Somber yet awe-inspiring and calm yet glaring, Heather Mekkelson’s Debris Field, 2008, juxtaposes the human touch with the force of nature by drawing attention to a scene—meticulously and painstakingly recreated—that nature took only minutes to destroy.
Part of the ThreeWallsSOLO show which runs until February 16, the walk through, multi-part piece sits behind an unassuming door, halfway down a long, empty hallway and fills an entire gallery space. Similar to other Mekkelson works, Debris Field is the reconstruction of a disaster scene. In this case, water stains and caked sand give the impression of a hurricane. Human elements—a leather handbag tangled in white vertical blinds, a deflated soccer ball, an overturned dinner plate and a lone navy blue sock—mixed with bundled and broken building materials, work together to comment on the transience of human existence.
As the viewer enters the gallery space, she passes under a large speaker. The sounds transport the viewer to the South. Wind and water rush, cicadas pipe up in melodious rounds, and every once in a while, children yell to one another in the background. Because their words are inaudible, it is impossible to tell whether they are yelling out of joy or sadness.
You get the feeling that you have entered this landscape during “the calm after the storm.” Everything is still, each element has equal weight in the space, and nothing jumps out. In fact, some things are so well hidden that the viewer might miss them if she was not kneeling down to look under things or bending over to get a closer view.
A variety of objects fill the gallery—all tattered, wrecked, or completely demolished. The viewer immediately comes across a pile of roof tiles, a piece of bent metal siding, a broken switchboard and a sand encrusted standing fan laying on its side. As you move through the space, you pass three linoleum-covered stairs, a dirty floral duvet wrapped in torn plastic, and yard upon yard of unraveled air conditioner duct. Broken electrical wires hang across the room tangled with dirty fabric and a large blue tarp extends across one corner. Below the tarp, broken wood is bundled together with pieces of wire and sits alongside a bent doorframe and parts of a chain-link gate.
Six wooden stakes act as markers in the space. Perfectly suspended, at just the right height, I toyed with the idea that the artist may have actually driven them through the water damaged wooden floor. Helping to light the objects throughout the room are three makeshift mechanic’s lights hanging from industrial chain. These elements, along with a large, neon orange “OK” spray-painted on one wall show that some attention has been paid to the scene. They also raise an important question—is this scenario, “OK?” Maybe the people who owned these disjointed objects made it out of the storm safely. Regardless, nothing about this scene of pure destruction is “OK.” Or maybe, everything about the scene is “OK.” Through her work, Mekkelson aims to comment on the idea of imminent mortality. Perhaps the “OK” is a reminder about the true nature of our lives. In the end, we all die, and tattered blankets, stairs and roof tiles are all secondary.
Mekkelson’s attention to detail is flawless. The wreckage is a scene from which I want to shield my eyes, but instead, cannot force myself to look away. Mekkelson’s work is where disaster and beauty collide. To say it is an aestheticization of real life (in this case disaster), however, is challenging because that presumes a disregard for morals. Mekkelson’s piece doesn’t entirely lack aesthetic qualities, but in her case, art is more than aesthetics. It surpasses beauty and serves to function as freedom of speech and conscious. Imminent mortality isn’t necessarily a topic viewers are willing to accept, but Mekkelson pushes the subject and makes her comment through the artwork. She pushes her point even further by making her piece “in your face.” Field cannot be appreciated from a distance. It requires the viewer to interact with it; to see everything one must walk through the rubble.
In presenting Debris Field as an exact recreation of the disaster landscape, it is also necessary to argue its possible role as a memorial. In going along with the historical conventions of such, suggesting that the work is a memorial would mean that it is devoid of aestheticism (which is not to say that memorials can’t also be aesthetically pleasing, it is just to say that aesthetics are not their principle function). As discussed above, Mekkelson’s work doesn’t possess conventional aestheticism, but it is still a work of art. Mekkelson does not attempt to put the events of the disaster up on a pedestal, but rather to break them down into their most basic elements—a piece of metal siding, a dinner plate and a navy blue sock.
Rather than memorializing the events of this disaster, Mekkelson is presenting them in a way that is completely foreign to the viewer, and in doing so creating a work of art that is both abstract and representational. Debris Field is blatantly representational. In the same way a viewer can pick out an apple in a still life painting, any citizen of today’s world can look at Field and see its direct ties to disasters (like Hurricane Katrina) that have been so well publicized in recent years. It has immediacy because it is very recognizable within the viewer’s realm of understanding. Mekkelson’s work is abstract because of the way it is presented. She shatters the notion of the pristine gallery space by bringing the disaster inside. Rather than photographing or recording her disaster landscapes in a more traditional way, Mekkelson actually constructs the catastrophe for the viewer.
Mekkelson’s work is abstract yet representational and creates an eerie and contemplative environment. In this quiet space she speaks loudly to the idea of imminent mortality, not through an intense emptiness or metaphoric grim reaper, but rather through a real scene, meticulously recreated, of discrete ruins.
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