The Forest and the Trees: Ron Bechet at CAC
If you haven’t seen Ron Bechet‘s charcoal drawings at the Contemporary Arts Center, get it while you can. From the Storms of Our Souls: The Art of Ron Bechet is the best exhibition I’ve seen at the CAC in a long time.
I have been struggling to articulate what makes this show so good. The problem is that the most astounding aspect of this work is its ability to generate silence. Standing in front of the massive drawings in the quiet of the gallery, the constant noise of my own thoughts and the urge to describe my experience of the art grew quiet. I left that day with an empty notebook.
But this exhibition does more than offer a moment of peace in a cacophonous world, so I went back a few days later to write this column. Storms of Our Souls occupies most of the first floor, including the awkward spaces of the Oval Gallery, the front window display, and the small room with black walls that always makes me a bit claustrophobic. The ne plus ultra of the show is in the main gallery. Four floor-to-ceiling charcoal drawings on paper are mounted without glass or frames. The subject of these and all works in the show is a closely-cropped rendering of natural material—roots, branches, trunks, or vines. Identifying what plants these are is not possible, though not for a lack of surface detail. There are no leaves or flowers and no way to see the whole shape of what we’re looking at. There are no dark patches of obvious earth or ground.
I’m not an expert on the wilderness, but I have spent time in nature. I can think of no swath of it that actually looks like what is represented in these drawings. Yet the detailed mark-making and illusion of light and volume momentarily convinces the viewer that these are “real” spaces and “real” flora. If they are not real or specific plants, what are they? Memory? Metaphor? Both? The drawings are made with the things they depict: wood and vine. “Yes,” Bechet said when I mentioned this. “And cotton,” he added. The paper is made of cotton which carries its own nature and a history that carries a specific resonance with the artist, a Black man who grew up in the American South.
The drawings are detailed but it’s not photographic detail particular to a camera lens. I assumed they were not drawn from photographs. Later, when I spoke to the artist about the show, he told me he sometimes sketches when he is out in nature, but mostly he just observes it. Back in the studio he draws from his imagination, improvising detail on basic shapes he sketches out ahead. As an undergrad, Bechet was exposed to photorealism which was popular in the 1970s. “So I became influenced by that style.” This made sense. Even though Bechet no longer uses photographs or makes work about photographs, his drawings retain that lineage. They are dense and complex compositions that can be viewed effectively from across the room or from inches away.
This show represents a lot of work. By “work” I mean labor—physical exertion separate from the more cerebral and imaginative aspects of making art. These drawings were made by the artist alone. I verified this though looking at the work. It would have surprised me if he had enlisted others to do the drawing for him. It’s evident in the mark-making that there is a single author. In a way, labor, the act of drawing, seems to be the point. Like Benedictine monks for whom labor is a component of their practice, this work feels spiritual. Drawing is a practice rather than a means to an end. Bechet told me his grandfather was at one time a WPA laborer who helped dig the lagoons in City Park. These works feel like a kind of digging.
The perspective in many of the drawings is close to the ground like an animal or a curious child. What lies beyond the up-close bramble is mostly obscured. This subtly encourages soft attention on what is close and present, like a focal point in meditation. The artist is encouraging slowness and stillness by practicing what he preaches without words or definable ideology. “Be still and observe” is not the message I got from the work, but what it modeled and convinced me to do.
It’s not a perfect show. The smaller drawings by the entrance are mounted behind glass in black frames. The frames seem to be at cross purposes with the drawings’ untamed nature and reflections in the glass block the soft spell of the charcoal. Art installed by the CAC’s front windows facing Camp and Julia streets often feels treated like window dressing, vying for the attention of passers by. Unfortunately, the drawings mounted on hanging panels look like stage props and daylight does charcoal no favors, washing out the rich black color. The most successful parts of the show are the most straightforward, large drawings mounted flush with the wall that meet the viewer face-to-face with as little intervention as possible.
Nonetheless, I’ve told everyone who will listen to go see this show. The second time I left the CAC after spending more than an hour at the exhibition, I felt close to how I feel after looking at large and quiet mountains. Ron Bechet told me his grandfather taught him to “make what he needed: loyalty, honor, and discipline.” He said he wanted others to “take from it what they need.”
For more info on From the Storms of Our Souls: The Art of Ron Bechet, check out cacno.org.
Photo by Emily Farranto: Reverberations of the Truth, 2016, Charcoal on paper, 63” x 60”
