Capitol Hill has always been home to many visual artists. Mark Tobey started the art department at Cornish in 1924 using the basement of Kerry Hall as his working studio. Today, many young artists call the neighborhood home.
One of the rising stars on the art horizon is Keith Tilford, whose work is currently up at the Eighth Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum. The exhibition is a joint curatorial effort by David Kiehl, curator of prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Rock Hushka, curator of contemporary and northwest art at Tacoma Art Museum. On view through May 6 is an untitled ink on paper drawing from 2005 measuring a substantial 47.5" x 64.5"
Last fall, two drawings were published in the premier issue of Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, Vol. 1, along with essays by and interviews with Alain Badiou ("Philosophy, Sciences, Mathematics"), Reza Negarestani ("The Militarization of Peace"), Nick Bostrom ("Existential Risk"), and Thomas Duzer ("On the Mathematics of Intensity"). Clearly Tilford is an artist going places locally, regionally and internationally.
When Tilford was still a student at Cornish College of the Arts, his drawings attracted the attention of James Harris, owner of the James Harris Gallery in Pioneer Square. What followed was an impressive debut solo exhibition in 2004 that was critically well received. Regina Hackett, the dean of the Seattle Art Press, wrote "Having just seen the Biennial at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, I can say with confidence that Tilford's work is the height of style. After a long absence, drawing is back in the forefront, and Tilford's visual stream of systems theory looks as good as anyone else's," in the Seattle P-I.
This premier exhibition led to his work being placed in the public art collections of the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond and Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. He also has work placed in significant private collections both locally and nationally. All told, this represents a remarkable series of achievements for an artist under the age of 30.
The drawings use as their source random images culled from the Internet. The artist redacts all of the signifiers of place, time and season. They work from a distance as hazy figures emerging from a background of digital noise. Up close they reveal the complex structure of the work in a simple elegant series of expressive lines.
They are totemic icons of the people who populate any city. Tilford replaces the historical context of the original photo with a new aesthetic context that mixes down the visual static noise of the composition. The French Situationalist International through a process called "de-torne" articulated this process.
The skeleton of the form in which swift, yet meticulous marks compose a small form that repeats and combine to reveal a figure is what then remains. These representations of icons appear to hover and dissolve off the paper as the viewer approaches them up close. As skilled and elegant in their form, the content each of the works has a deep philosophical dimension.
The leader of the Italian Futurist movement, Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, once noted, "Language is the mother lode of all culture," and thus pointed out the nature of the essential text, porous as it may be. Tilford takes on this challenge of difference and multiplicity by dissecting the different elements of: hierarchy, identity and representation using drawing as a vehicle for an unique typology. His compositions reflect the transitive property of aesthetics that recognizes that the only constant in any part of a world is the constant state of flux. As Tilford states: "what remains is the uncertainty of the face... an uncertainty as to whether it is coming together or breaking apart."
The drawings are simply and elegantly presented floating in space with minimal white frames and no other color to manipulate the viewer into false emotional states.
In each drawing every stroke is like the movement of a conductor's baton making a symphony, making the composition sing. Visual art, when done well, is like good music; it can transport you into other realms. It takes us outside of our selfishness and ourselves. It can move us a micro meter into becoming something a little bit better than we once were. It is for these reasons that artists like Keith Tilford exist.
In the coming years it will be interesting to see how Keith Tilford mediates the flux of our existence. He writes his own blog at metastableequilibrium.blogspot.com, where he muses about the intersection of science, art theory and philosophy. Individual artists like Tilford add spice and flavor to our neighborhoods.
Hopefully, in our mad dash to develop, destroy and add density to Capitol Hill, we will leave room for our artists. After all, they have been here all along.
Capitol Hill resident Steven Vroom writes about visual arts each month. He is the host of Art Radio Seattle, a weekly visual art news pod cast at www.vroom journal.com. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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