CHRISTOPHER TAW: SHADOW BOXES
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By contrast Taw is a realist: his boxes are rooted in, and lead the viewer back to, the physical world. The earliest box in the show, Closet (1975), literally takes the form of a closet, the glass in the position of the door. The white-walled room, with a shelf and rack, is scattered with odd two-toned hangers made of color-coded telephone wire. It’s in the Hall Closet (1980) is another, more cluttered miniature cubicle. Tiny bundles of newspaper lie on the floor; a thermometer hangs on the wall, as do several small drawings and prints. Some of these objects, such as the newspapers, might logically be in a closet–but who hangs art on a closet wall? On the floor with the newspapers are actual kitchen matches, leaning against the wall; these look enormous in the miniature room, introducing an almost surreal disparity. Here, within an “actual” room–a realist space Cornell almost never provides–Taw introduces mystery.
Even stranger and more powerful are Taw’s group of six small works, part of a recent series of smaller boxes each containing only one, two, or three objects. An untitled box (1994) holds a rusted piece of machinery; a grid of bluish circles covers the back wall. The odd prominence given this piece of junk, which almost seems to press against the sides of the box, encourages the viewer to bring his own associations to it–as he would with a Cornell box–but the rusted object’s physicality prevents him from going on a weightless mental journey from soap bubble to solar system. With a Grain of Salt (1992) places a saltshaker on the floor of an otherwise empty cubicle whose walls are black with white specks, a pattern that suggests the night sky–in which case the shaker is absurdly large. Like the matches in Closet, the isolated saltshaker asserts its own physicality, denying the piece any of Cornell’s transcendent delicacy and returning the viewer to the world of everyday objects.
Perhaps the most complex of the boxes is Strange Garden (1992). While most of the box is relatively dark, as in The Attic a light comes from within, from behind a closed garden gate at the rear. In the foreground are planters in which “plants” made of the ends of elevator cables formed into loops sprout from the soil. Pointing every which way is a labyrinth of what seem metal logs, made of small reinforcement bars used for poured concrete. If urban gardens are usually attempts to soften the metal and stone of the city with greenery, this garden reverses that expectation, just as the seemingly haphazard arrangement of logs is the opposite of the well- ordered landscaping of most gardens. The whole scene, with the closed gate, has a slightly threatening edge, a suggestion of industrial detritus come alive and run amok.
