lead pencil studio
there’s nothing to see here lead pencil studio
land art | phantom construction by lindsay leblanc
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Maryhill Double and Non-Sign II are examples of functional form void of its purpose, left to be interpreted as frames, skeletons, the beginnings of something that is not to come. Viewing the work for the first time, there is a recognition of assumed or intended function, followed almost immediately by the recognition that the assumed or intended function is in no way supported by the work. What happens next is a divided experience, between the satisfaction of knowing what is there and the dissatisfaction of knowing nothing is there. The discussion of Maryhill Double and Non-Sign II here is not only an investigation of this (almost Kantian 1 ) viewing experience, but an argument in favour of lacking purpose. Because sometimes efficiency is just not that interesting.
It is difficult to regard the work of Lead Pencil Studio while bearing the ideological load of an efficiency-obsessed society, where each form has its function, each function its form, and the objects that defy this rule of reductive thinking are left to be further classified—as art in the most fortunate cases, otherwise, as another item to be added to the piles of waste we already produce. There is a collective fear of things left purposeless (as if there is meant to be a method to the madness). Annie Han and Daniel Milhayo, dual parts of Seattle-based Lead Pencil Studio, stand out for disobeying the rules; they do not make objects that take well to classification. In fact, Han and Milhayo ‘fake out’ pre-existing systems of classification. A word to the wise: whatever you may think it is, it is probably not.
1 ‘We can say no more than that the object serves for the presentation of a sublimity that can be found in the mind; for what is properly sublime cannot be contained in any sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason, which, though no presentation adequate to them is possible, are provoked and called to mind precisely by this inadequacy, which does allow of sensible presentation.’ Immanuel Kant in Critique of the Power of Judgment , ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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