artworks. I was feeling as though poetry would well capture something essential of what I was trying to communicate. Marc Handelman’s exhibition at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, titled “West After West,” continues through July 25. Thank you to the gallery, and best wishes to the artist!
The Suburban Cross
by Valerie Bright, spurred by artwork from Marc Handelman
Can a flattened
Red Bull box on the predawn sidewalk bear the weight of
A crushingly lit hospital corridor chapel of
Loss?
Will it hold the
Grief?
Can you ever see through a
Shattered mirror? To its creators?
In
My repetition, do
I ever remain in the museum food court, a little longer?
I’m trying to plant spinach in the chain link fenced sidewalk.
I’m not sure why it won’t work. But
I hear someone.
I hear a hymn, from a forgotten church.
It doesn’t exist anymore.
I hear the dry hymnal pages turning, the
Hulking, wooden, narrowly windowed doors closing. The tiled floors, scuffed in real time. I didn’t realize I’d one day
Remember this.
I see the elderly congregant’s steps towards the
Pastor’s perch and the
Devoted prayers I don’t quite understand, though I try to be
Courteous.
I hear myself walking, my
Shortened
Breaths.
I’m always turning through the newspaper pages and putting the light
Out.
I find a gift wrapped garden daisy.
The
Subway staircases are watching me like a box of
1960s vinyl records left in a two car garage without a door to
Rot in the torrential summer rains.
A pressed maple leaf from a highway road trip rest stop and a shoebox of sentimental stone wish upon a
Me
that they may find another life.
Searing, blind window gazing
I wish
I was on the
Other side of it.
Doubled paper bags from the grocery store sing in a chorus line from outside the
shell of the
forgotten house and the
Other house that’s not even there anymore.
But I can still see it on
Google Maps. Besides, of course, the
Insides of my eyelids. Even the
Blind eye. Animals who no longer exist except for an
Image taken passively and indifferently by a
Passing car.
My entire life, seen in a
Split
Second.
A tattered political candidate’s banner and an American flag, left together to the
Raging
Incandescent
Utterly indifferent fury of the
Cars on a passing highway. Somehow, the
Mailbox is still upright.
