VOELZ CHANDLER: Tracing exodus from Plains

Mary Voelz Chandler

Published February 8, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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A still from the conclusion of Mary Lucier's The Plains of Sweet Regret, a segment also known as Arabesque.

An untitled grid of matchbooks from Phil Bender's "Last Place."

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Lots of sky, and lots of space. Few people, and tough climate. Good hearts, and wary hearts.

Those phrases from a piece by Michael Maidenberg, set against a gray video background, help New York-based artist Mary Lucier begin her video installation The Plains of Sweet Regret.

On view on six screens, large and small, at the Lab at Belmar, Sweet Regret is a wistful yet lyrical examination of the flight of population from the Great Plains.

Laurel Reiter, director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, commissioned the work as part of a larger project called "Emptying Out of the Plains," an exploration at once site-specific and universal.

After all, migration, rootlessness, abandonment and loss certainly are not confined to that part of the United States, or to the United States in general. Economic and political forces hold sway over individuals in ways we cannot overcome, whether it is the immense population shifts in China, the loss of small farms in this country or the brutal forced migration of ethnic groups in Africa.

Yet Lucier goes neither wonkish nor sentimental in this 18-minute, five-channel work. There are no talking heads. The wind does the talking, as do the tall, dry grass and the abandoned homes and the stuff left behind, from teapots to trophies. It is a quiet beginning, a soft look at a hard situation that shows a deft touch and a good eye.

Lucier parses out images between screens but sometimes fills all with the same vista, a situation bound to keep a viewer swiveling around in the vintage school chairs that are part of the installation.

But then Plains of Sweet Regret takes a big turn, veering into a segment in which Lucier manipulates the images and expands upon the content by adding a song layered and mixed into its own mini wall of sound.

These final seven minutes have had a life of their own as Arabesque, she said during a recent talk at the Lab. It's a smart word to use for this trip to a rodeo, where Lucier uses doubling effects to produce a kaleidoscopic view of a bullrider, the garish clowns, the massive animals and the crowd.

This buoyant segment - you can feel the energy and the release - is accompanied by George Strait's I Can Still Make Cheyenne, a ballad about losing and winning and heading off to the next competition. As the hunky young rider appears to meet himself in the air and on the ground, the song loops and overlaps, until the man walks toward the camera, tips his hat at those of us in those hard chairs and is off to something or somewhere else.

Lucier began her career in the 1970s exploring the power of light in video, a pioneer in the field who over time has remembered that content must be an equal partner with technology. Sweet Regret is the proof, a work about North Dakota and the rest of the world.

Lab director Adam Lerner has teamed this powerful piece with work by a Colorado artist, an unusual step for the space. Except this is Phil Bender, veteran artist, found object guru and arts advocate. For years, Bender has made us see stuff, just stuff, as art, arranging it in grids and presenting it with respect.

In Last Place, matchbooks, whisks, crochet- covered hangers and beaded belts take on a serious air. That's partly because they are arrayed in such a formal manner and partly because the long, narrow gallery confers a monumentality hard to imagine when you're looking in a kitchen drawer or garage corner.

It's fitting that the "last place" for these objects - before oblivion - is in a gallery eyeing its own backyard.

Plains of Sweet Regret/ Last Place

* What: Video installation by Mary Lucier and installation of found objects by Phil Bender

* Where and when: The Lab at Belmar, 404 S. Upham St., Lakewood; through May 1

* Information: 303-934-1777; belmarlab.org

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