Three days until the SHIFTED FOCUS gallery opening…KSW is filling up with art, the Mission sun is shining through the windows, and the air smells strongly of fresh paint fumes. Breathe in the excitement!
It’s a busy time with artists dropping by to install their work. Rebecca Szeto, an artist from APAture 2005, kindly lets me interview her while she fluffs and re-shapes her steel-wool wall drawing. It began as a wiry cloud, soft to the eye but hard to the touch. With a Goya print as her model, she transforms the wiry cloud into a seated woman with topsy-turvy houses stacked on her head. The piece is called Gross Domestic Product (Props for a Market Crisis).
Rebecca explains…
The big umbrella topic is belief structures—how we shape our beliefs collectively and individually for the good and bad. In this instance, it’s the idea of security in uncertain times, using the current economic recession and mortgage crisis as a backdrop.
KSW: What draws you to Goya?
RS: Much of his subject matter dealt with the politics and undercurrents of society, which is what interests me. The etching I reference in my drawing is from Los Caprichos, a series that commented on the vanities of society during the Spanish war [against the French].
Anecdotally, Goya sold his prints at a place across from his house on a street called Disillusion [Calle de Desengaño]. Pretty serendipitous, since I’m working with illusion and the collapse of structure.
KSW: Watching the way you work with steel wool, it has a lot of dualities: hard and soft, strong and collapsible, sculpture and drawing. Why do you use steel wool?
RS: Steel is a relevant material in the history of America. Steel economically and physically built this country. I also like using materials in unexpected ways to test assumptions.
KSW: How did you come up with this unique process of using steel wool?
RS: I never thought, “I’m going to draw with steel wool.” I just have a fascination with mass-produced cleaning products. I like checking out cleaning products from around the world. I did an artist residency in Italy, and the steel wool there came in big rolls. I bought a bunch, and I had it sitting in my studio. It went from being on my desk, to being on the wall, to clipped on a string, to hanging unraveled… And then I walked into studio one day and saw it against the white of the back wall and realized it had the quality of graphite pencil. The deception of 3-D imitating 2-D.
KSW: And that deception is part of what your piece says about belief structures.
RS: The medium is the message. My process of working with steel wool parallels what I’m trying to say with it on a conceptual level: belief structures are as real as you make them. They are self-made illusions, where there is always the choice to re-form, and all it takes is a small shift in perspective. With the steel wool, a small tug transforms a cleaning product into a drawing. Add a little water and it again changes to rust.
Rebecca adds more precarious houses to the top of her work. She anticipates the whole thing to corrode and the rust to drip down the walls over the course of the exhibition. SHIFTED FOCUS is at KSW’s space180 Gallery October 25, 2008-January 23, 2009. Meet Rebecca at the opening reception this Saturday.
–Lisa Leong
