In
1976, William Peterson began
publishing a quarterly magazine "devoted exclusively to the contemporary
fine arts of
the Southwest." Operating from a storefront in Albuquerque, over the next
seventeen
years Artspace succeeded in brilliantly presenting riffs of the erratic
range of contemporary art produced in this region. A fine writer himself, Peterson
set a high standard for his contributors, while the publication also became known
for the quality of
its reproductions.
Then,
early in 1992, desiring recognition in a more diverse and dynamic,
if not shrill, market, along with the possibility of
acquiring fresh
funding, Artspace moved to Los Angeles. This was accomplished, however,
at the expense of the base which had given it grounding and persona in
the Art World. In L.A., losing its reason to exist, Artspace struggled
on for a little more than a year before, in the autumn of 1993, delivering
its final
issue.
During the process
of his move to the Coast, Peterson donated to the University
of New Mexico's Jonson Gallery seventeen pieces of art that had
been bequeathed
to the magazine. These became the foundation on which the gallery
plans to raise funds to build The Artspace Collection,
representing the
unique historiography the publication had so vividly encompassed.
A selection of ten of these
works, on view at the Jonson Gallery until April 22, includes Elliot
Norquist's untitled wire grid that criss-crosses
and parses an abyss of dark glass without committing itself to what may
appear real or hallucinogenic in these
retentive spaces; and Susan Linnell's "The White Robe," a nightmare
of abstract energy, unkept edges, and thoughtful empty spaces, painting
almost a definition of
contemporary New Mexico.
Jaune
Quick-to-See Smith's lithograph "El Morro" contains
her familiar iconography of animal figures, tents, various trail signs,
and other glyphs motioning from a sustainable past, broadcasting into
a disposable present
not so much the validity of these senescent marks, but the very states
of consciousness that might produce a matrix complex and flexible enough
to generate the labile
theophanies our future will
demand.
Presented, too, are Felice
Lucero Giaccarod's untitled construct of a floating semiotics,
dividing while extending, from teeth and mind, some
universally
ingrained romantic concepts of "Indian Country," and
Janet Maher's "Post
No
Bills," two pages--here mounted in a plexiglass box--from
the artist's book of
xeroxed photographs of scribed and scored walls found in New York's
SoHo district.
(c) Joel Weishaus 1994
(c) THE Magazine, Santa Fe, NM. 1994